FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—It is perhaps natural that the intricacies of national finance should cause some confusion of thought, but it is difficult to account for such a complete reversal of an axiomatic principle as your correspondent, " Parallax," makes in to-day's Spectator. He says " If we owe more money than we are owed we have got credit as well as goods and are _richer still." The more we owe and the richer we are—so that we may regard our overdrafts with a more friendly . eye.
It seems strange that such an absurd idea should ever gain currency, and yet we hear similar nonsense expressed daily by thoughtful men and women. It is as baffling and as exasperating as anything devised by Lewis Carroll. It would appear that to talk in millions is to depart from the elementary laws of good husbandry, and indeed to reverse them.
It is sufficient to say that if the extract quoted above be written in the first person singular, it is immediately trans- formed from an acceptable economic argument into a state- ment which, as Macaulay would say, " might raise a laugh in a well-managed nursery."—I am, Sir, &c., Gordon House, ARNOLD HYDE. Clayton Bridge, Manchester.
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