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depend entirely on the relations of a majority to a minority, on the necessity imposed on the former to hold its own, on the anxiety of the latter to supplant its rival, and turn it into a minority. Take away the motive of political debate and you arrest political knowledge. Diminish it, and you produce a partial effect in the same direction. Does anybody doubt where political knowledge is at the lowest ebb? It is in those constituencies where the system of arrangement, the precursor of minority voting, has been longest practised. But that person best understands the true social interests of his countrymen who stimulates their natural inclination to discuss social questions from every point of view which can be taken of them, not one who advises them to commit a strong prejudice to the exposition of a representative of it.

The system of minority representation was an experiment, and I think a crude and ill-advised one. When first proposed in the House of Commons it was rejected. It was afterwards inserted in the Lords, and was finally accepted by the Commons, for the reasons which I have given before, because the Conservative party foresaw that it would neutralise the great constituencies, and because the philosophical Radicals imagined it to be just. But I am strongly disposed to think that the English people is gradually coming to the view which Cobden strongly advocated, and which by the way gives the fairest prospect of minority representation, that of parcelling the country out into electoral districts, based pretty much on the old lines, and giving each district one member.

*See Bright's Speeches, Reform xiii.

CHAPTER IX.

COMMERCIAL DIPLOMACY.

THE earlier years of Cobden's political career are identified with the struggle after free trade, i. e. the vindication of commercial liberty as a matter of principle, and the application of the principle to all processes of production and exchange. As I have already shown, Cobden was equally alive to the further application of his principle in the other two economical circumstances of distribution and taxation; that his doctrine of 'free trade in land' was adopted in order to serve the ends of a natural distribution, and that his adhesion, in a general way, to the principle of direct taxation was equivalent to a declaration that the rules and hopes on which British finance are founded are indefensible in theory and unsafe in practice.

But the later years of Cobden's life were devoted to a purpose which, to the mind of many, seemed to be a policy which was either external to free trade, or even repugnant to it. Free trade, it was alleged, simply removes obstructions to the discretion of the individual, in disposing either of his labour or his property; and

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the State, when it adopts free trade as the maxim of its action, is merely concerned with the removal of such obstacles in the way of individuals or associations as hinder the development of free exchange. It does not restrain the action of any, and by implication it assists the action of none. It does not prohibit bargains, but it does not, on the other hand, aid the act of bargaining, for it admits that the wisdom of self-interest in the individual is far more active and accurate than any faculty which would be developed under the assistance of a Legislature or an Administration. And if it declines to help enterprise, still less does it, under such circumstances, make itself a party to any engagement which might check action, or prohibit its discretion. But a commercial treaty necessarily involves restrictions. It is simply absurd to negotiate on the principle that one party is to have unlimited freedom, while the other is tied by conditions. No arrangement can be entered into which does not involve the surrender of some liberty on the side of both contracting parties.

The critics, therefore, of that commercial diplomacy into which Cobden entered in 1860, and which had for its fruits the commercial treaty with France, and ultimately with other countries, adopted two forms of objection to the preliminaries of the treaty, which they conceived were fatal to its soundness, or at least to its consistency with the rules which its originator and author had so powerfully vindicated during the whole course of his public life. They inculpated the treaty on grounds of fact, and on grounds of principle. The whole theory of commercial treaties was identified with the worst fallacies of the mercantile system. These

instruments had been used in order to further political alliances of a mischievous kind abroad, or to sustain special interests at home. The annals of England are full of diplomatic documents which, while they commended themselves to the political passions or military projects of one party in the community, stimulated an interested body, which discerned its own immediate advantage in the creation or sustentation of particular treaty stipulations, but to the detriment of the public good, and to the ultimate profit of no one. If there be two truths which have been demonstrated conclusively, they are, first, that there is only a very limited period during which protection assists private industry, since competition soon puts an end to the exceptional emoluments of the favoured calling, while the injury and loss to the public commence at the very moment that the protection is accorded; and, second, that the reversal of a protectionist policy is always difficult, because far more loss is effected on the protected industries by a return to the principle of economical freedom, than profit had been secured during the time that the protection was granted. Evidence on this subject is cumulative and overwhelming.

Among the earliest of those diplomatic engagements, which are partly commercial, partly political, and which were negotiated because the country secured the latter end, and appeared to secure the former, are the treaties which the Plantagenet kings of the fourteenth century entered into with the Low Countries. The weavers of Ghent cultivated the English alliance, and stipulated for peculiar privileges in the English wool market. There is, I imagine, no reason to doubt that according

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to the policy of the time, it was the interest of the Flemish burghers to gain the assistance of England against their feudal lord, and that it was equally the interest of the English wool-growers to have a free market for their produce in the Flemish towns. In other words, the advantages of the treaty could be secured, and would be secured, without the interposition of any formal instrument, and therefore this ancient treaty was either an injury, or a superfluity; the former in case the interests of trade did not dictate its provisions, the latter if trade would have been carried on equally well without it. Similarly the negotiations which, under the name of the Intercursus magnus, are reported to have finally destroyed the hopes of the Yorkist party in the fifteenth century, were nothing more than a recognition of those relations which might have been fairly left to natural causes, since it was certain that if no hindrance were put on the parties who might traffic together, traffic would certainly be originated and sustained.

Nothing better illustrates the source of economical fallacies than the eagerness with which the mercantile classes have always grasped at the grant of the favoured nation clause in commercial diplomacy. When the prospect of a monopoly in a particular market is offered, the bait is snapped with instant eagerness. But commercial history is full of proofs that no advantage whatever attends the monopoly. The merchants who constituted the East India Company soon found that the profits of their trade monopoly would not give them a dividend, and were constrained to find a revenue from the taxes which a conquering despot

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