Having now passed under review the different arguments by which Free Trade is usually supported in the works of the Orthodox Economists, and the diluted echoes of them from the mouths of the parliamentary politicians with which the newspapers resound; having seen that they rest primarily on the doctrine that what is best economically for the world as a whole is necessarily best for each particular nation; having seen, too, that this doctrine, in turn, rested on the illusion of a common reservoir of wealth which if all tariff barriers were removed, would, like a fertilizing stream, water all nations alike, instead of each having its own private reservoir on which alone it can rely, and which depends on the number and strength of the instruments of production - in the shape of land and other fixed capital - which it has secured for itself; having seen, further, that this illusion of a common reservoir is the direct result of the lumping together of the competitive industries engaged in international trade, with those that are complementary to each other, and then treating them as if both were additions to the wealth of each nation, instead of separating them and seeing that while competing industries are warlike in character, and, like rival stags, destroy each other (barring always the conqueror, who now can reign supreme), only the complementary ones are peaceful, fruitful in nature, like the opposite sexes, and beneficent to all nations alike; - having seen all this, and seen further that the prosperity of International Trade when once it is started is, in the opinion of the Free Traders, ultimately fixed and made permanent and secure by the effect on prices of the gold that passes and repasses between nations through the mechanism of the Foreign Exchanges, and that their arguments on this head are not merely analagous but identical with the illusions of the perpetual-motion schemer; - having seen all this, I say, and that it all rests on a basis of old-world thought engendered in the infancy of Modern Industry (and indeed even before its infancy) by Adam Smith, and as exploded to-day in all else save this of Free Trade (which, indeed, has only been kept alive owing to the saving industrial supremacy among all nations of one highly favoured nation through a long series of years, but now admittedly narrowing on every side and aspect to its close) as is the old Ptolemaic Astronomy: - we may now pass to those related aspects of the problem of Free Trade and Protection which bring it into touch with the problems of general Civilization, of Politics, of Sociology, and of Morality, in which it must ultimately have its roots, but which since Political Economy as a science has been narrowed down to an academic specialism, have been cut away from it, and entirely divorced from it.

These we must now proceed to re-unite with it, if the full round of the arguments bearing on this problem of Free Trade and Protection, as opposite principles of policy, are to be presented in their entirety before any nation for its acceptance or rejection.