the same consideration holds good. All wealth is a result of mind applied to matter. The matter is always there. The factor of human capacity is exceedingly variable. The quickened sense of relative power in a nation acts, and can only act, through its individuals. It means more initiative, more enterprise, more inventiveness, more energy. It constitutes one of the strongest economic forces by which the wealth of nations can be promoted. A sound economic policy will always be directed towards the increase of relative power.
Isolated free imports lend no assistance to that aim, but, on the contrary, defeat it. That they promote the expansion of manufacture and population in foreign countries, and advance all the interests of those countries, no one disputes. That the tariffs of the same countries restrict our own manufacture, and are injurious to all our interests, no one disputes. That free imports and foreign tariffs must therefore work together towards the decrease of our relative power and against the maintenance of Empire is a proposition of which the truth must appear self-evident. Habit may continue to dispute it, reason cannot. It is, indeed, if we look into me matter, the single point upon which the two schools of controversialists are already, without knowing it, in agreement. For Mr. Cobden's disciples and Mr. Chamberlain's supporters are wholly at one in believing free imports to be a blessing to foreign nations—and they are again at one in holding that foreign tariffs are prejudicial to ourselves. But even if our foreign commerce could be carried on under improved conditions, no conceivable extent of success in that sphere could now solve our Imperial problem.
It is not enough to stop the process by which we have helped our competitors to gain upon us. The Empire needs to make up leeway. Trade in which we divide the benefits equally with Germany, Russia, or the United States is only half the political value—transactions being considered as economically equal—of the trade which strengthens the wealth and population of the Empire on both sides of the sea, and works absolutely
