that man will feel that he is doing
best who sells more to his neighbour than he buys from him. And rightly
so!" That note of exclamation is his. It also represented my feelings
when I read the statement. I am also quite at one with him in the quoted
remark, but (as in my poor way, I tried to be consistent) I am at issue
when in his first article he chuckles over the excess of imports.
Suppose that excess to be made up entirely of shipping, sale
commissions, and interest on foreign investments, and that it does not
imply that we are living on our capital; even then the thing does not
work out quite happily. Shipping is all right, of course, but sale
commissions less so; they spell enrichment, doubtless, to a certain
class of City men, but the working and manufacturing classes generally
get nothing out of these foreign manufactures. Still less do they share
in the third item. It does not help this country's industries to aid the
establishment of rival industries abroad, which is what foreign
investments mostly mean; while when the returns on those investments are
used to purchase foreign goods it is again difficult to see exactly
where the English industrial classes come in. With regard to the
entrepot trade, your correspondent says that it "seems somewhat to halt
in the process" of slipping away; but as his own figures show that the
sixty-seven millions of 1889 have dwindled in six years to the sixty
millions of 1895, I don't think I need occupy further space by combating
his assertion with figures of my own.

Yours faithfully,
ERNEST E. WILLIAMS.

_(To be concluded.)_

MR. WILLIAMS'S REPLY.--II.

_To the Editor of the "Daily Graphic."_

Sir,--In my first article I endeavoured to show that the charges of
disingenuousness brought against me by your critic not only missed their
aim, but possessed a boomerang quality. I will ask your attention to
another instance. In his second article your correspondent, in order to
damage my reputation for intellectual honesty, writes:--"Mr. Williams
has artfully picked out half-a-dozen or so items of our imports from
Germany, and then exclaims in horror at the amount of 'the moneys which
_in one year_ have come out of John Bull's pocket for the purchase of
his German-made household goods.'" This, in vulgar language, is a
staggerer.

Let me explain my artfulness. In a half-jocular sectio