the economist can offer no light. He has no method of investigating them. He can deduce no principles, lay down no laws in regard to them. The legislator must go on in the dark and experiment. If his taxes do not produce the required result, if there turn out to be "snakes" in the tariff which he has adopted, he has to change it. If the result still fails, change it again. Protectionism bars the science of political economy with a dogma, and the only process of the art of statesmanship to which it leads is eternal trial and failure — the process of the alchemist and of the inventor of perpetual motion.
(D) Definition of Free Trade and of a Protective Duty.
12. What then is a protective tax? In order to join issue as directly as possible, I will quote the definitions given by a leading protectionist journal,[1] of both free trade and protection, "The term 'free trade,' although much discussed, is seldom rightly defined. It does not mean the abolition of custom houses. Nor does it mean the substitution of direct for indirect taxation, as a few American disciples of the school have supposed. It means such an adjustment of taxes on imports as will cause no diversion of capital, from any channel into which it would otherwise flow, into any channel opened or favored by the legislation which enacts the customs. A country may collect its entire revenue by duties on imports, and yet be an entirely free trade country, so long as it does not lay those duties in such a way as to lead any one to undertake any employment, or make any investment he would avoid in the absence of such duties: thus, the customs duties levied by England — with a very few exceptions — are not inconsistent with her profession of being a country which be-
- ↑ Philadelphia American, August 7, 1884.
