transformed, from a mere principle of criticism, till it comes to
be regarded as the harbinger of a possible Utopia. It was in this
fashion that it was put forward by French economists and proved
attractive to some leading American statesmen in the 18th century.
Turgot regarded the colonial systems of the European countries
as at once unfair to their dependencies and dangerous to the peace
of the world. “It will be a wise and happy thing for the nation
which shall be the first to modify its policy according to the new
conditions, and be content to regard its colonies as if they were
allied provinces and not subjects of the mother country.” It
will be a wise and happy thing for the nation which is the first
to be convinced that the secret of “success, so far as commercial
policy is concerned, consists in employing all its land in the
manner most profitable for the proprietary, all the hands in the
manner most advantageous to the workman personally, that is
to say, in the manner in which each would employ them, if we
could let him be simply directed by his own interest, and that
all the rest of the mercantile policy is vanity and vexation of
spirit. When the entire separation of America shall have forced
the whole world to recognize this truth and purged the European
nations of commercial jealousy there will be one great cause of
war less in the world.”[1] Pitt, under the influence of Adam
Smith, was prepared to admit the United States to the benefit
of trade with the West Indian Colonies; and Jefferson, accepting
the principles of his French teachers, would (in contradistinction
to Alexander Hamilton) have been willing to see his country renounce the attempt to develop manufactures of her own.[2] It
seemed as if a long step might be taken towards realizing the free-trade ideal for the Anglo-Saxon race; but British shipowners
insisted on the retention of their privileges, and the propitious
moment passed away with the failure of the negotiations of
1783.[3] Free trade ceased to be regarded as a gospel, even in
France, till the ideal was revived in the writings of Bastiat,
and helped to mould the enthusiasm of Richard Cobden.[4]
Through his zealous advocacy, the doctrine secured converts in
almost every part of the world; though it was only in Great
Britain that a great majority of the citizens became so far
satisfied with it that they adopted it as the foundation of the
economic policy of the country.
It is not difficult to account for the conversion of Great Britain to this doctrine; in the special circumstances of the first half of the 19th century it was to the interest of the most vigorous factors in the economic life of the country to secure the greatest possible freedom for commercial intercourse. Great Britain had, through her shipping, access to all the markets of the world; she had obtained such a lead in the application of machinery to manufactures that she had a practical monopoly in textile manufactures and in the hardware trades; by removing every restriction, she could push her advantage to its farthest extent, and not only undersell native manufactures in other lands, but secure food, and the raw materials for her manufactures, on the cheapest possible terms. Free trade thus seemed to offer the means of placing an increasing distance between Britain and her rivals, and of rendering the industrial monopoly which she had attained impregnable. The capitalist employer had superseded the landowner as the mainstay of the resources and revenue of the realm, and insisted that the prosperity of manufactures was the primary interest of the community as a whole. The expectation, that a thoroughgoing policy of free trade would not only favour an increase of employment, but also the cheapening of food, could only have been roused in a country which was obliged to import a considerable amount of corn. The exceptional weakness, as well as the exceptional strength, of Great Britain, among European countries, made it seem desirable to adopt the principle of unrestricted commercial intercourse, not merely in the tentative fashion in which it had been put in operation by Huskisson, but in the thoroughgoing fashion in which it at last commended itself to the minds of Peel and Gladstone. The “Manchester men” saw clearly where their interest lay; and the fashionable political economy was ready to demonstrate that in pursuing their own interest they were conferring the benefit of cheap clothing on all the most poverty-stricken races of mankind. It seemed probable, in the ’forties and early ’fifties, that other countries would take a similar view of their own interests and would follow the example which Great Britain had set.[5] That they have not done so, is partly due to the fact that none of them had such a direct, or such a widely diffused, interest in increased commercial intercourse as existed in Great Britain; but their reluctance has been partly the result of the criticism to which the free-trade doctrine has been subjected. The principles expressed in the writings of Friedrich List have taken such firm hold, both in America and in Germany, that these countries have preferred to follow on the lines by which Great Britain successfully built up her industrial prosperity in the 17th and 18th century, rather than on those by which they have seen her striving to maintain it since 1846.
Free trade was attractive as an ideal, because it appeared to offer the greatest production of goods to the world as a whole, and the largest share of material goods to each consumer; it is cosmopolitan, and it treats consumption, and the interest of the consumer, as such, as the end to be considered. Hence it lies open to objections which are partly political and partly economic.
As cosmopolitan, free-trade doctrine is apt to be indifferent to national tradition and aspiration. In so far indeed as patriotism is a mere aesthetic sentiment, it may be tolerated, but in so far as it implies a genuine wish and intention to preserve and defend the national habits and character to the exclusion of alien elements, the cosmopolitan mind will condemn it as narrow and mischievous. In the first half of the 19th century there were many men who believed that national ambitions and jealousies of every kind were essentially dynastic, and that if monarchies were abolished there would be fewer occasions of war, so that the expenses of the business of government would be enormously curtailed. For Cobden and his contemporaries it was natural to regard the national administrative institutions as maintained for the benefit of the “classes” and without much advantage to the “masses.” But in point of fact, modern times have shown the existence in democracies of a patriotic sentiment which is both exclusive and aggressive; and the burden of armaments has steadily increased. It was by means of a civil war that the United States attained to a consciousness of national life; while such later symptoms as the recent interpretations of the Monroe doctrine, or the war with Spain, have proved that the citizens of that democratic country cannot be regarded as destitute of self-aggrandizing national ambition.
In Germany the growth of militarism and nationalism have gone on side by side under constitutional government, and certainly in harmony with predominant public opinion. Neither of these communities is willing to sink its individual conception of progress in those of the world at large; each is jealous of the intrusion of alien elements which cannot be reconciled with its own political and social system. And a similar recrudescence of patriotic feeling has been observable in other countries, such as Norway and Hungary: the growth of national sentiment is shown, not only in the attempts to revive and popularize the use of a national language, but still more decidedly in the determination to have a real control over the economic life of the country. It is here that the new patriotism comes into direct conflict with the political principles of free trade as advocated by Bastiat and Cobden; for them the important point was that countries, by becoming dependent on one another, would be prevented from engaging in hostilities. The new nations are
- ↑ “Mémoire,” 6 April 1776, in Œuvres, viii. 460.
- ↑ Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 275. See also the articles on Jefferson and Hamilton, Alexander.
- ↑ One incidental effect of the failure to secure free trade was that the African slave trade, with West Indies as a depot for supplying the American market, ceased to be remunerative, and the opposition to the abolition of the trade was very much weaker than it would otherwise have been; see Hochstetter, “Die wirtschaftlichen und politischen Motive für die Abschaffung des britischen Sklavenhandels,” in Schmoller, Staats und Sozialwissenschaftliche Forschungen, xxv. i. 37.
- ↑ J. Welsford, “Cobden’s Foreign Teacher,” in National Review (December 1905).
- ↑ Compatriot Club Lectures (1905), p. 306.
