And further, it is because the instruments of production of the other nations I have mentioned, - or that part of them which is devoted to foreign commerce, - are of less and less value compared with those of England, that the imports which come to them are less and less in amount than those that come to England; until with countries like Labrador or Greenland there are few or none at all. In other words, it is the exports of a country that are the cause of its imports at any and every point of time, and not the imports that are the cause of the exports; or to put it differently, the industrial strength of a nation depends on its exports, not on its imports; and when you have to handle it practically, it must always be approached from the side of its exports, never from the side of its imports; in the same way as the strength of Shakespeare's brain was the cause of whatever remuneration came to him from the sale of his dramas, and not the remuneration the cause of the strength of his brain; or again, as it is the strength of the stag that is the cause of the herd going over to him, in a body, not the herd going over to him that is the cause of his strength.

One is ashamed to have to labour so palpable a truism, and it is largely owing to the persistency with which the Free Traders not so much argue as assume the opposite, but especially, as we shall see, to the indifference as to which is cause and which is effect which they habitually betray (as if it did not matter either way), that we are obliged to ask the reader to consider this matter once and for all at the very outset of our argument. If, then, we are right in our contention that the industrial powers of a nation - its instruments of production, or fixed capital of all kinds - are not only the sole cause of the wealth which that nation can permanently command, but the only asset over which it can have any control, precisely as in the case of a private estate; and if we are further right in identifying these instruments of production of the nation in question with its exports; what shall we say of this economic maxim of Sir Robert Peel's, poured over us with so much sacramental unction from every Free Trade platform, of "taking care of your imports and your exports will take care of themselves," when you can neither take care of that which does not belong to you, nor leave the only things over which you have any control, - namely your exports, - to take care of themselves; what can we say of this broken reed of economic scripture, but that it is an excellent specimen of the kind of thing which passed current for political wisdom fifty years ago, and which, with 'the big and little loaf,' is still as magical as ever for driving the political sheep into the fold? But worse remains.

For the Free Traders having: fallen headlong into this primary intellectual error in industrial diagnosis, viz., of keeping their finger only on the to-and-fro movement of the pulse of exports and imports and the mere surface play of their external symptoms, instead of definitely ascertaining; the state of the organ which is the cause of these symptoms, - the nation's instruments of production as seen in the character, quality, and strength of the exports, - there is no intellectual atrocity to which by this they are not committed; until going farther and farther they end, as we shall see, in the actual perpetual motion of these exports and imports, and the perpetuity of the wealth of the nation, - whatever befalls them! The inner train of logic by which this is brought about will be seen presently, but in the mean time I appeal to the reader, and even to the Free Traders themselves, to say whether there is any proposition whatever in regard either to the amount, kind, quality, or source, of a nation's exports which they do not regard with indifference, provided you will grant them assent to two propositions only, - first, that the exports and imports must always balance each other, on the ground that whatever is sold or bought must be paid for, and secondly, that all is well if the exports and imports combined keep up to their average, - a truism, so far as the past and the present of a nation's industry are concerned, but clearly beside the point of the discussion, which, as the basis of a practical policy, must concern itself entirely with the future, excepting in so far as the signs or symptoms existing in the present and past which bear on that future are concerned.

But by cutting off the question of exports and imports from its roots in their central cause, - namely, the instruments of production of the nation as represented in its exports alone, - and concentrating attention on the mere interplay of exports and imports combined, us represented by their gross sum-total in the present, the Free Traders have not only thrown overboard all regard for, or attempt at, a true theory of Free Trade or Protection, but have shut themselves out from all possibility as practical politicians of a true diagnosis of any particular case, as well. For by their own act they have put themselves in precisely the position of the quack doctor who finding on enquiry that his patient looks about as well as usual, sleeps and eats as well, and is not conscious of any deterioration in physical vigour, will pronounce with confidence that there is nothing seriously the matter, even when the skilled physician has already detected definite signs, say, of consumption, cancer, or fatty degeneration; or of the insurance agent, who going by his client's general appearance should take all risks without a medical examination; and are as rightly to be condemned in consequence as would be the shipping company which should send a vessel on a distant voyage, freighted with merchandise and human lives, without regard to the amount of coal in its hold, and in extenuation of subsequent disaster should put up the frivolous plea that at any rate when it started out, the to-and-fro movements of the piston of its engine balanced each other, and the number and strength of the backward and forward strokes were up to the average! In other words, having on the strength of Sir Robert Peel's foolish phrase deliberately shut out from their purview all consideration of, or regard for, the real cause of the prosperous or declining trade of a nation, and pinned their faith instead to a chain of speculative abstractions compared with which, as we shall see, the mechanical abstractions of the old perpetual-motion schemers were (considering the knowledge of the time) but a pardonable infirmity, the Free Traders have not only thrown away their compass and rudder, but indifferent alike to the pole star above them, to the supply of coal for their voyage, and the quantity and quality of the cargo of their ship, drift about on the open sea on the mere chance that the known periodicity of the tides, or the backward and forward swing of the waves, will keep them off the rocks.