of trade returns, that is to say, by looking at them without taking into account, or consideration, a number of other facts and circumstances without which they are not only useless, but are absolutely misleading and mischievous. No one can get anything like a correct notion of what is going on between nation and nation until he has taken such matters as the following into account:—He must not only look at the bare figures of imports and exports, he must know the rules by which they are computed; and the rules differ in different countries. He must find out whether country A is lending capital to or buying the securities of country B, or whether the contrary is taking place; or whether A is paying off debt, or paying interest on loans and other securities to B; or whether B is doing all that to A. And, further, he must take into account the great ocean-carrying trade, and allow for freights and insurance; and he must see who provides the capital for this international trade, and whose merchants and bankers do the business, and thus earn the profits, and the commissions; and he must also take into account such matters as payments for war indemnities, alterations of currency, and the complications arising out of fluctuations of prices, and out of changes in the standard of value. I say, that in order to obtain a perfectly accurate knowledge of what a nation is doing, the inquirer must know, and properly work in, all these various factors. But, as besides the figures in the trade returns we have no official figures, we can only roughly estimate other factors from such sources as are available, and arrive as nearly as we can at a correct conclusion.
Well now, let me ask, did you ever know or hear of a Fair Trader doing anything of that kind? I venture to say there is not one of them who, until lately, has had the faintest notion of what is required, and that the faint notion, such as it is, which they possess, has been instilled into them by their opponents during this discussion.
Bearing in mind these considerations, let us now examine some of the facts and arguments relied on by our friends the Fair Traders.
