[1] See H. Helmholtz, _Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen_ (Brunswick,
1877), p. 166.
[2] See also Ernst Heinrich and Wilhelm Weber, _Wellenlehre_
(Leipzig, 1825), where a particularly lucid explanation of the
phenomenon is given, pp. 526-530.
[3] See Helmholtz, _op. cit._ p. 167.
[4] These phenomena are clearly explained at greater length by Sedley
Taylor in _Sound and Music_ (London, 1896), pp. 134-153 and pp.
74-86. See also Friedrich Zamminer, _Die Musik und die musikalischen
Instrumente_, &c. (Giessen, 1855), p. 261.
FREESIA, in botany, a genus of plants belonging to the Iris family
(Iridaceae), and containing a single species, _F. refracta_, native at
the Cape of Good Hope. The plants grow from a corm (a solid bulb, as in
_Gladiolus_) which sends up a tuft of long narrow leaves and a slightly
branched stem bearing a few leaves and loose one-sided spikes of
fragrant narrowly funnel-shaped flowers. Several varieties are known in
cultivation, differing in the colour of the flower, which is white,
cream or yellow. They form pretty greenhouse plants which are readily
increased from seed. They are extensively grown for the market in
Guernsey, England and America. By potting successively throughout the
autumn a supply of flowers is obtained through winter and spring. Some
very fine large-flowered varieties, including rose-coloured ones, are
now being raised by various growers in England, and are a great
improvement on the older forms.
FREE SOIL PARTY, a political party in the United States, which was
organized in 1847-1848 to oppose the extension of slavery into the
Territories. It was a combination of the political abolitionists--many
of whom had formerly been identified with the more radical Liberty
party--the anti-slavery Whigs, and the faction of the Democratic party
in the state of New York, called "Barnburners," who favoured the
prohibition of slavery, in accordance with the "Wilmot Proviso" (see
WILMOT, DAVID), in the territory acquired from Mexico. The party was
prominent in the presidential campaigns of 1848 and 1852. At the
national convention held in Buffalo, N.Y., on the 9th and 10th of August
1848, they secured the nomination to the presidency of ex-President
Martin Van Buren, who had failed to secure nomination by the Democrats
in 1844 because of his opposition to the annexation of Texas, and of
Charles Francis Adams, of Massachusetts, for the vice-presidency, taking
as their "platform" a Declaration that Congress, having "no more power
to make a slave than to make a king," was bound to restrict slavery to
the slave states, and concluding, "we inscribe on our banner 'Free Soil,
Free Speech, Free Labor and Free Man,' and under it we will fight on and
fight ever, until a triumphant victory shall reward our exertions." The
Liberty party had previously, in November 1847, nominated John P. Hale
and Leicester King as president and vice-president respectively, but in
the spring of 1848 it withdrew its candidates and joined the "free soil"
movement. Representatives of eighteen states, including Delaware,
Maryland and Virginia, attended the Buffalo convention. In the ensuing
presidential election Van Buren and Adams received a popular vote of
291,263, of which 120,510 were cast in New York. They received no
electoral votes, all these being divided between the Whig candidate,
Zachary Taylor, who was elected, and the Democratic candidate, Lewis
Cass. The "free soilers," however, succeeded in sending to the
thirty-first Congress two senators and fourteen representatives, who by
their ability exercised an influence out of proportion to their number.
Between 1848 and 1852 the "Barnburners" and the "Hunkers," their
opponents, became partially reunited, the former returning to the
Democratic ranks, and thus greatly weakening the Free Soilers. The party
held its national convention at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, on the 11th of
August 1852, delegates being present from all the free states, and from
Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky; and John P. Hale, of New
Hampshire, and George W. Julian of Indiana, were nominated for the
presidency and the vice-presidency respectively, on a platform which
declared slavery "a sin against God and a crime against man," denounced
the Compromise Measures of 1850, the fugitive slave law in particular,
and again opposed the extension of slavery in the Territories. These
candidates, however, received no electoral votes and a popular vote of
only 156,149, of which but 25,329 were polled in New York. By 1856 they
abandoned their separate organization and joined the movement which
resulted in the formation of the powerful Republican party (q.v.), of
which the Free Soil party was the legitimate precursor.
