WHAT IS JUGERNATH?
Well! well!! I have put off the evil day as long as possible; but
sooner or later it must come out, even if you have not already
guessed it.
Stoop low while I whisper in your ear the name by which this
destructive fiend Jugernāth is known in England. It is:--
FREE TRADE!!!
Yes! it is _Free trade_ that has utterly ruined Ireland; that is
rapidly dragging England down under its wheels; that drains the
lifeblood of India and England’s dependencies.
Free trade is that idol which England worships, but which brings
in its train disaster, bankruptcy, pauperism, drunkenness, and
crime. It is Free trade that is destroying England’s industries,
and is driving her capital to protectionist countries. It is Free
trade that, if not soon abandoned, will soon bring about a national
bankruptcy in England.
My dear fellow! I know your stale arguments by heart. I have looked
into your dishonest and fictitious statistics and discovered their
imposture. I know you can make glib quotations from Adam Smith
and Mill, and misapply them. It is easy for you to prate about
Political _Economy_, and at the same time to practise Political
_Extravagance_, of the most ruinous description; but I ask you
to leave theory for a short time and look ugly facts straight
in the face, divesting your mind, if you can, of all prejudice.
These facts I will give you in the next chapter. But now don’t
misunderstand me. I am not a _rabid_ protectionist. I am not an
advocate of Fair trade, Reciprocity, or Retaliation. I hold that
Protection, if carried beyond its legitimate limits, is nearly
as mischievous in its action as Free trade. And that although
“Fair trade,” “Reciprocity” and “Retaliation” are cries that have
been evoked by the evils that Free trade has brought upon us, yet
they are wrong in practice, as an attempt at a compromise with
an utterly false principle; and I am glad that the movement has
collapsed.
I hold that Free trade is entirely wrong in principle and
disastrous in results. Every argument of the free-trader is based
on the _misuse_, not upon the _proper use_, of Protection.
Every so-called triumphant exposure of the evils caused by
Protection has simply been an exposure of the evils of Protection
carried _beyond its legitimate limits_.
The Corn Laws, to which Free trade owes its existence, were an
instance of undue protection; they urgently required _alteration_,
not _repeal_. Free trade advocates are unable to distinguish the
difference between the use and the misuse of a principle. In their
abhorrence of its misuse, they would sweep it away altogether. They
are about as reasonable as the man who discovers that too much food
will cause indigestion, and therefore proposes, as an infallible
law of political economy, the dogma that no food whatever is to be
taken. And they stigmatize as “simpletons without memory or logic,”
as men “beyond the reach of argument”[1] those who decline to
accept the Free trade gospel of starvation.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Mr. Bright’s letter to A. Sharp, Bradford, 1879.