Lord Avebury (formerly Sir John Lubbock) on Monday delivered an
address at the London Institution full of facts worth remembering. So far from our commerce de- clining, "it was last year the largest ever transacted by any country in the history of the world, and this year it showed a substantial advance." The national income was estimated in 1877 at 21,200,000,000, and now it is 21,750,000,000, while the amount assessed to Income-tax had risen in ten years from 2674,000,000 to 2880,000,000, an increase of over 2200,000,000. Our shipbuilders built more ships than Germany, France, and the United States all put together. The Protectionist States abut themselves out of neutral markets, our export trade with India, for example, being 238,000,000, though India gives us no advantage, while that of Germany is only 21,500,000, that of France only 2800,000, and that of America 2860,000. Our imports were no doubt 2100,000,000 more than our exports, but half of that difference was repre- sented by our, foreign investments, and the other half by the profits of our carrying trade. "The argument for Protection really amounted to this : that the more goods we sent abroad, and the less we received in exchange, the better for us." It would be difficult to put the argument for Free-trade in a more condensed or intelligible form.
Previous page
