4. In all cases where the extent of a nation's market abroad is blocked by hostile tariffs, the principle of a quid pro quo should be rigorously applied by means of 'commercial treaties' special to each one; the world of foreign nations being pitted against each other like rival bidders in an auction room, so that when for any reason an industrial instrument, whether of soil or manufactures, has to be parted with, it may be knocked down to the highest bidder. In a word, now that we see that the Free Trade doctrine - that what is economically best for the world as a whole is necessarily in the long run the best for each particular nation, - is a fatal delusion and confusion of thought, we have no better general prescription to offer to nations who have trade relations with other nations than to follow the most accepted and best accredited maxims and methods of individuals in their business relations with one another. In doing so a nation will be, I believe, as nearly right as the nature of things will at present permit it to be.

5. But should, the reader still have any doubt of the supreme importance of our trade maxim of never parting with an instrument of production, - whether of land, mine, or manufacture, - to the foreigner, for the sake of mere cheapness to the home consumer, except under compulsion; and that when forced to do so, it should be some subordinate instrument of limited or local efficiency, for which something not only as good or better, but also as permanent, has been received in return; while the supreme instruments of production of a country must not be parted with at any price; - if the reader still doubts this, I may venture to present him with a fresh argument founded on and following from one of the most cherished maxims of the Free Traders themselves, - a maxim which guides the practice and inspires the teaching of all statesmen, economists, and publicists alike, whether they be Free Traders or Protectionists. It is a maxim of Taxation, when that taxation is levied not for purposes of Protection, but for the ordinary and necessary revenue of the State, and it is this: - Never to lay a tax where there is any chance of its falling directly or ultimately on an instrument of Production, or on capital that is invested, or likely to be invested, in such instruments, - whether on land, mines, machinery, tools or horses and carts, buildings, fruit trees, or what not, when used for productive purposes; for it was that and that alone which owing to the short-sighted greed and extortion of their despotic rulers brought the countries under Turkish and Oriental rule, - many of them so rich in natural resources, - to the poverty in which they are sunk at the present day.

Great men's heads might have been periodically cut off like tulip tops by the score, and yet the country might flourish exceedingly; but by striking at the instruments of production themselves through taxation, you strike at the very heart of a nation's economic prosperity. It was this that precipitated the downfall of the Roman Empire in the West. The Emperors in their greed absolved the large landowners, who were mostly senators, from taxation, and laid it on the small proprietors, - the twenty or thirty acre men, - who everywhere surrounded the towns and villages in Italy, Gaul, and Spain; making them responsible not only for their own share, but for that of all the defaulters as well. And the consequence was that as the list of defaulters increased, these taxes became at last so formidable, that in spite of all efforts of the Government to prevent it, the small landowners threw up their lands altogether, and entered the ranks of the coloni and slaves. And the same principle is found also to work in the political sphere.

When the French revolutionaries determined to break the power of the Feudal Nobility, they took from the great landlords at a stroke their legal titles to the soil, and dividing it up into small holdings, transferred the ownership to the millions of petty proprietors whose successors own it to-day. The expedient was a success; and the power of Feudalism was once and for ever broken in France. But Cromwell, who was as much resolved to break the power of Royalty in England as the revolutionaries were to break the power of the Feudal Nobility in France, proceeded by a different method, - and failed. Instead of dividing the lands of the feudal nobility who supported Charles, among his own republican adherents, he imagined he could get the same result by taxing the landlords, and quartering his soldiers on them. Now had he broken up the lands instead, as in France, and sold them to the small farmers among his own adherents, he would have taken away from the landlords their instruments of production, and would have attained his end of entirely breaking their power; but being permitted to keep the title-deeds of their estates, no amount of taxation, however long continued, could avail to lower their power; for taxes fell only on their rent-rolls, and as these were spent for the most part unpro-ductively in luxurious consumption if not in more obnoxious forms of extravagance or dissipation, not only did the real wealth of the country remain practically untouched, - inasmuch as the farmers had sufficient capital to till the land, and so this natural asset was left as an instrument of production unimpaired - but even if the landlords had been personally starved in the meantime, their political influence over their tenants, so long as the relation of landlord and tenant lasted, would have continued; and their heirs, on any fresh shuffle of the political cards, could enter into their heritage again with undiminished confidence and hope.