stated for less than nothing; for, besides getting these products, we have actually acquired a vast sum in money, and have also induced every civilised nation on earth to give us I O U's., amounting in the aggregate to at least 600 millions sterling! And, with these facts in our possession, we cannot but see that all the talk we hear about "buying more than we sell" and "our adverse balance of trade" is nothing but arrant nonsense; and that it is not the Free Traders, but the Neo-Protectionists, who cherish "blundering and mischievous delusions."
III.
ONE-SIDED FREE TRADE.
Having safely passed our "pons" we will now, by the help of what this has taught us, examine what our Neo-Protectionists call One-sided Free Trade.
I hold it to mean that while every nation has a free sale for its products in our home markets, we are excluded more or less from some of the great markets of the world by hostile and prohibitory tariffs. This is the truth, but the inferences and conclusions drawn therefrom by our Neo-Protectionists are as false and absurd as their notions about our adverse balance of trade.
They suppose that Great Britain is the principal if not the only sufferer from this state of things; and they assert that while Protection is advancing the prosperity of other countries, Free Trade is destroying ours.
Free Traders deny these propositions, and, on the contrary, affirm that Free Trade has been, and is, a source of vast prosperity, and an unmitigated blessing to the country, and that Protection has been, and is, a source of loss to those countries which have established it.
Let us now see what we, as a nation, have done under our one-sided Free Trade.
First, let us try and understand the meaning of the complaint that every nation has a free sale for its products in our home markets. From the terms used, it must be evident that every nation which produces anything, and wishes
