This simple consideration alone would be sufficient of itself to solve the whole problem of Free Trade and Protection, - so far, that is to say, as its purely economic aspect is concerned. For, as we have seen, the balance of economic profit-and-loss between losing an instrument of production (whether by taxing it to death or by driving it out by foreign competition), and getting its product cheaper for the consumer, falls always on the one side, whatever unit you take to test it on, - whether it be an individual workman with his bag of tools, a village, a town, a division of a country, or the country as a whole as against other nations. So that it becomes an axiom of trade policy, never to lose an instrument of production for the sake merely of a greater cheapness in its product.

Now, the first objection that is likely to rise to the lips of the Free Trader is this; - Do you mean to say that you would not sacrifice all the private bags of tools of all the workmen in the kingdom, if necessary, for the sake of the cheapened products of the superior instruments of production in the shape of machinery which in so many forms have replaced them, simply because these products come from abroad? Or all the capitalists with inferior kinds of machinery, for the cheaper products of better machinery from abroad? Would you not have the shoemakers sacrifice their last hammer and awl, the carpenters their last plane and chisel and saw, for the cheaper but equally good products of planing, and stitching, and cutting, machines; the seamstresses their last needles for the cheaper and equally good products of the sewing machine; the manufacturer his mills, and factories, machinery, workshops, and skilled workmen, for the cheaper but equally good products of superior machinery, better organized workshops and more highly skilled workmen; or the farmer his last acre, for the cheaper corn of richer lands? This is the very nodus of the whole problem of Free Trade or Protection for a nation, and my reply is definite and unhesitating.

To put it briefly, it is this; - the carpenter, the shoemaker, the tailor, the farmer, as well as the capitalist manufacturers of every grade, quality, or description of product, may, as cheerfully as they can, sacrifice their last tool, workshop, or machine, for the sake of a cheaper article of the same kind to the consumer, - provided always that the competitors who have brought them to this pass belong to the same nation. And why? Firstly, because it is the recognised rule of the game, accepted and submitted to by all the individual members of a nation in their industrial and trade relations with each other; and secondly, because however great the number of the inferior instruments of production which are supplanted by the superior ones may be, nothing is lost; for the superior ones, however few in number, not only gather up and concentrate in themselves all the powers of all the inferior ones which they have displaced, but still leave something over to the good for the nation itself; - as is proved by the fact that all its consumers are getting everything at a less price.

And if, as is equally true, every inferior instrument of production that is thrown out by a superior one thrown out of work a number of workmen also (inasmuch as the greater part of the work done by the superior instruments of production is done by impersonal powers of Nature called into being by inventive genius), and so leaves less to be done by mere human labour; - that is a problem which Politics has to settle by altering the rules of the game which bear on these recognised contingencies, and must not be mixed up with the purely economic problem with which, as such, it has nothing whatever to do. But if it be a foreign nation or circle of foreign nations, on the other hand, that is making the attempt to displace our instruments of production by means of the cheaper products of its own, then the game at once alters, and has to be played on quite a different principle, and by an entirely different set of rules. For now, the instruments of production which by the cheapness of their products have supplanted our own, belong to foreign nations; and as the instruments of production of a nation consist of its fixed capital of all kinds and the skill of the workmen; and further, as these are the only permanent wealth producing assets of a nation (all their products being implicitly contained in them and not to be counted twice over); it follows that when they are transferred, as the issue of trade competition, to other nations - one to one nation, another to another - first, a subordinate instrument engaged in extracting raw material or producing half manufactured goods going across to the foreigner, then another and another, until at last the great and complex machines engaged in manufacturing the finished product, with all their subordinate and cooperative collaterals, are forced to close down by being undersold; - it follows, I say, that economically speaking, that nation having allowed its arms and legs to be cut off for the sake, as it were, of its stomach, must as literally starve or depend on foreign charity for the future, as a single Red Indian hunter would have to do if he sold his rifle for a more delicate morsel of venison, or, (as I have known drunken Mohawks do in Canada), for a bottle of whisky; or an isolated workman his bag of tools not for a better bag of tools, but for a cheaper mess of pottage.