In his discussion of the tariff question, Mr. Bigelow assumes it as a settled principle of national policy that revenue should be raised by duties on imports. To clear the ground from ambiguity, he states exactly what he means when he uses the terms "free-trade" and "protection," and then proceeds to describe and explain the tariff-policy of Great Britain. Not without good reason does he give this prominence to the action of that great power. It is not merely that England stands at the head of manufacturing and commercial nations, or that our business-connections with her are intimate and extensive. The fact which makes English policy so important an element in the discussion is found in the persistent and too often successful efforts of that country to shape American opinion and legislation on questions of manufacture and trade. Nowhere else have we seen the utter fallacy of the free-trade argument, as urged by Great Britain on other countries upon the strength of her own successful example, so clearly shown. The nature, object, extent, and motive of the tariff-reforms effected by Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Gladstone are made plain, not only by the quoted explanations of those statesmen, but by statistical facts and figures. Until she had carried her manufactures to a height of prosperity where competition could no longer touch them, England was, of all nations, the most protective. Then she became of a sudden wondrously liberal. Her protective laws were abolished, and, with a mighty show of generosity, she opened her ports to the commerce of the world. Foreign producers were magnanimously told that they could send their goods freely into England at a time when English manufactures were underselling and supplanting theirs in their own markets. The sacrifice of duties actually made by England on foreign manufactures, and which she paraded before the world as a reason why other nations should imitate and reciprocate her action, amounted, as we learn from the work before us, to this immense annual sum of two hundred and eighteen thousand dollars, being "less than one-fourth part of the tax which Englishmen annually pay for the privilege of keeping their dogs!"
It is true that the exports and trade of England have increased with extraordinary rapidity since 1853, and that the free-trade economists of that country ascribe this great prosperity in large degree to their alleged reforms. That they have no good ground for such a representation is shown conclusively by Mr. Bigelow. During the same period, France, with high protection, and the United States, with moderate protection, made equal or even greater advances. The causes of this increased prosperity must, therefore, have been general in their nature and influence. The progress of invention and discovery, and the increased supply of gold, are mentioned by the author as among the most efficient.