370 POSTSCRIPT 
and thus have a prospect of either obtaining a revenue, 
or of inducing our neighbours to give us better terms. 
It seems as if a time were coming when it would only be 
by specific agreement that we shall have access to markets in 
which to dispose of the wares with which we purchase the 
necessaries of life, and of industrial activity. The imposition 
of retaliatory tariffs on protectionist countries may be forced 
upon us as the only means of strengthening our business 
connection? with the great self-governing colonies, and of 
thus securing the command of supplies of food and raw 
materials. It is possible that England would by this means 
not only ward off the dangers which threaten her very 
existence, but enter on a path by which the completest 
sconomic co-operation between the distant regions which 
form parts of the Empire may be most quickly and easily 
realised. 
The persuasive force of economic principles becomesgreater 
when concrete instances, which affect immediate interests, can 
be adduced in supporting them. The manufacturers in 1846 
realised that by the adoption of Free Trade and the admission 
of foreign cereals, the demand for our manufactures would be 
enormously increased®. They had such a belief in the su- 
periority of our methods of production, and the eagerness of 
foreigners to buy on the cheapest terms, that they could not 
conceive that any market which was once open to our goods 
would ever be deliberately closed against us. Circumstances 
have so far changed, and our industrial rivals have so far 
developed in efficiency and in commercial influence, that the 
Thiscourse question is forced upon public attention whether itis prudent 
amonise for us to continue to trust entirely to laissez faire, or whether 
oith Ie we are not compelled to take active measures to retain and 
agvies extend the market for our goods. Under changed conditions 
benefit of there may be a new reading of the Whig commercial tradition. 
and 
securing 
an open 
door for 
our manu- 
factures. 
1 Such retaliation is quite different in economic character from any scheme for 
reverting to the protection of home industries, as it was in vogue in the eighteenth 
tentury, or is maintained in any country which regulates economic life on a strictly 
National basis. Huskisson attempted to modify our tariffs in such a fashion as to 
create new ties of common interests throughout the Empire, but his plan would 
cot be applicable to present conditions. (Cunningham, Wisdom of the Wise, 50.) The 
scheme for an Imperial Zollverein is discussed sympathetically by Lord Elgin, who 
-egarded it as no longer practicable, Letters and Journals, 61. But it may still 
be possible to introduce particular measures that benefit the mother-country and 
some particular colony too, without attempting to impose one system on all the 
members of the Empire. 3 Moxley, op. ett. 1. 141.