FREE-TRADE AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL.
Free-Trade and other Fundamental Doctrines of the Manchester School. Edited, with an Introduction, by Francis W. Hirst. (Harper and Brothers. 5s. net.)--From this volume may be gained a very clear notion of the doctrines of the Manchester School, and of its activities in other directions besides that of commercial policy. It cannot be denied that the course of events both in the British Empire and in the world at large has belied many of the hopes of the ablest of its members, and that it is threatening even the fiscal policy founded by their efforts. The only criticism we should be inclined to pass on the appearance of this work at the present juncture is that it may foster a miscon*- ception that Free-trade is so much bound up with ideas of peace, disarmament, and-anti-Imperialism that with their eclipse, tem. pomry or permanent, it is no longer to the interest of this country to maintain it. It is the business of those who believe that Free. trade is now more than ever necessary to the very existence of Great Britain as an Empire to deal with the position of the country as it is, not as it might have been had Cobden's ideas acquired as much ascendency in other civilised communities as they did in our own. In saying this we are far from wishing to disparage those ideas ; we believe, on the contrary, that they are for the most part destined for future triumphs in popularly governed. States, and that all States must, if they are to survive, take to heart the lessons as to public expenditure so admirably expounded in some of these papers. That sound finance is the foundation of states- manship is, after all, the first lesson to be learnt from the Man- chester School, and the root of the whole matter. We may draw special attention to the essay by the late Lord Ferrer on "The Proposed British Zollverein," written in 1896, and brought up to date by the editor. It has been well said that Little Englaudism was a product of the old Colonial preferential system; and we have nowhere seen the argument that a revival of preferential arrange- meats must place an intolerable strain both on the Imperial spirit of the Mother-country and on the loyalty of the Colonies better put and illustrated than in Lord Farrer's paper.
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