In the same way, if all the products of a particular nation were obliged to find for themselves a market in that nation, owing to tariff 'barriers preventing them from finding their natural market elsewhere, they would either be wasted, and cease to be produced at all, and so a diminution of the possible wealth-production of the world would result; or if produced, would exchange for less of the products of other nations, owing to the cost incurred in surmounting the barriers raised against them. In a word, then, universal Free Trade, by permitting each and every kind of natural, artificial, or manufactured product, to find most easily a natural home and market for itself somewhere in the wide world, would give to all products alike a greater market than would otherwise be possible, and so would permit of everything everywhere being produced at less cost. On the other hand, Protection, by raising tariff barriers between nations, has precisely the same effect as if the natural productions of a country had to be carried at some part of their course over hills or mountains on pack-saddles, instead of sailing or running smoothly along in ships or by rail; and so by raising the cost in human labour of all products alike, would reduce the aggregate possible wealth of the world as a whole.

From all of which it is clear that a universal Free Trade, under ideal conditions for its exercise, would most greatly increase the wealth of the world as a single economic unity or whole.

But now let us turn to the other side of the shield, and see what the effect of a universal Free Trade would be on any particular nation, - when that nation is resolved at all costs to maintain its political unity, dignity, and independence, and to increase by every means in its power the wealth and material prosperity which is necessary to support it. We shall find that it will be the same as its operation on any given division of a particular nation - as we saw in the case of the United States of America; and that the same freedom of trade which brings to your door from all parts of the world the precise products which your means or your tastes will permit you to enjoy, at the smallest possible cost, will bring also with it, and with equal facility, the goods of your foreign rivals in the same line of business as your own; and that unless your nation from its geographical position or its natural productivity and skill, can maintain a supremacy over all its rivals, it may lose as much by Free Trade on the side of Production, through foreign competition, as it will gain by it on the side of Consumption through the cheapness of those complementary products which it does not itself produce.

And when once the world of nations is able to successfully conquer your industries in your own homes, - one nation in this product and another in that, and another in yet another, - there is no more guarantee in commerce than in war that your nation may not in a decade be degraded from the rank of a first to that of a third-rate industrial power. And the more complete is the freedom of trade between all nations, and the more perfect the ramifications of transport-service everywhere, the more rapidly will wealth, capital, and population be driven from one geographical area to another, - according to convenience of situation, natural resources, or the relative power of the combatants to supply at the cheapest cost those products for which there is the most world-wide demand. In a universal regime of Free Trade there is no way of keeping the wealth, capital, or population, fixed and steady on any given area of soil, and in any particular nation, or of preventing them moving away to more favoured regions or nations; the economic destinies of all, on the contrary, being as fated as if 'written on the iron leaf.' And the whole industrial history of the world gives it proof.

For from the moment that the route around the Cape was discovered, and the ships of all nations were equally allowed to sail it, the fate of Venice and the other Italian Republics of the Middle Ages was sealed; and although their decline might linger, their end was inevitable. Again, from the moment that the corn of Western America, Russia, and the Argentine, was from better transport facilities brought to our doors, English agriculture, under the regime of Free Trade, received its death blow; and had Adam Smith been alive, it must have destroyed his belief in that system of Free Trade which, as we have seen, following the Physiocrats of France, he founded originally on the supremacy of Agriculture as a wealth-producing asset for all nations alike, - and founded on that supremacy alone. And we may go farther and say, that when the time is at length ripe for the giant Trusts of the world, concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, to make a concerted attack on our manufactures, whether by 'dumping' and other devices, or by the legitimate underselling which production on a gigantic scale will make possible, - as it has already made it possible for them to extinguish their trade rivals in their own countries; - and when they are aided and abetted in this by the cotton 'corners,' the Metal and Food Produce corners of the world (and for this a dozen or two of the greatest multi-millionaires have only to lay their heads together to shake the markets of the world to their centres), what defence would the Free Trade of any nation make which could avail against them? Indeed, had Adam Smith lived to-day, still believing, as he did, that Agriculture was practically safe from attack by foreign rivals under a regime of Free Trade, - on the ground, as we have seen, that as corn and cattle could be practically produced and reared at about the same cost in every agricultural country, the expense of transport made their successful competition a practical impossibility except in times of scarcity or famine, - what would he have said when he found that not only these great staples of Agriculture, - its corn and cattle, - were undersold in the home market, but that even the humble breakfast egg, the most uncertain and perishable of all commodities, could be brought from nearly every European country to the markets of his own country, and through the cumulative effects of some petty differences in cost of transport, could so over-ride all considerations of time, distance, and productiveness (his three sheet anchors of defence) as to drive out the home egg as effectually as the brown rat has driven out the black one? Would he not then have known and realized for the first time, that when once the transport between nations is so perfected that time and distance have become practically annihilated in the bill of costs, Free Trade brings to the door of every home not only the peaceful foreign trader who will supply you at the cheapest rate with the commodities you wish to possess but which you do not yourself produce, but will bring also to your door by the same boat the foreign commercial traveller with his battle-axe and his mailed fist, who, unless you are the stronger, will proceed to batter down the walls of your factories and workshops, and cut off the wages that support your hearths and homes! And it will be done so naively, so unsuspectingly, and so cunningly, that your throat will have been 'cut with an oiled feather' before you are aware of it.