GREAT BRITAIN IN DECLINE.* THERE is much in Mr. Brooks
Adams's striking, though in some respects sensational, argument to cause thought in an Englishman, but it is primarily intended to arouse his fellow- countrymen in America to a sense of their destiny as a world- Power and of the need of a sweeping reform of their political and administrative methods. He dwells impressively on the signs of the relative decline of England, political and economic, but it is with the object of preparing America to take up the
• America's Economic Supremacy. By Brooks Adams. London : Macmillan and Co. [ss.]
burden of supremacy. The seat of Empire; which has tarried for the three generations since Trafalgar in one city, is moving westwards, and the bond "which from beyond the limit of human memory has been the containing power of the world" is, he thinks, becoming loosened. The world, and Americans in particular, have relied upon England "to police the globe and keep distant markets open," and if she is weakening "America must in future fight her own battles whether she will or no," for her vital necessity in the future will be to secure a vent abroad for her surplus production. In our author's view, America will be forced to compete "for the seat of inter- national exchanges, or in other words, for the seat of Empire," and the key of the situation he conceives to lie in China. Germany, France, and Russia are bending their energies to occupy and organise the interior of China, to control its trade, and discriminate against and exclude the exports of America and England ; and the great struggle of the near future will be between this coalition and the maritime power, between land and sea transport, for the control of this market. America, lying on the Pacific in the path of the great maritime trade route, and holding in Manila the military and com- mercial key to Eastern Asia, must bear the brunt of such a struggle, and if she proves equal to her opportunity there is nothing to prevent her becoming a " greater seat of wealth and power than ever was England, Rome, or Con- stantinople."
Now in this view of the actual and potential greatness of the United States there is no exaggeration, nor can it be dis- pleasing to an Englishman that his country should be passed in the race by one allied in speech, in blood, and in commercial interests. England, with her Navy, her Colonies, and her coaling stations, must at all events be the most important of all allies to a nation with the kind of future sketched out by Mr. Adams, and provided only that their democratic systems of government can create or maintain a reasonably efficient financial and military administration (without attaining German perfection), there would seem to be little reason to fear that the equilibrium of the world will be so upset as to enable the Continental coalition, or rather Germany and Russia, even if they succeed in this gigantic enterprise of absorbing China, to reduce the Anglo-Saxon communities to the " semi-stationary " condition redoubted by writers like Mr. Adams and the late Mr. Pearson.
Mr. Adams's contentions, indeed, are based on a singularly narrow and insufficient survey of the economic position of the modern world. Foreign trade, in his view, is a source of profit which is in some special way the prize of Empire, instead of being only the inevitable result of the principles of subdivision of labour and exchange of services and products, A community is at least as likely to increase its opportunities for exporting by freely importing the products of others as by struggling for the exclusive possession of new markets, for no fallacy has been more conclusively exploded by facts (such as the increase of German and American commerce) as that " trade follows the flag." It is useless to reiterate in these days the truth that new markets of greater value than any which can be wrung from yellow or black races lie at the very doors of civilised nations if they choose to remove instead of erecting barriers ; but it is perhaps worth while to point out that, in spite of them, these nations do a far more profitable trade with each other than any which they do with semi-civilised foreign possessions. Our trade, for instance, with British India, with its free market and great population, amounts to something like sixty millions per anmun, while that with protectionist France is seventy-five millions, and with Germany sixty-eight millions. Mr. Adams tells us that " no theory has ever proved more fallacious than the dogma that the cheapest goods command the world's markets," and "that the whole protective system of modern times demonstrates the contrary." But the remarkable thing is that the protective system so largely fails in its object, that it shows how limited is the power of tariffs to prevent civi- lised peoples from satisfying their desires by means of trading with each other. Bearing such considerations as these in mind, and remembering also that Sir Robert Giffen has recently pointed out that tha mere increase of the white populations will afford the most important new markets of the future, we may ask if it is conceivable that the mere development of China would enable Europe to dispense with American (and English)
products, and whether such trade as America could hope to do with China, even under conditions as favourable as those existing between England and India, would amount to anything approaching that which she will inevitably do with England and Europe. The present Chinese trade is not at present so impor- tant in value even for this country that its loss could not be supplied in other quarters of the world ; but is it pretended that if China is opened up and developed, no matter by whom, the increased exchanges resulting from that process will not benefit all, and that China, with an immense seaboard and great rivers, can be forced to confine her exchanges to what can be carried on by railways traversing the deserts of Central Asia ? If not, must not the maritime Powers inevitably get their fair share, even without a death struggle for its posses- sion ? Is it likely that American capital can be dispensed with if China is to be opened up, even as English capital has hitherto proved necessary, and will not this fact alone secure Anglo-Saxondom against the dreaded exclusion P But while we believe that economic forces are thus far more decidedly on the side of America, with her boundless resources, and England, with her widespread Empire (which being as free to the trade of every nation as it is to that of our own need not on economic grounds excite the jealousy of mankind), we would not wish to minimise the effect of the warning which Mr. Adams's impartial survey of our condi- tion conveys. In spite of the fact that the British Empire is no longer alone or supreme as a naval, colonial, or manufac- turing Power, we should face the future without misgivings if we felt that the dark picture he draws in no unfriendly spirit of the England of to-day were completely lacking in truth. For this alone his book deserves the most careful study in this country. The account he gives of diminishing prosperity, based largely on what we must describe as the bogey of the great preponderance of imports over exports, seems, indeed, to be overdrawn and quite insuffi- ciently supported by knowledge and facts ; but realised wealth is not everything to a nation, and in other respects it would be difficult to contest his inferences ; for most men now reaching middle life could of their own experience point to various signs which seem to show a certain degeneracy in the national character. The pages in which the conduct of the present war is ruthlessly, we dare not add unfairly, described form at all events a useful corrective to the indiscriminate self- praise with which British politicians and generals conspire to mislead a public only too willing to be deceived ; and they reflect an opinion universally held by sober judges outside these islands. We will not do more than draw attention to this portion of the book, and pass on to the following passage, which gives some general conclusions. It is not pleasant reading :-
" If it be true that a relative relaxation of vigour can be traced in Great Britain alike in private and public affairs ; if a com- parative subsidence of energy can be noted in the workshop and the counting house, in the university and Parliament ; it it be established that after fifteen years of labour the army remains what it has proved itself this year ; if the British attack of 1900 is to the British attack of 1800 as Buller's assault on Spion Bop is to Wellington's advance at Waterloo ; if it be admitted that the Salisbury administration, though discredited at home and abroad retains office because the nation lacks vitality to replace it,—the symptoms admit of but one explanation. Nature seldom retraces her steps. Great Britain must already lie in the wake of the social cyclone."
Much might doubtless be said in answer to some of the counts in this indictment. We are no alarmists, not believing that the social and material progress of other nations can be harmful, or indeed otherwise than beneficial, to our own. But if our relative decline is due, not merely to the natural growth of others, but partly, as there is too much reason to fear, to the inferiority of our system of education, beginning with the great public schools, and to a general increase of habits of idleness and self-indulgence, then there is at least serious ground for uneasiness. The most disheartening symptom is the indifference and apathy of all but a small independent instructed minority in presence of many patent signs of inefficiency. The best that can be said, and in this we owe much to the book before us, is that we are warned in time, for the power and wealth of Great Britain are still intact, if threatened ; and the spirit of the people is high, if ignorantly over-confident.
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