FREE-STONE (a translation of the O. Fr. _franche pere_ or _pierre_, i.e.
stone of good quality; the modern French equivalent is _pierre de
taille_, and Ital. _pietra molle_), stone used in architecture for
mouldings, tracery and other work required to be worked with the chisel.
The oolitic stones are generally so called, although in some countries
soft sandstones are used; in some churches an indurated chalk called
"clunch" is employed for internal lining and for carving.
FREETOWN, capital of the British colony of Sierra Leone, West Africa, on
the south side of the Sierra Leone estuary, about 5 m. from the cape of
that name, in 8 deg. 29' N., 13 deg. 10' W. Pop. (1901) 34,463. About 500 of the
inhabitants are Europeans. Freetown is picturesquely situated on a
plain, closed in behind by a succession of wooded hills, the Sierra
Leone, rising to a height of 1700 ft. As nearly every house is
surrounded by a courtyard or garden, the town covers an unusually large
area for the number of its inhabitants. It possesses few buildings of
architectural merit. The principal are the governor's residence and
government offices, the barracks, the cathedral, the missionary
institutions, the fruit market, Wilberforce Hall, courts of justice, the
railway station and the grammar school. Several of these institutions
are built on the slopes of the hills, and on the highest point, Sugar
Loaf Mountain, is a sanatorium. The botanic gardens form a pleasant and
favourite place of resort. The roads are wide but badly kept. Horses do
not live, and all wheeled traffic is done by manual labour--hammocks and
sedan-chairs are the customary means of locomotion. Notwithstanding that
Freetown possesses an abundant and pure water-supply, drawn from the
adjacent hills, it is enervating and unhealthy, and it was particularly
to the capital, often spoken of as Sierra Leone, that the designation
"White Man's Grave" applied. Since the beginning of the 20th century
strenuous efforts have been made to improve the sanitary condition by a
new system of drainage, a better water service, the filling up of
marshes wherein the malarial mosquito breeds, and in other directions. A
light railway 6 m. long, opened in 1904, has been built to Hill Station
(900 ft. high), where, on a healthy site, are the residences of the
government officials and of other Europeans. As a consequence the public
health has improved, the highest death-rate in the years 1901-1907 being
29.6 per 1000. The town is governed by a municipality (created in 1893)
with a mayor and councillors, the large majority being elective.
Freetown was the first place in British West Africa granted local
self-government.
Both commercially and strategically Freetown is a place of importance.
Its harbour affords ample accommodation for the largest fleets, it is a
coaling station for the British navy, the headquarters of the British
military forces in West Africa, the sea terminus of the railway to the
rich oil-palm regions of Mendiland, and a port of call for all steamers
serving West Africa. Its inhabitants are noted for their skill as
traders; the town itself produces nothing in the way of exports.
In consequence of the character of the original settlement (see SIERRA
LEONE), 75% of the inhabitants are descended from non-indigenous Negro
races. As many as 150 different tribes are represented in the Sierra
Leonis of to-day. Their semi-Europeanization is largely the result of
missionary endeavour. The only language of the lower class is
pidgin-English--quite incomprehensible to the newcomer from Great
Britain,--but a large proportion of the inhabitants are highly educated
men who excel as lawyers, clergymen, clerks and traders. Many members of
the upper, that is, the best-educated, class have filled official
positions of great responsibility. The most noted citizens are Bishop
Crowther and Sir Samuel Lewis, chief justice of Sierra Leone 1882-1894.
Both were full-blooded Africans. The Kru-men form a distinct section of
the community, living in a separate quarter and preserving their tribal
customs.
Since 1861-1862 there has been an independent Episcopal Native Church;
but the Church Missionary Society, which in 1804 sent out the first
missionaries to Sierra Leone, still maintains various agencies. Furah
Bay College, built by the society on the site of General Charles
Turner's estate (11/2 m. E. of Freetown), and opened in 1828 with six
pupils, one of whom was Bishop Crowther, was affiliated in 1876 to
Durham University and has a high-class curriculum. The Wesleyans have a
high school, a theological college, and other educative agencies. The
Moslems, who are among the most law-abiding and intelligent citizens of
Freetown, have several state-aided primary schools.
