nature of the occupation concerned, but
designed for purposes of exclusiveness. As against all such methods of
restriction, the Liberal case is clear.

It has only to be added here that restrictions of sex are in every
respect parallel to restrictions of class. There are, doubtless,
occupations for which women are unfit. But, if so, the test of fitness
is sufficient to exclude them. The "open road for women" is one
application, and a very big one, of the "open road for talent," and to
secure them both is of the essence of Liberalism.

5. _Economic Liberty_

Apart from monopolies, industry was shackled in the earlier part of the
modern period by restrictive legislation in various forms, by navigation
laws, and by tariffs. In particular, the tariff was not merely an
obstruction to free enterprise, but a source of inequality as between
trade and trade. Its fundamental effect is to transfer capital and
labour from the objects on which they can be most profitably employed in
a given locality, to objects on which they are less profitably employed,
by endowing certain industries to the disadvantage of the general
consumer. Here, again, the Liberal movement is at once an attack on an
obstruction and on an inequality. In most countries the attack has
succeeded in breaking down local tariffs and establishing relatively
large Free Trade units. It is only in England, and only owing to our
early manufacturing supremacy, that it has fully succeeded in overcoming
the Protective principle, and even in England the Protectionist reaction
would undoubtedly have gained at least a temporary victory but for our
dependence on foreign countries for food and the materials of industry.
The most striking victory of Liberal ideas is one of the most
precarious. At the same time, the battle is one which Liberalism is
always prepared to fight over again. It has led to no back stroke, no
counter-movement within the Liberal ranks themselves.

It is otherwise with organized restrictions upon industry. The old
regulations, which were quite unsuited to the conditions of the time,
either fell into desuetude during the eighteenth century, or were
formally abolished during the earlier years of the industrial
revolution. For a while it seemed as though wholly unrestricted
industrial enterprise was to be the progressive watchword, and the
echoes of that time still linger. But the old restrictions had not been
formally withdrawn before a new process of re