And lastly, after thus rejecting all the special arguments by which Adam Smith defended his principle of Free Trade, the modern Free Traders reject his political remedy as well, - his proposal, namely, to abolish the monopoly which the mother country held over the Colonial trade which with him was the source of all the mischief (much more so, indeed, than the Corn Laws), and to throw open the trade to all the world; - not for the benefit of the Colonies, be it remembered, but for the benefit of the mother country; - to make the Colonies contribute to the Imperial revenue the amount spent on their defence: and to allow them to send representatives to the British Parliament.

And this brings us to the most interesting and important point in the whole discussion, namely as to how or why it is that with Adam Smith and the modern Free Traders thus openly repudiating each others' arguments, they should still agree in defending the principle of Free Trade! For as result we have, as we have seen, this curious spectacle and anomaly, that while the earlier economists and statesmen accepted the principle of Free Trade from Adam Smith by reason of the arguments with which he supported it, the present generation of Free Traders still hold on to his principle after repudiating in turn each and every one of his arguments! Now the answer to this is quite simple, and leads us at once to the deepest and most central of all the illusions which underlie the principle and doctrines of Free Trade. And it is this; - that whatever policy is best adapted to increase the wealth of the world as a single economic whole, is also necessarily the best adapted to increase the wealth of each particular nation in it: and that in consequence, if all the tariff barriers between nations were thrown down, the increase of wealth that would accrue, would, like liquid manure poured out at any part of a level field divided into sections but without fences between them, spread itself out evenly over all, to the particular benefit of each part or division as well as to the general welfare of the whole.

In this, Adam Smith and the modern Free Traders are at one, and it is this which keeps them united on the principle of Free Trade, although mutually annihilating one another in every argument by which they respectively support it. Fortunately, to get at the truth or falsehood of this theory we have a concrete instance ready at hand, which has only to be presented to settle the matter without confusing the reader with pages of abstract argument. For all we have to do is to let the United States of America represent, for the nonce, the world as a single economic whole, and its several States (between all of which absolute Free Trade exists) represent the separate nations of which the world is composed; and then see what has happened and is happening there to-day so far as the fortunes of its several States are concerned. Does the economic prosperity of each of these different States keep pace in point of fact with the economic prosperity of the Union as a whole; and does each get its proportionate share of the wealth that is being heaped up in all? Certainly not; on the contrary, wealth, capital and population alike migrate in great masses from State to State, either driven out by the competition of other States, or attracted by the superior opportunities for accumulating wealth opened up by them.

Agriculture, for example, has almost entirely disappeared from some of the Eastern sea-board States, and moved on to the West, taking its country population with it; farms are not so much sold as abandoned, the old homesteads have fallen into ruin and decay or are used as summer resorts for invalids, while the land itself has returned to its original prairie state again. Then, too, whole batches of mills and factories in one State are extinguished in a decade by the competition of another, as if a destroying angel had passed over them; and now that the great industries of the country are organized and concentrated in great Trusts, the fortunes of particular States no longer have to wait until they are annihilated by the direct impact of competition, but whole industries are liable to be dislimned at a moment by a nod from the central controlling power of the Trust - furnace-fires blown out here to be re-lit on a larger scale there, mills closed down in this State, as no longer so profitable as their concentration and enlargement in that -while the population which they support, having received their marching orders, have to roll up their tents, disperse, and steal away, like nomads in the night. And the reason is obvious.

Facilities of transport having at last caught up with the powers of Production, the separate States of the Union no longer exist as semi-isolated economic units, as in the clays of Adam Smith, but each is in free communication with all the rest, as the organs of an animal's body are through its blood and nervous system; so that the products of each and every State, floated everywhere on this equal stream of circulation, can join issue at each and every point of the vast territory, whether for attack or co-operation; and the twin poles on which the economic fortunes of nations turn, namely competitive and complemetary exchange, can operate unimpeded at each and every point with all their force. And the consequence is, that just as in the conflict of talents in an open arena and on even terms, and where there are no exclusions, the best man win; so the geographical situations that are either richest in wealth-producing raw material, - whether of soil or of mines, - or which offer the best strategetical points for manufacturing, concentrating, or distributing it, resume their natural economic superiority over all those factitious advantages which bulk themselves out so bravely when from absence of transport or from inter-State barriers they are kept from a hand-to-hand grapple for supremacy.