31 OCTOBER 1908, Page 25

We heartily welcome the Report of the Proceedings of the

International Free-Trade Congress (Caxton House, Westminster, 5s.) The Congress, which owed its inception to Messrs. John de Witt Warner and Harvey N. Shepard, two American Free-traders, and, we may add, Mr. Russell Rea, M.P., had eight sessions, at which snore than fifty speeches were delivered and more than twenty papers read. The subject has been so often discussed in our columns that we need not revert to it on the present occasion. We may quote, however, from the preface contributed by Mr. J. A. Murray Macdonald, M.P., a summary of tho discussions :—" They showed that as a means of raising State revenues protective taxes were enormously costly and entirely unreliable. They showed, with absolute unanimity, that protective tariffs isolated nations, and bred illwill and suspicion among them. And finally, and with equal unanimity, they showed that Protection debased public morals and corrupted government at its very source."