FREE TRADE, an expression which has now come to be appropriated to the
economic policy of encouraging the greatest possible commercial
intercourse, unrestricted by "protective" duties (see PROTECTION),
between any one country and its neighbours. This policy was originally
advocated in France, and it has had its adherents in many countries, but
Great Britain stands alone among the great commercial nations of the
world in having adopted it systematically from 1846 onwards as the
fundamental principle of her economic policy.
In the economic literature of earlier periods, it may be noted that the
term "free trade" is employed in senses which have no relation to modern
usage. The term conveyed no suggestion of unrestricted trade or national
liberty when it first appeared in controversial pamphlets;[1] it stood
for a freedom conferred and maintained by authority--like that of a free
town. The merchants desired to have good regulations for trade so that
they might be free from the disabilities imposed upon them by foreign
princes or unscrupulous fellow-subjects. After 1640 the term seems to
have been commonly current in a different sense. When the practice which
had been handed down from the middle ages--of organizing the trade with
particular countries by means of privileged companies, which professed
to regulate the trade according to the state of the market so as to
secure its steady development in the interest of producers and
traders--was seriously called in question under the Stuarts and at the
Revolution, the interlopers and opponents of the companies insisted on
the advantages of a "Free Trade"; they meant by this that the various
branches of commerce should not be confined to particular persons or
limited in amount, but should be thrown open to be pursued by any
Englishman in the way he thought most profitable himself.[2] Again, in
the latter half of the 18th century, till Pitt's financial reforms[3]
were brought into operation, the English customs duties on wine and
brandy were excessive; and those who carried on a remunerative business
by evading these duties were known as Fair Traders or Free Traders.[4]
Since 1846 the term free trade has been popularly used, in England, to
designate the policy of Cobden (q.v.) and others who advocated the
abolition of the tax on imported corn (see CORN LAWS); this is the only
one of the specialized senses of the term which is at all likely to be
confused with the economic doctrine. The Anti-Corn Law movement was, as
a matter of fact, a special application of the economic principle; but
serious mistakes have arisen from the blunder of confusing the part with
the whole, and treating the remission of one particular duty as if it
were the essential element of a policy in which it was only an incident.
W. E. Gladstone, in discussing the effect of improvements in locomotion
on British trade, showed what a large proportion of the stimulus to
commerce during the 19th century was to be credited to what he called
the "liberalizing legislation" of the free-trade movement in the wide
sense in which he used the term. "I rank the introduction of cheap
postage for letters, documents, patterns and printed matter, and the
abolition of all taxes on printed matter, in the category of Free Trade
Legislation. Not only thought in general, but every communication, and
every publication, relating to matters of business, was thus set free.
These great measures, then, may well take their place beside the
abolition of prohibitions and protective duties, the simplifying of
revenue laws, and the repeal of the Navigation Act, as forming together
the great code of industrial emancipation. Under this code, our race,
restored to freedom in mind and hand, and braced by the powerful
stimulus of open competition with the world, has upon the whole
surpassed itself and every other, and has won for itself a commercial
primacy more evident, more comprehensive, and more solid than it had at
any previous time possessed."[5] In this large sense free trade may be
almost interpreted as the combination of the doctrines of the division
of labour and of _laissez-faire_ in regard to the world as a whole. The
division of labour between different countries of the world--so that
each concentrates its energies in supplying that for the production of
which it is best fitted--appears to offer the greatest possibility of
production; but this result cannot be secured unless trade and industry
are treated as the primary elements in the welfare of each community,
and political considerations are not allowed to hamper them.
Stated in its simplest form, the principle which underlies the doctrine
of free trade is almost a truism; it is directly deducible from the very
notion of exchange (q.v.). Adam Smith and his successors have
demonstrated that in every case of voluntary exchange each party gains
something that is of greater value-in-use to him than that with which he
parts, and that consequently in every exchange, either between
individuals or between nations, both parties are the gainers. Hence it
necessarily follows that, since both parties gain through exchanging,
the more facilities there are for exchange the greater will be the
advantage to every individual all round.[6] There is no difficulty in
translating this principle into the terms of actual life, and stating
the conditions in which it holds good absolutely. If, at any given
moment, the mass of goods in the world were distributed among the
consumers with the minimum of restriction on interchange, each
competitor would obtain the largest possible share of the things he
procures in the world's market. But the argument is less conclusive when
the element of time is taken into account; what is true of each moment
separately is not necessarily true of any period in which the conditions
of production, or the requirements of communities, may possibly change.
