do not agree." The
doctrinarians were, in those days, unusually harmonious among
themselves, for there were comparatively few who made a vigorous
defense of protection on grounds of economic principle. The practical
world was less harmonious, since the views of different parts of it
were colored by differing interests; but the fact that science did not
fall into self-contradiction was encouraging. It was possible for the
uncompromising free-trader to think and to say that fundamental
principles were all on his side, and that the protectionist had
nothing in his favor except transient disturbances that interfered
with the perfect working of the principles.

_Static Theory in Favor of Free Trade._--Now, the business world
conceded too much to the free-trader when it said that he had theory
altogether in his favor. What he could truthfully claim, and what the
world could safely admit, was that he had static theory in his favor.
Static theory deals with a world which is free, not only from friction
and disturbance, but also from those elements of change and progress
which are the marked features of actual life. Stop all the changes
that are taking place in the industrial life of the world; put an end
to inventions and improvements in business organization; let there be
no moving of population to and fro, and no increase of the aggregate
population of the world; further, let there be no addition to the
wealth of the world and no change in its forms,--and you will have the
static state described in the early part of this treatise. Men would
go on making things to the end of time, using identically the same
methods that are now in vogue and getting identically the same
results, and in such an imaginary world there would be no possibility
of answering the contention of the general body of economists of a
generation ago. Free trade would be the only rational policy, and it
could be defended upon the simple ground on which division of labor in
the case of individuals is defended. One man has an aptitude for
making shoes, another for making watches, another for painting
pictures, and so on; and each one of them can gain far more by
devoting himself to his specialty and bartering off the product of it
than he can by trying to make everything for himself. Nations have
their special aptitudes and should follow them, and make all they can
out of them; and the nation which has special facilities for producing
cotton, or wheat, or pet