ns" because Adam
Smith flourished a little earlier than Hamilton, and stage coaches
were used in his day also. The simple truth is that there is nothing
very new to-day in the question of free trade or protection. The
subject is one which has been under consideration for some time. It
has received great developments in the last hundred years, and is
still so far from the last word that it is safest not to be too
dogmatic about it.

In this matter of the tariff, then, we have before us a question which
is not new, which is not moral, but which deals simply with matters of
self-interest according to the dictates of an enlightened selfishness.
What is the condition of the question of free trade to-day in its
practical aspect? Fifty years ago, roughly speaking, the movement for
it in England became successful, and the English people abandoned a
protective tariff which they had maintained for some centuries and
adopted the free trade tariff which they have to-day. The latter
system has had a thorough trial in England under the most favorable
circumstances. If there is any country in the world which, by its
situation, its history and its condition, is adapted for free trade,
England is that country. If free trade, therefore, is the certain and
enormous benefit which its advocates assert, and if it is the only
true system for nations to adopt, its history in England ought to
prove the truth of these propositions. How near has free trade come to
performing all that its original promoters claimed in its behalf? How
brilliant has been its success in practise? One thing at least is
certain: it has not been such an overwhelming and glittering success
as to convince any other civilized nation of its merits. England
stands alone to-day, as she has stood for the last fifty years, the
one free trade nation in the world. Possibly England of all the
nations may be right and everybody else may be wrong, but there is, at
least, a division of opinion so respectable that we may assume, with
all due reverence for our free trade friends, that there are two sides
to this question as to many others.

Let us look for a moment at some of the early promises. Free trade,
according to its originators, was to usher in an era of peace and
good-will. It was, in its extension, to put an end to wars. It has
certainly not brought peace to England, which has had a petty war of
some sort on her hands almost every year since the free trade gospel
was preac