Free trader

“ We claim, also, that with reference to the rights of labor, property, and capital, the free-trader is the true protectionist. It is the free-trader who demands for the laborer the fullest, freest use of [Pg 3] the results of his labor, and for the capitalist the widest scope in the employment of his capital ”

“ The complete breakdown of all barriers which impede the free flow of commerce and the migration of capital and labour, the fullest and widest dissemination of industrial information, are necessary to the attainment of the individualistic ideal of free trade. Perfect transparency of industrial operations, perfect fluidity of labour and of wealth would effect incalculably great economies in the production of commercial wealth. The free-trader, in his concentration upon the achievement of the latter economy, has generally failed to do full justice to the importance of the former. ”

“ Does any notable supporter of Protection happen to make an after-dinner speech, no matter what be its immediate subject—the presentation of a piece of plate to some well-deserving neighbour, or an oration at the opening of a mechanics' institution—without alluding in any way to the present price of wheat or the future prospects of agriculture?—we are immediately stunned with the announcement that he has become a virulent Free-trader. ”

“ Under Free Trade it is possible for a foreign trader to take trade away from a British trader. If for any reason we lost an important trade, or several small trades, our unemployed would naturally grow. The Free Trade theory that the capital and the labour in the lost trades [294] will find other employment is simply theory. Suppose they didn't. The Free Trader has no answer except: Look at our enormous wealth. My countrymen, looking at another man's wealth does not feed me, clothe me, and house me. ”

“ As we have seen from all these facts and figures, it is quite possible that important interests may suffer, and yet that the community as a whole may be prospering. No Free Trader denies, or wishes to deny, that certain interests have suffered.
What the Free Trader asserts is that the nation as a whole is prosperous and thriving, and that the proofs abound on every side. ”

“ It is, not worth while to stand upon nice definitions as to free trade. Some think it enough to say that they are not free-traders because they are not in favor of abolishing all customs duties. Let me remind such that the free-trade countries of Europe, recognized to be such, have not abolished all customs duties. A better distinction is this: The free-trader believes in levying customs duties without any regard to the effect of those duties upon the wages of our working people, or upon the production of our own shops. This, then, is the issue. ”

“ The Fair Trader, however, regardless of all such considerations, persists in asserting that every year we buy of the foreigner more than we sell him. The fallacy under which he labours arises, of course, from the use of the terms buy—sell. The Free Trader, with a more just appreciation of what takes place, discards these terms in the sense thus implied, and rightly says:—So far as commodities are concerned, we got in 411 millions of them, and gave out only 286 millions, and if that were all to be considered, it seems to be a mighty fine business. ”

“ Supposing that State control of money is a foregone conclusion, he sees as a logical result of this false premise that the State must also control the balance of trade. That his premise may be doubted does not seem to have occurred to him. "The most extreme free trader," he says, "opposes free trade in money." ”

“ The labor which we have here thrown out of employment by the cheap importation of this article is now ready to be employed again at any price,—if not one that will afford bread and straw, then it must accept one that will produce potatoes and rubbish; and with the product some Free-Trader proceeds to break down the price and destroy the reward of similar labor in some other portion of the earth. ”

“ The free-trader replies that the fall in price has been still greater in the foreign market, and the protectionist rejoins that the reduction was made to compete with the American product, and that the former price would probably have been maintained so long as the importer had the monopoly of our market. ”

“ That the secret of our wealth lies in this, that our free imports give us an unmistakable advantage, as regards the element of cheapness, in the universal competition, and that the only way in which we can be deprived of this advantage is by other nations becoming Free Traders. ”

“ Free Traders deny these propositions, and, on the contrary, affirm that Free Trade has been, and is, a source of vast prosperity, and an unmitigated blessing to the country, and that Protection has been, and is, a source of loss to those countries which have established it. ”

“ Years ago, when the Free-Traders were in the first blush of their success, and the minds of men were still inflamed with the hot fever of speculation, the advocates of the new system were requested to state in what way they proposed to employ that mass of labour which must necessarily be displaced by the substitution of so much foreign produce instead of our own. ”

“ There could not be a clearer statement of the oft-demonstrated principle that the greatest protection possible against excessive prices was to be found in safeguarding the freedom of competition, which, of course, could not exist if its chief method of underbidding was wrested from free traders. ”

“ As to the home trade, we all know, and the manufacturers themselves know to their cost, in what a wretched position that is placed. But when the Free-traders were asked why they had adopted the Free-trade policy or why they continued it, they replied that it was because if they had not done so there would have been a revolution in this country. ”

“ A taunt very frequently levelled at modern Free Traders is that the anticipations of their predecessors in respect to the influence which Free Trade would be likely to exercise on international relations have not been realised. ”

“ But if they left competition free to what they considered unsound knowledge—if they permitted the lowest-priced Fiction, however bad or indifferent, to circulate without their unequal competition—we believe the free-traders would beat the monopolists in point of numbers ”

“ As often as the advocates of commercial restriction have laid claim to those periods of national prosperity when their system happened to be in vogue as evidence of its success, the free-traders have as often and with equal right claimed like success under eras of free trade. ”

“ We have been repeatedly reproached by the advocates of the new commercial system for the gloominess of our views, and the absence of that hopeful spirit which animates the efforts, and gives vivacity to the style, of the light and lively Free-Traders. ”