Each individual is likely to act with reference to his own future, but
it may often be wise for the statesman to look far ahead, beyond the
existing generation.[7] Owing to the neglect of this element of time,
and the allowance which must be made for it, the reasoning as to the
advantages of free trade, which is perfectly sound in regard to the
distribution of goods already in existence, may become sophistical,[8]
if it is put forward as affording a complete demonstration of the
benefits of free trade as a regular policy. After all, human society is
very complex, and any attempt to deal with its problems off-hand by
appealing to a simple principle raises the suspicion that some important
factor may have been left out of account. When there is such mistaken
simplification, the reasoning may seem to have complete certainty, and
yet it fails to produce conviction, because it does not profess to deal
with the problem in all its aspects. When we concentrate attention on
the phenomena of exchange, we are viewing society as a mechanism in
which each acts under known laws and is impelled by one particular
force--that of self-interest; now, society is, no doubt, in this sense a
mechanism, but it is also an organism,[9] and it is only for very short
periods, and in a very limited way, that we can venture to neglect its
organic character without running the risk of falling into serious
mistakes.
The doctrine of free trade maintains that in order to secure the
greatest possible mass of goods in the world as a whole, and the
greatest possibility of immediate comfort for the consumer, it is
expedient that there should be no restriction on the exchange of goods
and services either between individuals or communities. The
controversies in regard to this doctrine have not turned on its
certainty as a hypothetical principle, but on the legitimacy of the
arguments based upon it. It certainly supplies a principle in the light
of which all proposed trade regulations should be criticized. It gives
us a basis for examining and estimating the expense at which any
particular piece of trade restriction is carried out; but thus used, the
principle does not necessarily condemn the expenditure; the game may be
worth the candle or it may not, but at least it is well that we should
know how fast the candle is being burnt. It was in this critical spirit
that Adam Smith examined the various restrictions and encouragements to
trade which were in vogue in his day; he proved of each in turn that it
was expensive, but he showed that he was conscious that the final
decision could not be taken from this standpoint, since he recognized in
regard to the Navigation Acts that "defence is more than opulence."[10]
In more recent times, the same sort of attitude was taken by Henry
Sidgwick,[11] who criticizes various protective expedients in turn, in
the light of free trade, but does not treat it as conveying an
authoritative decision on their merits.
But other exponents of the doctrine have not been content to employ it
in this fashion. They urge it in a more positive manner, and insist that
free trade pure and simple is _the_ foundation on which the economic
life of the community ought to be based. By men who advocate it in this
way, free trade is set forward as an ideal which it is a duty to
realize, and those who hold aloof from it or oppose it have been held up
to scorn as if they were almost guilty of a crime.[12] The development
of the material resources of the world is undoubtedly an important
element in the welfare of mankind; it is an aim which is common to the
whole race, and may be looked upon as contributing to the greatest
happiness of the greatest number. 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. It was in
this fashion that it was put forward by French economists and proved
attractive to some leading American statesmen in the 18th century.
