to protect agriculture would be injurious to the general interest, and on this ground the Corn Laws were abolished.
The reasons which hold against Protection to agriculture apply with tenfold force to other and minor interests. If these interests clash with those of the community they must give way. There is no other possible method of attaining to the greatest happiness of the greatest number. And on no other ground can a Free Trader argue the question as regards Retaliation, or whatever form Protection may take; whatever net gain it might bring to a class, the loss to the community would be much larger.
It must be contrary to the general interest that the price of any commodity should be artificially raised. To raise prices is, on the one hand, injurious to producers by checking consumption, and thus diminishing the demand for the article produced, and for the labour which produces it; while on the other hand, it is injurious to the consumer, in forcing him either to pay more for, or to consume less of, the article of which he stands in need.
To diminish production is to diminish our industry, our trade, and our commerce, and thus to impoverish ourselves and the rest of the world.
It is the interest of the community that the keenest competition should reign, so that energy, enterprise, and invention shall have full play, and shall work for the benefit of ourselves and the rest of mankind. Protection dulls and stifles these beneficent forces, and its inevitable tendency is to bring about the mimimum of production at the maximum of cost. And on this ground it stands utterly condemned.
V.
TWO NEO-PROTECTIONISTS.
- A Quarterly Reviewer, July, 1881.
- Sir Edward Sullivan, Bart., Nineteenth Century, August, 1881.
Under the head of "Imports and Exports" I have given a few extracts from two of the latest Protectionist utterances. I here take the opportunity of making a few comments on some of the facts relied on, and the conclusions drawn, in these two diatribes against Free Trade.
