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by the assurance that they are cheap; but the shop prices are not within his range of experience, and, when he goes home, he may find that he has paid twice what he should. Very much the same is it in a protected country where there is no experience of anything else than a range of prices dictated by the interests of the producing classes.

CHAPTER XIII.

RETALIATION.

If Retaliation be not Revenge, the suggestions concealed in the word require careful analysis. We find action called for on two perfectly distinct grounds :—(1) hostile tariffs abroad, (2) dumping here.

1

IT may be that I am a man of peace, but I cannot see that the case for Retaliation is selfevident. "Revenge," said Adam Smith in a celebrated passage, "naturally dictates retaliation." But revenge is perhaps the stupidest and most immoral gratification in which man can indulge. That you hurt me, is no reason why I should hurt you-although it may be that, in the heat of a blow, one does not pause to think of that. It is a very good reason why I should recover damages from you, but that is not because the damages hurt you, but because they recoup me. To do people justice, revenge, although the stock-in-trade of every novelist, does not play any important part in the real world. It generally takes time to plan and to carry through, and I, personally, have never met the

1 Wealth of Nations, book iv., chap. ii.

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nasty sort of person who "harbours a grudge," and is really pleased when he pays the other party out. I do not believe he exists in decent society. What is often called "revenge" is something very different. It is best seen in that pleasant form of retaliation called the lovers' quarrel, where the one does not want to hurt the other, but only to show how much he or she has been hurt. It is a compliment, indeed, which hurts one to pay! The very first glance, then, shows that the word Retaliation covers and conceals suggestions as to motive, purpose, and policy, and so should have most careful analysis.1

The subject of Retaliation seems to divide itself into two according to the grievance which calls for it. The first grievance is, that we are injured by foreign tariffs; the second, that we are injured by what is called "Dumping."

I. When we ask what is the harm done to us by foreign countries which prompts Retaliation

1 Again and again, during this fiscal enquiry, I have been reminded of my old friend's warning: "There are masked words droning and skulking about us in Europe just now, which nobody understands, but which everybody uses, and most people will also fight for, live for, or even die for, fancying they mean this or that, or the other, of things dear to them. There never were creatures of prey so mischievous, never diplomatists so cunning, never poisoners so deadly, as these masked words; they are the unjust stewards of all men's ideas: whatever fancy or favourite instinct a man most cherishes, he gives to his favourite masked word to take care of for him; the word at last comes to have an infinite power over him,-you cannot get at him but by its ministry.”—Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies, p. 20.

XIII.

AGAINST HOSTILE TARIFFS

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on our part, we are told that they have raised hostile tariffs against us so that we cannot, or can with difficulty, get our goods through.

I confess I cannot see that this calls for retaliation. If they want to keep themselves to themselves, they have as much right to do so as we have to lock our front doors. We cannot very well deny to foreign nations what we have allowed to our Colonies-the right to surround themselves with tariff walls. Is it reasonable for Englishmen to arrogate to themselves the right to dictate to other nations what they are to do with their own property?

But, it is said, they have taken unfair advantage of our free ports; they send and sell us what they like.

The reply is obvious: Is not "open ports" the policy deliberately adopted in 1846 as one that suited us? There was no bargain with other powers. It was our own selfish policy;1 and, for sixty years, we have been boasting that it was the very best policy that ever was. Are we, in sober earnest, complaining that these nations enter our free ports? I thought we were always saying how good a thing it was for us that they did; we got cheap food, cheap material, cheap everything. How is it we have only now discovered that some wrong is done us when we get what we asked for?

It must come to this: not that any wrong is done us, but that we make a mistake in not making a bargain for reciprocity, and that we are

1 See Peel's words, Jan. 27th, 1846, Hansard.

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now going to try back and find the means of making one. This is a quite sound and intelligible proposition. Entire free trade on our part, it may be said, suited us for half a century and more. So long as nations kept their tariffs moderately low, we could pass through them. But now they have raised them higher and higher; we find it more and more difficult to get our goods in; and we mean to call a parley. But why call this "retaliation"? Why cause bad blood among nations, and stir warlike feelings among ourselves, by speaking of "big revolvers "-of "hitting back"? Let us return to common sense. We said, and we thought, that our free imports would be balanced by at least moderate protective tariffs abroad. This has not been the case. Then, as Mr. Balfour says: "The only alternative is to do to foreign nations what they always do to each other, and, instead of appealing to economic theories in which they wholly disbelieve, to use fiscal inducements which they thoroughly understand."

The first proposal of Retaliation, then, is: that, on due occasion, we should put on import duties against certain nations, in order to take them off again when they have succeeded in bringing these nations to their senses; which, being translated, means, when they are prepared to make some modification in our favour. "At no time during my career," says Mr. Chamberlain, "either as a business man or as a politician, was I ever able to make a satisfactory bargain unless I had something to give."