Turgot regarded the colonial systems of the European countries as at
once unfair to their dependencies and dangerous to the peace of the
world. "It will be a wise and happy thing for the nation which shall be
the first to modify its policy according to the new conditions, and be
content to regard its colonies as if they were allied provinces and not
subjects of the mother country." It will be a wise and happy thing for
the nation which is the first to be convinced that the secret of
"success, so far as commercial policy is concerned, consists in
employing all its land in the manner most profitable for the
proprietary, all the hands in the manner most advantageous to the
workman personally, that is to say, in the manner in which each would
employ them, if we could let him be simply directed by his own interest,
and that all the rest of the mercantile policy is vanity and vexation of
spirit. When the entire separation of America shall have forced the
whole world to recognize this truth and purged the European nations of
commercial jealousy there will be one great cause of war less in the
world."[13] Pitt, under the influence of Adam Smith, was prepared to
admit the United States to the benefit of trade with the West Indian
Colonies; and Jefferson, accepting the principles of his French
teachers, would (in contradistinction to Alexander Hamilton) have been
willing to see his country renounce the attempt to develop manufactures
of her own.[14] It seemed as if a long step might be taken towards
realizing the free-trade ideal for the Anglo-Saxon race; but British
shipowners insisted on the retention of their privileges, and the
propitious moment passed away with the failure of the negotiations of
1783.[15] Free trade ceased to be regarded as a gospel, even in France,
till the ideal was revived in the writings of Bastiat, and helped to
mould the enthusiasm of Richard Cobden.[16] Through his zealous
advocacy, the doctrine secured converts in almost every part of the
world; though it was only in Great Britain that a great majority of the
citizens became so far satisfied with it that they adopted it as the
foundation of the economic policy of the country.
It is not difficult to account for the conversion of Great Britain to
this doctrine; in the special circumstances of the first half of the
19th century it was to the interest of the most vigorous factors in the
economic life of the country to secure the greatest possible freedom for
commercial intercourse. Great Britain had, through her shipping, access
to all the markets of the world; she had obtained such a lead in the
application of machinery to manufactures that she had a practical
monopoly in textile manufactures and in the hardware trades; by removing
every restriction, she could push her advantage to its farthest extent,
and not only undersell native manufactures in other lands, but secure
food, and the raw materials for her manufactures, on the cheapest
possible terms. Free trade thus seemed to offer the means of placing an
increasing distance between Britain and her rivals, and of rendering the
industrial monopoly which she had attained impregnable. The capitalist
employer had superseded the landowner as the mainstay of the resources
and revenue of the realm, and insisted that the prosperity of
manufactures was the primary interest of the community as a whole. The
expectation, that a thoroughgoing policy of free trade would not only
favour an increase of employment, but also the cheapening of food, could
only have been roused in a country which was obliged to import a
considerable amount of corn. The exceptional weakness, as well as the
exceptional strength, of Great Britain, among European countries, made
it seem desirable to adopt the principle of unrestricted commercial
intercourse, not merely in the tentative fashion in which it had been
put in operation by Huskisson, but in the thoroughgoing fashion in which
it at last commended itself to the minds of Peel and Gladstone. The
"Manchester men" saw clearly where their interest lay; and the
fashionable political economy was ready to demonstrate that in pursuing
their own interest they were conferring the benefit of cheap clothing on
all the most poverty-stricken races of mankind. It seemed probable, in
the 'forties and early 'fifties, that other countries would take a
similar view of their own interests and would follow the example which
Great Britain had set.[17] That they have not done so, is partly due to
the fact that none of them had such a direct, or such a widely diffused,
interest in increased commercial intercourse as existed in Great
Britain; but their reluctance has been partly the result of the
criticism to which the free-trade doctrine has been subjected. The
principles expressed in the writings of Friedrich List have taken such
firm hold, both in America and in Germany, that these countries have
preferred to follow on the lines by which Great Britain successfully
built up her industrial prosperity in the 17th and 18th century, rather
than on those by which they have seen her striving to maintain it since
1846.
Free trade was attractive as an ideal, because it appeared to offer the
greatest production of goods to the world as a whole, and the largest
share of material goods to each consumer; it is cosmopolitan, and it
treats consumption, and the interest of the consumer, as such, as the
end to be considered. Hence it lies open to objections which are partly
political and partly economic.
As cosmopolitan, free-trade doctrine is apt to be indifferent to
national tradition and aspiration. In so far indeed as patriotism is a
mere aesthetic sentiment, it may be tolerated, but in so far as it
implies a genuine wish and intention to preserve and defend the national
habits and character to the exclusion of alien elements, the
cosmopolitan mind will condemn it as narrow and mischievous. In the
first half of the 19th century there were many men who believed that
national ambitions and jealousies of every kind were essentially
dynastic, and that if monarchies were abolished there would be fewer
occasions of war, so that the expenses of the business of government
would be enormously curtailed. For Cobden and his contemporaries it was
natural to regard the national administrative institutions as maintained
for the benefit of the "classes" and without much advantage to the
"masses." But in point of fact, modern times have shown the existence in
democracies of a patriotic sentiment which is both exclusive and
aggressive; and the burden of armaments has steadily increased. It was
by means of a civil war that the United States attained to a
consciousness of national life; while such later symptoms as the recent
interpretations of the Monroe doctrine, or the war with Spain, have
proved that the citizens of that democratic country cannot be regarded
as destitute of self-aggrandizing national ambition.
