The immediate increment is in (1) 4,922,000l.; (2) 1,577,000l.; (3) 10,747,000l.; (4) 20,857,000l.; (5) 5,480,000l.

The large variation in these amounts indicates the action of the collateral and secondary causes, to which reference has been made. In the case of No. 3, the year 1848, with which the comparison is made, had been exceptionally depressed by war and revolution in Europe. But if, instead of 1848 and 1849, we were to take 1849 and 1850, we should still obtain the very large increment of 7,771,000l. Taking the figures as they stand, they show that the result of the large measures of Free Trade severally was to add on the five occasions, in less than a twelvemonth for four of them, the sum of 43,673,000l. to our export trade; or for each occasion, on the average, 8,493,000l. Now the average annual increment, over the whole period from 1842 to 1870, was about 4,400,000l. Thus the general effect of the liberating laws was, in a period considerably under the twelvemonth, nearly to double the average rate of growth. I cannot but think this fact carries with it an irresistible weight of demonstration. It would be futile to imagine that at these particular seasons there was in each case such a powerful enhancement of the regularly growing action of locomotive facilities as in any sensible degree to account for such great augmentations. We have therefore no choice but to assign them in substance to the direct effect of liberating legislation.

It seems perfectly legitimate, and of considerable utility, to find a further verifying formula for the more detailed examinations already made in a broader conspectus of the Free Trade Period as a whole, and in a comparison of it with the First Railway Period.

In the First Railway Period, 1830-42, we have seen an addition of about 1,000,000l. sterling annually to our exports, and have left them standing at 50,000,000l. In 1876, after twenty-eight years. through which the Legislative and the Locomotive Factors have been jointly at work, the exports are 199,500,000l., or let us say, 200,000,000l. The original starting-point, supplied by the paternal or protective period, was 38,000,000l. The average annual increment for the twenty-eight years, during which the two factors worked together, would upon these data be over 5,250,000l., against 1,000,000l. while locomotion worked alone. Regarding the matter in this light, out of the total growth of 162,000,000l. the locomotive factor might, at first sight, claim 40,000,000l., or one-fourth, leaving 122,000,000l., or three-fourths of the whole, for liberating legislation.

But it is probable, as I have already said, that an allowance should be made for the very special effect of the Telegraph in quickening commercial transactions. There has likewise been an increase in the receipts per mile from Railway traffic, amounting possibly to one-third.2 But against this increased efficiency of railways is to be

* I am not in possession of the exact figures for 1879.

set the diminution in the number of miles opened. And while, without doubt, the benefits of any given locomotive agencies are more and more felt from year to year, the very same expansive principle applies to Liberating Legislation, which continually gives scope for new improvements in the methods of trade. Let us, however, with reference to what has here been said, add 10,000,000l. to the sum set down to the credit of Locomotive agencies. In this view those agencies will have given an extension of 50,000,000l. to our export trade, while 112,000,000l. will remain due to Liberating Legislation or about 30 per cent. will be set down to the first, and 70 per cent. to the second.

Look at these figures as we will, within the bounds fixed for us by positive data, and I think it is impossible to arrive at any other conclusion than that the operation of a sound Political Economy has been even more, and greatly more, prolific in enlarging the commerce and wealth of the country, than the operation of its sister and ally, Inventive Genius, applied to the development of natural science for purposes of locomotion.

I am aware that no portion of the reasoning or evidence, which I have presented, can claim to be demonstrative when taken by itself. At every step exception may be taken to my methods, as allowing too little or too much. But I have given the case as a whole in three distinct forms, independent of one another:

1. The comparison of the periods, following each successive instalment of Liberating Legislation, with one another and with the years 1830-42, forming the purely Locomotive period.

2. The comparison of the entire period of Liberating Legislation (1842-70) with (1830-42) the purely Locomotive period.

3. The comparison in each case of the last reported year preceding the great legislative changes with the first reported year following upon them.

If each one of these three strands be thought by circumspect statisticians insufficient to sustain the conclusion, still I submit that the concurrence of their testimony binds them into a rope which will safely bear the weight.

It may be said that, if Freedom of Trade has become the solid and unalterable basis of our legislation, inquiries such as these can have for us none but a speculative interest. Even on this showing, however, they bear a character highly practical for the Governments and citizens of other lands, who are rushing or gliding back into the embarrassments of a condemned and impoverishing system, or hugging themselves with abundant gratulation on their never having departed from it. In the Statistical Journal for June 1878, Mr. Newmarch has published a table which compares the trade of four great Protective countries with that of the United Kingdom. To this valuable table I regard the present paper as supplementary and

auxiliary. It shows how favourably Free Trade among us compares with Protection in France, Austria, Russia, and the United States. One strange plea, indeed, the witch has invented at her last gasp, to save her from the stake she has so well deserved. She yields a liphomage to Free Trade as good for Britain, though elsewhere bad. This country, it seems, had just reached by means of Protection a development, which has enabled her to venture safely on Free Trade. An unreformed drunkard might as well say to a reformed one, that he indeed, drunkard A, had by means of constant drinking so fortified his constitution as to be able to face the perils of temperance, but that to himself, drunkard B, who had not yet emptied so many puncheons, butts, and bottles, such premature amendment would be fatal. What is the term granted to Protection, and with which she will be satisfied, to complete her minority, and sow her wild oats?

