It is a comfort to see that Mr. Hunter Rodwell,
Q.C. and M.P., the tenant-farmers' Conservative Member for Cambridge- shire, has been addressing the farmers at Ixworth on the sub- ject of Reciprocity, in a strain of the utmost manliness and simplicity. We could wish that our respected correspondent, the Rev. Archer Gurney, had listened to that speech, in which case he would hardly have addressed to us the letter we publish to-day. Mr. Rodwell took the true line,—that for economical purposes, the world should he considered as virtually a unit, where it is always expedient to get what you need in the region which is relatively the most advantageous for that special pro- duction, whether that region be outside the bounds of what is called the nation, or not. Mr. Archer Gurney, on the other hand, if we understand him rightly, would try to compel every separate nation to produce for itself at least a great part of its supply of necessaries, whether or not it could buy them at a much less cost by producing other articles, in the making of which it had more advantage, and by exchanging these for the necessaries it had ceased to produce. How far is this process of reduplicating the area for the disadvantageous production of necessaries, to go ? Are Holland, and Switzerland, and every petty German State not yet effectually assimilated to the German Empire, to do likewise, and to cease to do so the moment the name and form of political independence disappear? Mr. Gurney is not so clear as he thinks himself. At all events, the Cambridgeshire tenant-farmers, as taught by Mr. Rodwell, will not be taken in by any of these pleas for an artificial disturb- ance of the natural division of labour among the different territories of our little planet. Mr. Rodwell ridiculed rather well the mutual attempt of rival States to harass each other into Free-trade, by setting individually the example of pro- tective duties.
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