In Germany the growth of militarism and nationalism have gone on side by
side under constitutional government, and certainly in harmony with
predominant public opinion. Neither of these communities is willing to
sink its individual conception of progress in those of the world at
large; each is jealous of the intrusion of alien elements which cannot
be reconciled with its own political and social system. And a similar
recrudescence of patriotic feeling has been observable in other
countries, such as Norway and Hungary: the growth of national sentiment
is shown, not only in the attempts to revive and popularize the use of a
national language, but still more decidedly in the determination to have
a real control over the economic life of the country. It is here that
the new patriotism comes into direct conflict with the political
principles of free trade as advocated by Bastiat and Cobden; for them
the important point was that countries, by becoming dependent on one
another, would be prevented from engaging in hostilities. The new
nations are determined that they will not allow other countries to have
such control over their economic condition, as to be able to exercise a
powerful influence on their political life. Each is determined to be the
master in his own house, and each has rejected free trade because of the
cosmopolitanism which it involves.
Economically, free trade lays stress on consumption as the chief
criterion of prosperity. It is, of course, true that goods are produced
with the object of being consumed, and it is plausible to insist on
taking this test; but it is also true that consumption and production
are mutually interdependent, and that in some ways production is the
more important of the two. Consumption looks to the present, and the
disposal of actual goods; production looks to the future, and the
conditions under which goods can continue to be regularly provided and
thus become available for consumption in the long run. As regards the
prosperity of the community in the future it is important that goods
should be consumed in such a fashion as to secure that they shall be
replaced or increased before they are used up; it is the amount of
production rather than the amount of consumption that demands
consideration, and gives indication of growth or of decadence. In these
circumstances there is much to be said for looking at the economic life
of a country from the point of view which free-traders have abandoned or
ignore. It is not on the possibilities of consumption in the present,
but on the prospects of production _in the future_, that the continued
wealth of the community depends; and this principle is the only one
which conforms to the modern conception of the essential requirements of
sociological science in its wider aspect (see SOCIOLOGY). This is most
obviously true in regard to countries of which the resources are very
imperfectly developed. If their policy is directed to securing the
greatest possible comfort for each consumer in the present, it is
certain that progress will be slow; the planting of industries for which
the country has an advantage may be a tedious process; and in order to
stimulate national efficiency temporary protection--involving what is
otherwise unnecessary immediate cost to the consumer--may seem to be
abundantly justified. Such a free trader as John Stuart Mill himself
admits that a case may be made out for treating "infant industries" as
exceptions;[18] and if this exception be admitted it is likely to
establish a precedent. After all, the various countries of the world are
all in different stages of development; some are old and some are new;
and even the old countries differ greatly in the progress they have made
in distinct arts. The introduction of machinery has everywhere changed
the conditions of production, so that some countries have lost and
others have gained a special advantage. Most of the countries of the
world are convinced that the wisest economy is to attend to the
husbanding of their resources of every kind, and to direct their policy
not merely with a view to consumption in the present, but rather with
regard to the possibilities of increased production in the future.