“ The Free-Traders first, by their final measures, drive some 300,000 of our industrious inhabitants out of the country annually, in quest of the employment which they have lost at home, and then they rest on the tonnage required to convey them away, in order to conceal the effect of Free Trade in shipping on our mercantile marine! They are welcome to the whole benefit which they can derive from the double effect of Free Trade, first on our people, and then on our shipping. ”

“ The Free Traders were still seen ruling everything in the high places of the land in the name of political economy, and they were everywhere apparently accepted as authorized interpreters of the mysteries of that, to the ordinary public, somewhat occult science. They preached the freedom of exchange like a religion which contained at once all they were required to believe in economic matters, and all they were required to do. ”

“ It is truly ridiculous to see the free-traders stress the few specialities in each branch of industry,throwing them into the balance against the products used in everyday consumption and produced most cheaply in those countries in which manufacture is most highly developed. ”

“ For this purpose the working classes were stirred up to class antagonism, and the Free-Traders have kept up the delusion by dishonestly claiming as the work of free trade every advantage which protectionist countries have shared in common with us. ”

“ What chance there is of free-trade doctrines being adopted by the present socialist and free-trade government in France, may be judged of by the following quotation from the Constitutionnel:—
“Is not, in fact, the consumer, such as the free-traders represent him to us, a strange creation? He is, as he has been wittily described, a fantastic being—a monster who has a mouth and a stomach to consume produce, but who has neither legs to move nor arms to work. We do not fear that the operative classes will suffer themselves to be seduced by those doctrines. ”

“ The claims of Free Trade and the cheap-food cry are disregarded and treated with contempt. "Free Traders talk about the folly of Protection. But Free Trade itself is a form of Protection. It protects the strong and the cunning against the weaker and the more honest. ”

“ General as the distress is which, under the combined operations of free trade and a fettered currency, has been brought upon the country, there is one circumstance of peculiar importance which has not hitherto, from the efforts of the free-traders to conceal it, met with the attention it deserves. ”

“ David A. Wells, Professor Perry, and all the economists of the Manchester school are fond of clamoring for "free trade"; but an examination of their position always shows them the most ardent advocates of monopoly in the manufacture of money,—the bitterest opponents of free trade in credit. ”

“ Competition in the open market seems to secure that each consumer shall obtain the best possible terms; and again, since all men are consumers whether they produce or not, or whatever they produce, the greatest measure of comforts for each seems likely to be attainable on these lines. For those who are frankly cosmopolitan, and who regard material prosperity as at all events the prime object at which public policy should aim, the free-trade doctrine is readily transformed, from a mere principle of criticism, till it comes to be regarded as the harbinger of a possible Utopia. ”

“ But it is extremely difficult for trusts adapted to the requirements of a profitable tied market at home to adjust their methods of free competition in the world markets upon a profitable basis of steady trading. ”

“ The first thought of a wise business man is for his markets, and you as a great trading nation are bound to think of your markets, not only your markets of to-day but of to-morrow and the day after to-morrow.
The Free Trade theory was the birth of a time when our imports were practically all supplemental to our exports, all indispensable to us, and when, on the other hand, the whole of the world was in need of our goods, far beyond our power of supplying it. ”

“ Must the utmost amount of products, at all hazard, be obtained, whatever the mode of industry that earn it, or the fate of those called into existence by the overgrown manufacture you encourage? Is it no matter how won, or who enjoys? Is the only question that the wealth be there? What if England, by carrying out, without pause or exception, the doctrine of free-trade, should aggravate the most alarming symptoms of her present social condition—must this law of the political economist be still, with unmitigated strictness, urged upon her? ”

“ Q. Why is not Free Trade also a felicitous term?
A. Things that are in themselves good, and that are made free and abundant, are, we must admit, generally to be approved. Abundant health or abundant friendship or abundant money we have not yet thought it wise to consider objectionable. But there are exceptions to all rules. Abundant trade—or Free Trade—which is trade done voluntarily by shrewd and sane men in order to procure abundant money, is different. ”

“ Now, we all know that when two men desire to purchase a commodity, it rises in value, and its owner finds himself more free to determine for himself what to do with it than he could do if there were only one person desiring to have it, and infinitely more free than he could be if there were two sellers to one buyer. To make men free there must be competition for the purchase of their services, and the more the competition the greater must be their value, and that of the men who have them to sell. ”

“ The "small traders in country towns," that very section of the mercantile community who are notoriously suffering most from the inroads of Free Trade, are to invest their remaining capital in farming, that particular business which has received the deepest wound from Free Trade! And this is the sheet-anchor of Sir James Graham's hope; and this is a sample of Free-trade wisdom from the lips of its greatest champion! No doubt there may be small traders with little capital in the commercial world who are fools ”

“ Is it not where trade flourishes, and when the merchant can freely export the produce of the country to such parts of the world as will bring the richest return? When the merchant doth not purchase, your produce is low, finds a dull market—in vexation you call the trader a jocky, and curse the men whom you ought to pity. A desire of gain is common to mankind, and the general motive to business and industry. You cannot expect many purchases when trade is restricted, and your merchants are shut out from nine-tenths of the ports in the world. ”

“ With regard to the main doctrine of the political economists, that of free-trade—their advocacy of unfettered industry, whether working for the home or foreign market—one sees plainly that there is a truth here. ”