TOPICS OF THE DAY.
SHIBBOLETHS.
FREE-TRADERS, and especially those Free-traders who are compelled to speak or write in public, will be greatly relieved when Mr. Chamberlain has deliverud his speeches at Glasgow, Greenock, and Cardiff. They will then, it is to be hoped, have intelligible arguments to con- sider and refute. At present, while Mr. Chamberlain is almost silent, waiting for the Birmingham leaflets to manure the intellectual soil, his friends confine themselves to strings of assertions, which when disproved they, like James II., assert again, and think unanswerable because of the reiteration. They assert, for example, that our trade is dwindling ; and when it is proved by the official statistics that it is the greatest in the world, and even now expand- ing, they repeat that it is dwindling, and think they have closed the case. They assert that our prosperity has ended ; and when shown that the Income-tax produces more per penny with every year, they reiterate the allegation of declining prosperity, and wonder that their opponents in the face of that demonstration only smile or sneer. They assert that taxes on corn do not inerease the price of bread; and when asked if they believe that a stone thrown into a basket does not increase its weight, they reply that a joke proves nothing. They assert that an increase of imports is a deplorable symptom ; and when asked whether they do netlike to be paid for their goods, look as if the question had nothing to do with the discussion in hand. They become irritated by the certainty of their oppo- nents—which is, in fact, a little irritating, like the certainty of a man explaining the rule of three to a boy who does not comprehend figures—and declare at the end of almost every sentence that those opponents are using "old arguments" and uttering mere "shibboleths." The statement, taken as a statement, is true enough. Many Free-traders do use very old arguments, as old, indeed, as the invention of figures. They say, for example, that taxation must diminish trade, and that diminished trade cannot afford higher wages,—the latter a truth certainly known, and probably stated, when the only profit- able manufacture was that of stone axe-heads. But, then, if the Free-traders were for their sins condemned to prove that twice two is four, they would also use an old argument,—viz., that if it is not so, then two is not two, but two and something else. Is that argument false because of its venerable age ? It is also true that if "a shibbo- leth" is intended to be equivalent to "a pet phrase," which is the meaning—the wrong meaning but the popular one—assigned to it in the Imperial dictionary, .Free- traders, who are very convinced folk, are much given to repeating "shibboleths." They do like to say over and over again that the consumer should be considered before the producer because he is everybody ; that taxation for Protection is a fine on the community for the benefit of a class ; that a protected trade sooner or later becomes an incompetent trade ; that if Protection were wise, inland Customs (Likin) would be wise too ; and other truisms of that wearisome sort. But, then, very convinced people rarely invent new expressions—one notices how often religious enthusiasts quote texts—or even thoughts, and it is not given to every one to dress up old fallacies in new and eloquent words with the skill of M. Thiers, or Mr. Chamberlain. Religious reformers, wise revolutionaries, even teachers of abstract science, are very apt to grow tiresome with their reiterations of the truths which to them seem past question ; but still some of those "wearisome dogmatists" have helped on the march of the world. Mr. Chamberlain conceals his exact proposition, in what seems to many an unconstitutional manner, and then complains that people mutter old shibboleths, which are only muttered because he is expected to deny ascertained facts. He might as well threaten to reform the Constitu- tion in some magnificent but unrevealed way, and then complain because his audience murmur _that government by "King, Lords, and Commons," having resulted in order and freedom, is good enough for them. How is he to convert Englishmen to a new economic gospel if he does not know in what old one most of them believe?
Well, say Mr. Chamberlain's friends, "we will give up taunting Free-traders with the age of their arguments ; but surely if the ' conditions ' are altered, arguments should be altered too." The position of the Free-traders is that the -nein conditions cannot be altered, that they are as eternally true as the rules of geometry or the multiplication table— for example, there would be more trade if there .were no need for taxes—but we will waive that for the moment, and pass on to ask what these new conditions are. "Oh !." is the invariable reply, "Mr. Cobden expected all the world to adopt Free-trade, and the world has adopted Protection instead." Quite true ; and what does that prove ? That Mr. Cobden, like most innovators, underrated the infinite stupidity of mankind, especially about economics, and being sanguine, believed that a truth had only to fly abroad to be accepted. The Apostles were under the same inn.. sion. So are the prophets of peace who are listening this week at Vienna to the honeyed words of Dr. Kiirber, Prime Minister of a Sovereign who controls nearly two millions of soldiers. Do Mr. Chamberlain's friends believe that because the world is every day making more and more Preparation for war, therefore peace is 'a bad thing ? Is conscription no burden because the whole Continent has adopted it? Look at America, they say, and Germany, and France, and see how they prosper. Well, we look, and see that America, possessing all climates, and nearly all products, and seventy millions of people gifted with endless energy, bears a Protective system which enriches her manufacturers at the expense of her agriculturists, who in many States are the majority, and are at last beginning to kick. She does it partly because, there being no taxes on food, the inherent vice of the system does not come home to the poor, and because her people, even when aware of the truth, would rather submit to taxation than be thrown back, as they fancy they would be, on a dull monotony of purely agricultural. life. As to Germany, is Germany prosperous, or is it only the trading class in Germany ? The Agrarians deny the prosperity with shrieks of rage, and the unskilled multi-, tudes in towns with groans of despair, and Vote, for candidates whose programme is to break up the social. system. Germany, say its admirers, is enabled by Pro- tection to " dump " her surplus goods on Great Britain at less than their cost price. Think of that atrocity.! Yes, think of it ! and remember the satisfaction of the British consumer when he wants German goods, aud the horrible price all Germans must be paying, not to the State, which is all, but to the manufacturers, who are only a caste. As to France, does French trade increase, or is any class of workmen contented except the peasantry, who, being owners of the soil and never increasing in 'numbers, exult in the Protection which partially starves the citizen but makes their own position sure ? There is terrible poverty among us, especially in London, where so many people are huddled together that there is not continuous work for them all ; but we question if, as regards the un-- submerged nine-tenths, there is any happier people than the British ; while the one palliative for the condition of the remaining tenth is the marvellous cheapness of their necessary, food.
We have but one more remark to make to-day, and as it is rather addressed to the old Protectionists than to Mr. Chamberlain's followers, we only make it because of what seems to us its grave importance. The old Protectionists, the admirers of Mr. Chaplin, always affirm that the country is in danger because it does not produce food enough to maintain its people. If England, they say, were blockaded, we should starve. Quite true ; and what are our, defences against blockade? First the Fleet, and then the certainty, for several years at any rate, that the Coalition which alone could even hope to blockade us dare not make food contraband of war lest America should intervene. Even a Coalition will not fight the two English-speaking States. But if Mr. Chamberlain's scheme of preferential duties succeeds as he expects it to do, and Canada, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand obtain a monopoly of our market, we shall be all the sooner dependent in the event of war, not upon America, but upon our own wheat-producing Colonies, which have no fleets. We do not ourselves believe in this blockade story at all ; but accepting it as true, why should a patriot of the old Pro- tectionist stripe support Mr. Chamberlain's proposal ? The Colonies are not the • less divided from us by sea because they are peopled by our brothers.
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