This deliberate rejection of the doctrine of free trade between nations,
both in its political and economic aspects, has not interfered, however,
with the steady progress of free commercial intercourse within the
boundaries of a single though composite political community. "Internal
free trade," though the name was not then current in this sense, was one
of the burning questions in England in the 17th century; it was perhaps
as important a factor as puritanism in the fall of Charles I. Internal
free trade was secured in France in the 18th century; thanks to
Hamilton,[19] it was embodied in the constitution of the United States;
it was introduced into Germany by Bismarck; and was firmly established
in the Dominion of Canada and the Commonwealth of Australia. It became
in consequence, where practicable, a part of the modern federal idea as
usually interpreted. There are thus great areas, externally
self-protecting, where free trade, as between internal divisions, has
been introduced with little, if any, political difficulty, and with
considerable economic advantage. These cases are sometimes quoted as
justifying the expectation that the same principle is likely to be
adopted sooner or later in regard to external trading relations. There
is some reason, however, for raising the question whether free trade has
been equally successful, not only in its economic, but in its social
results, in all the large political communities where it has been
introduced. In a region like the United States of America, it is
probably seen at its best; there is an immense variety of different
products throughout that great zone of the continent, so that the mutual
co-operation of the various parts is most beneficial, while the standard
of habit and comfort is so far uniform[20] throughout the whole region,
and the facilities for the change of employment are so many, that there
is little injurious competition between different districts. In the
British empire the conditions are reversed; but though the great
self-governing colonies have withdrawn from the circle, in the hope of
building up their own economic life in their own way, free trade is
still maintained over a very large part of the British empire.
Throughout this area, there are very varied physical conditions; there
is also an extraordinary variety of races, each with its own habits, and
own standard of comfort; and in these circumstances it may be doubted
whether the free competition, involved in free trade, is really
altogether wholesome. Within this sphere the ideal of Bastiat and his
followers is being realized. England, as a great manufacturing country,
has more than held her own; India and Ireland are supplied with
manufactured goods by England, and in each case the population is forced
to look to the soil for its means of support, and for purchasing power.
In each case the preference for tillage, as an occupation, has rendered
it comparatively easy to keep the people on the land; but there is some
reason to believe that the law of diminishing returns is already making
itself felt, at all events in India, and is forcing the people into
deeper poverty.[21] It may be doubtful in the case of Ireland how far
the superiority of England in industrial pursuits has prevented the
development of manufactures; the progress in the last decades of the
18th century was too short-lived to be conclusive; but there is at least
a strong impression in many quarters that the industries of Ireland
might have flourished if they had had better opportunities allowed
them.[22] In the case of India we know that the hereditary artistic
skill, which had been built up in bygone generations, has been stamped
out. It seems possible that the modern unrest in India, and the
discontent in Ireland, may be connected with the economic conditions in
these countries, on which free trade has been imposed without their
consent. So far the population which subsists on the cheaper food, and
has the lower standard of life, has been the sufferer; but the mischief
might operate in another fashion. The self-governing colonies at all
events feel that competition in the same market between races with
different standards of comfort has infinite possibilities of mischief.
It is easy to conjure up conditions under which the standard of comfort
of wage-earners in England would be seriously threatened.
Since the 9th edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ was published it
has become clear that the free-trade doctrines of Bastiat and Cobden
have not been gaining ground in the world at large, and at the opening
of the 20th century it could hardly be said with confidence that the
question was "finally settled" so far as England was concerned. As to
whether the interests of Great Britain still demanded that she should
continue on the line she adopted in the exceptional conditions of the
middle of the 19th century, expert opinion was conspicuously
divided;[23] but there remained no longer the old enthusiasm for free
trade as the harbinger of an Utopia. The old principles of the bourgeois
manufacturers had been taken up by the proletariat and shaped to suit
themselves. Socialism, like free trade, is cosmopolitan in its aims, and
is indifferent to patriotism and hostile to militarism. Socialism, like
free trade, insists on material welfare as the primary object to be
aimed at in any policy, and, like free trade, socialism tests welfare by
reference to possibilities of consumption. In one respect there is a
difference; throughout Cobden's attack on the governing classes there
are signs of his jealousy of the superior status of the landed gentry,
but socialism has a somewhat wider range of view and demands "equality
of opportunity" with the capitalist as well.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Reference has already been made to the principal works
which deal critically with the free-trade policy. Professor Fawcett's
_Free Trade_ is a good exposition of free-trade principles; so also is
Professor Bastable's _Commerce of Nations_. Among authors who have
restated the principles with special reference to the revived
controversy on the subject may be mentioned Professor W. Smart, _The
Return to Protection, being a Restatement of the Case for Free Trade_
(2nd ed., 1906), and A. C. Pigou, _Protective and Preferential Import
Duties_ (1906). (W. Cu.)