[107] The free-traders by theory are men who have a thought on the question, and have studied at least their own side of it. The majority of them are sincere and earnest in their convictions, and believe that their practical application must result in good. It is true that they are not always the most agreeable of people nor the fairest of debaters; like the generality of mere theorists, they are apt to be arrogant and ill-mannered, and speak contemptuously of arguments which they will not take the trouble to examine, and consequently cannot answer. But they have a great advantage over the Journal of Commerce free-traders, in the fact that they do after a sort speak from principles and reflection, and not from money-bags. And they are as much more worthy of respect, as it is better to speculate in ideas and theories than in the product of other men's labor. To this class of speculators we respectfully suggest that they put the cart quite too far before the horse, and are pursuing a mere abstraction, a theory for whose regulation the indispensable conditions are wanting. In short, they are Utopians. Many people range themselves with the free-trade party simply because it wears the name of liberty and claims to be in the van of progress. But this hardly seems to us a conclusive reason; and until we forget the difference between names and things, we shall endeavor to examine every pretension before admitting its validity. And the more we examine this free-trade pretension the more we are convinced that it is unsound and delusive. We shall oppose it therefore in the name of both progress and liberty. For, let us say, we do not yield to commerce that unqualified adoration which is the stock in trade of some writers. There are other interests the fostering of which seem to us more essential to human prosperity, taken in a large and just sense, than the interests of trade, and especially of trade with foreign and distant regions. We distrust exceedingly the source from which this cry of commercial liberty has issued. And we are assured that the true freedom of exchanges, in which as an ultimate thing, we most fully believe,
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Harper and Brothers, New York and London, 1907.
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