If then, in summing up the results of this long enquiry into the question of Free Trade and Protection, we were called on to lay down some rough general rules to follow in deciding whether Free Trade or Protection, or a mixture of the two, were best adapted to meet the particular requirements of a nation, we might formulate them somewhat as follows: -

1. If the nation in question is indisputably ahead of all its rivals in certain great lines of competitive industry, as England, for example, was fifty years ago, and to a large extent still is in her manufacturing and shipping industries, it can pull down its tariff walls and open its home trade freely to the incursions of all the world, and still sleep securely; for in what is competitive it can by the hypothesis beat the world already, and as for products that are complementary to its own, it wants them in any case, and the cheaper the better, and so lets them in free as well. The standing exception to this general rule is that the land of a country, which is the nursery and breeding ground of the nation itself, should never be permitted under any circumstances to go out of cultivation, and above all should never be sacrificed to a mere slight difference in the price of corn to the consumer. Otherwise you get an anomaly and stultification like that of the rich land of England falling out of use over great tracts and areas, - a deliberate throwing away of an instrument of production which, were it cultivated by peasant proprietors, as in France, would support innumerable families in comfort, would indefinitely increase the resources and power of the nation, and keep up its sturdy stock of men; - and all sacrificed for what? That herds, and ever more herds of the lowest ineffectuals, may gravitate in increasing swarms more and more to the slums of great cities, there to swelter by their tens of thousands, and either to be kept on the rates, or to scuffle in the gutters for the crusts of bread cheapened, as if by design, to attract them there, to breed and multiply like rats on the gratuitous garbage of the sewers.

For so great is the natural aversion of mankind to monotonous and uninteresting labour, that if you but made bare subsistence cheap enough, you could choke up the world with lack-alls and do-nothings, like the negroes in some of the West Indian islands, in the course of a single generation.

2. On the other hand, if the nation in question can be beaten in its own home market in all its instruments of production - by one nation in this, by another in that, by a third in something else, and so on - then let it put up tariff walls sufficiently high for its purpose, against them all, and then settle down to make the most of its own patrimony; while letting in all complementary products for which it is absolutely unsuited, free.

3. If a nation have a world-supremacy only in certain departments or processes of some great line of industry, as, for example, in the finished product, and if this supremacy would be threatened, as in the English cotton manufactures, if it had to depend on its own raw materials, then these latter should be let in free. On the other hand, if the supremacy were in the raw materials and not in the finished product, then the nation should protect its finished products if possible until it had acquired sufficient skill to manufacture them on even terms with the foreign rival; and so on, through all other differences in detail between nation and nation; the great object being to make a nation as self-sustaining as possible, and as little dependent on sources of supply outside its own political jurisdiction; - always of course excepting those purely complementary products which must be allowed to enter free. But in all cases of difficulty of adjustment between conflicting interests, the Government should always approach the question with the same bias of mind as it has in matters of taxation, namely, always to protect your instruments of production wherever possible, and shield them from the incursions of a Free Trade that would destroy them.

4. Should the nation in question enjoy a world supremacy in some unique class of product, - as France in wines, Turkey and Cuba in tobacco and cigars, England in steam-coal and china-clay, South Africa in diamonds, and so on; let that nation protect its product by taxing its export up to the point which the foreigner will be willing to pay, so that the net revenue shall not be diminished, precisely as the diamond-mine owners do of their own accord in restricting their out-put of diamonds. In short, treat other nations in this regard, as a tribe of Red Indians in possession of rifles would all other tribes who were without them, and make it as commercially difficult for individuals to sell their china-clay to be used in manufactures against you, or their steam-coal to be used in war-ships against you, as it is to sell the enemy your ironclads or ammunition in war; and permit no individuals, in their break-neck haste to be rich, to so flood the market and undersell each other by competition, that their china-clay is as cheap as brick-clay, - any more than diamond kings will do with their diamonds, - thus sacrificing a future national asset of rare value to present individual greed.

In a word, administer your national economics as you would your private estate, treating all foreign competitive industries as enemies in disguise, all complementary ones as friends bringing gifts, and making the most of your resources by manoeuvring and strategy, as is the way of the private capitalists of to-day.