… Excerpted from page 25 of William Gladstone’s January 1890 Contribution to the Debate with James G. Blaine of Maine on Free Trade and Protection.; These comments in CCCXCVIII of North American Review:
When we say this, we speak from our own experience [in Great Britain]. I have personally lived through that experience, which has cost the country a quarter of a century since we began the war between solitude and freedom. I have seen and known, and had an opportunity of comparing the sentiments and frame of mind first produced by our protection, which we now look back upon as slavery, and the liberty and equality of commerce which we have afterwards enjoyed for the last thirty years. or forty years. They tend to be stubborn towards positive selfishness; Another has done a lot to develop mental style.
DBX: Protection is legal robbery. If a person tries to act privately, that same power is used to defend against unjust use of governmental power.
Yet economic ignorance, often combined with ignorance of the facts, often leads well-meaning people to look at protectionism. Rent collectors who get rich off of protectionism welcome this ignorance and often encourage it. But the ignorance that makes acts of robbery appear false, or at least less than robbery, does not change the underlying fact; Protected robbery can appear peaceful and uninhibited to the untrained eye.
As Gladstone points out, the greater the acceptability of this booty, the greater the exercise of human veins and joint muscles. Therefore, one benefit of a firm policy of free trade is that it helps to eliminate these dangerous muscles by stimulating better and more disciplined muscles such as real trade and respectability. As long as trade is free, everyone benefits by helping their fellow citizens as much as possible. When trade is restricted, the few take advantage at the expense of the many.