Scire velim, pretium chartis quotus arroget annus.3

Alas! the wild oats are never sown, the minority never is exhausted; and the blushing maiden, when all her excuses are exhausted, will fight at last to the death in other lands as she did in this, a withered and hideous, but resolute and formidable, hag. The trades of most continental countries, be it observed, are not younger trades than ours, but older; as civilisation is older in France, Spain, Italy, and perhaps also in Germany, than it is in England. By far the most remarkable industry we possessed before 1842 was the Cotton industry; which supplied in 1841 not far short of a moiety of our total exports (23,500,000l. out of 51,500,000l.), and, but for the import duty, would probably have exceeded that proportion. Was it Protection which had given to the cotton industry this peculiar extension? On the contrary, it was distinguished from the other great trades by this, that far the larger part of its products was sent and sold abroad. that by far the most powerful of our manufactures was by far the least protected. I might, perhaps without impropriety, even say that it was a persecuted trade. Not only was the raw material, until 1842, struck with an import duty, but there was, until a period not much earlier, a duty of excise on printed calicoes. Into these points I will not now enter. What has been the sequel? That under the system of Free Trade, though our business in cottons has undergone a large absolute extension, its proportion of our export trade has diminished. In the great years 1872-3, it. supplied, instead of near a half, less than a third of our export trade, and in the years 1874-8 it has stood at about one-third, or say 33 per cent., of the whole, instead of 45 per cent. What is this but to say, in other words, that we cannot eat our cake and have it? The cotton industry could not have the full benefit of Free Trade, because it had enjoyed part of that benefit already. This pretended benefit of Protection Hor. Ep. 11. i. 35.

during the first minority of a trade, was just what it had least of all enjoyed; and, consequently, it had grown beyond every other trade. The other trades of the country were kept in swaddling clothes, while cotton had its right hand free. Is it possible to contend that the swaddling clothes were the secret of strength, in the face of the fact that the child but half swaddled grew the most, and that, when the whole was removed from the rest, and the residue from it, then its brothers and sisters began to catch it up? Protection, if a guardian, is a guardian who carries to his own banking account the proceeds of the minor's estate; and the favour now given to Protection in America and elsewhere is simply endowing such a guardian with an annuity instead of ensconcing him in the prison or the dock.

POSTSCRIPT.

W. E. GLADSTONE.

I have been prevented by circumstances from commenting on a very able and valuable argument by Lord Derby on points akin to the subject of this paper. While expressing my concurrence in his general views, and my hope that his address will be of great utility, I may venture to say that my own estimate of the proportion which the income from Foreign Trade bears to the aggregate annual income of the country is materially larger than that of Lord Derby, who places it at one-seventh only.

January 23, 1880.

THE

NINETEENTH

CENTURY.

No. XXXVII.-MARCH 1880.

ENGLAND AS A NAVAL POWER.

6

THE subject of England as a Military Power' has been well treated in the pages of this Review by one of the ablest and most successful of our generals. In taking up the consideration of England as a Naval Power,' it is my most anxious desire to write about it in a spirit of fairness and impartiality, and to indicate the facts which relate to it, free alike from optimist exaggeration and pessimist depreciation. However much we may regret the stubborn realities which surround. us and compel us to give our time, our wealth, and our energies to the unproductive arts of destruction, yet, in the present state of the world and our own position in it, we are not free agents in the matter. We cannot follow the peaceful paths of civilisation and progress, regardless of the intentions and aspirations of those around us. We see masses of men terribly armed, admirably disciplined, whose destructive energies may, at any moment, be launched against their. fellow-men, and overwhelm in a common ruin all that we value, all that we and our forefathers have realised through self-sacrifice and devotion. We cannot suffer this unresistingly, even though the blow should not be, in the first instance, aimed directly at ourselves.

Our own place among the nations of the earth is remarkable and providential. We have a great inheritance of glory and responsibility. With all its faults and with all its shortcomings, the English race has left its mark for good over vast and populous regions of the world. We, and those who come after us, inherit with our name great possessions, immense wealth, large risks, heavy responsibilities. It VOL. VII.--No. 37.

DD