50. THE FREE TRADE MOVEMENT. Introduction.— The British are Free Traders and hold it vital to their interests to maintain Free Trade. They do not, of course, mean that the government ought never to take any toll from traders or lay any taxation whatever upon imported goods. In a modern state it would be absolutely impossible to support any such contention. The enormous revenues which have to be raised to carry on the work of government make indirect taxation an ab solute necessity. The principle upon which the British Free Trader insists is that any tariff imposed upon goods entering his country shall be imposed for revenue purposes only. That he holds is the sole object which the government must entertain in levying its customs. But it follows from this that duties ought not to be levied at the ports on goods produced abroad which are also produced in England. To levy such duties encourages the consumer to buy the home and untaxed goods rather than the for eign and taxed goods, and so diminishes the yield of the tax. Needless to say, this principle is not adopted out of any hostility to home-made products, or from any desire to favor the for eigner. If he thought he could do so without injury to himself, without loss of revenue or without diminishing trade generally, the Eng lishman would of course prefer that the goods made by his fellow-citizens should sell better than those made by foreigners. One of his ob jections to protective duties (that is, to import duties on articles which are also made at home) is that such duties are not good "drawing* taxes. Unless the state levies excise duties equal in amount to the customs duties, and such excise duties can only be levied profitably in a few instances, the home manufactured goods which escape taxation are, speaking in a strictly fiscal sense, defrauding the revenue. In other words, what ought to go into the public purse is going into the pockets of the protected manu facturers. The more efficiently a tax protects, the worse tax it is for the purpose of filling the treasury— the true purpose of all taxation.
It is then, in the opinion of English Free Traders, neither wise nor in the true interests of the state to interfere with the course of trade on any other ground than that of produc ing revenue.
The Economic Argument.— It must next be explained that the Free Trade Englishman objects to interference with the course of trade, not out of any pedantic feeling in regard to the abstract "rights* of the trading part of the community, but because he believes that such interference must involve economic waste and so cause material loss to the nation. He be lieves that to forbid or interfere with exchanges between man and man always results in a dimi nution of national wealth. The English have adopted during the past 50 years and more, the principle that all exchanges are and must be a mutual benefit. They are transactions which are twice blest. They bless him that buys as well as him that sells, and benefit the man who exchanges gold for corn as much as the man who gives corn for gold. Hence it has become an essential, nay, an almost instinctive, belief on the part of the great majority of Englishmen that it is to their interest to stimulate and en courage exchanges in every possible way. They hold that to reduce the volume of exchanges must necessarily cause waste. But government interference with trade by means of customs duties is bound to reduce the number of ex changes. Therefore they will only allow that interference in obedience to the imperative needs of the treasury. They realize that for eign exchanges benefit the individuals of a na tion, and so the nation, quite as much as home exchanges, and feel that as long as exchanges are being made freely and are increasing, that there can be nothing wrong, at any rate in the commercial condition of a nation. Only allow free commercial intercourse, free buying and free selling and free access to the ports of a country, and its trade, and so its prosperity, will take care of itself. To allow the maximum of exchanges is to increase the wealth of a na tion. To prevent or lessen exchanges is to waste its wealth.