how the exclusion of foreign goods here would tend to force the purchase of our goods by foreigners; for that is what a revival of trade means. We may keep out the foreigner as much as we like, but would he much care? Could any form of retaliatory tariff enable us to dispense with corn, cotton, wool, wine, tobacco, silk, etc., purchased from abroad or from our own colonies? We want to sell: refusing to buy is no remedy if our old customers are churlish, or, for reasons of their own, indifferent to our wares. On the other hand, the evidence is very far from being in favour of Protection, even in the countries which still maintain it.

One could wish, indeed, that it was less clear than it is; that the evils under which modern industry is suffering were of so slight a nature as a reform of tariffs or any fiscal or economic change could remove. We could bear our woes with a more patient mind if all depended on the "bugbear" of Free Trade being promptly exploded. We have no such consolation. The root of the mischief lies deeper in the exorbitant over-production made possible by the marvellous improvement of machinery, and in the increased facility thereby of dispensing with manual labour.

Great efforts are made to show that a general

glut of commodities is not a source of evil, and that the appreciation of gold has been the cause of the extraordinary fall in prices. To those who hold this view, I would put the question why ivory and whalebone have not fallen in price, but, on the contrary, have steadily risen in price during the last decade? The plain answer, surely, is, that the enhanced price of these commodities is owing to the fact that elephants and whales not being capable of manufacture, nor, till yet, of artificial cultivation, the demand for ivory and whalebone has exceeded the natural supply, and the price of those articles has consequently gone up some 50 per cent. Oysters offer an even more instructive example. Every man of middle age can remember when oysters were sold in the shops at sixpence and eightpence a dozen, and how they rose a few years ago to prohibitory prices of three, four, and even four and sixpence dozen. The greatly diminished demand which followed in consequence, coupled with the attention devoted to oyster-culture, have at last caused a turn in the market, and now oysters are cheaper than they have been for years. These instances cannot be explained away. The old economic doctrine, that when demand exceeds supply prices will rise, and when supply exceeds demand prices will fall, is one

which is assailed in vain. If cotton yarns, pig-iron, silver, and many other commodities are cheaper than ever they were, it is because there is so much more. of them than ever there was. Some points even in political economy are ascertained and beyond dispute.

If it be asked what inference I draw from such facts, the answer is that it is a melancholy one. I believe we are approaching to a great catastrophe in our industrial system, which will be a calamity without precedent since the Black Death of the fourteenth century.

The praises of the steam-engine are on every tongue, and its merits are obvious enough to a superficial glance. Whether it will turn out a benefactor in the long run remains to be seen. It, clearly enough, greatly increased wealth, but it did nothing for its moralization or more beneficial distribution. It also vastly increased population, which is a more questionable boon; or, to speak plainly, a curse. But we have it, and certainly shall not lay it aside till we are compelled. Now, the proper and direct effect of all machinery is to diminish largely the cost and the amount of manual labour required in the production of commodities. In the first instance, this result was so masked by the rapid growth of English trade, that an increased demand for labour,

in form of "hands" serving steam-engines, was brought about. The folly and wickedness of workmen who smashed steam engines was pointed out with much unction in the early part of this century. Thousands of hands, it was asserted, and quite truly, were employed in the cotton trade, where only hundreds were employed before. But a great change has come over the world with the vastly improved machinery of later years. It no longer admits of doubt that machinery is a rival, and tending to become a triumphant rival, of labour. As competition becomes keener, and the cost of production an ever more serious consideration to the manufacturer, even the great expense of new plant is worth the saving produced by a less expenditure in wages. The ideal of manufacture now, would be production without "hands;" except, perhaps, a stoker and an engineer. Every day new contrivances are discovered by which human labour can be dispensed with. Were trade expanding, instead of contracting, there might be a compensation in the need of more workers to serve the greater number of machines. But in our present condition the result is doubly injurious to the working classes. Production of commodities by means of improved machinery is made cheaper, and an already glutted market still

more flooded at prices barely remunerative, at the very time that the merit of the improved machinery chiefly consists in doing with less manual labour.

It is difficult to see from what quarter an improvement of this condition of things can be expected. Is not that condition more likely to get worse? The race for cheap production is so severe, that each trade and nation in turn is forced to strain every nerve in order to keep abreast of its rivals. The wellknown tendency of profits to a minimum is exemplified as it never was before. The cost of production, and the selling price of the manufactured article, must before long coincide. And then what will become of the interest of the capitalist and the wages of the artisan?

If the mass of even civilized mankind were not, as Carlyle said, mostly fools, great relief could no doubt be rapidly attained by saving the immense sums now squandered on armaments unparalleled in human annals. And the removal of all fear of war would be even a greater gain than the suppression of war-budgets. But men must pay for their follies and passions; and they do pay, heavily enough. The cost of indulgence in international jealousies and hatreds, even between European countries at the present day, would be difficult to exaggerate; and