riff Reformer is
also anxious that we should buy them cheaply, but he is even more
anxious to know how we are going to pay for all this vast quantity of
things which we are bound to import. And that leads him to two
conclusions. The first is that, seeing how much we are obliged to buy
from abroad in any case, he looks rather askance at our increasing our
indebtedness by buying things which we could quite easily produce at
home, especially with so many unemployed and half-employed people. The
other, and this is even a more pressing solicitude to him, is that it
is of vital importance to us to look after our external markets, to
make sure that we shall always have customers, and good customers, to
buy our goods, and so to enable us to pay for our indispensable
imports. The Free Trader does not share this solicitude. He has got a
comfortable theory that if you only look after your imports your
exports will look after themselves. Will they? The Tariff Reformer
does not agree with that at all. Imports no doubt are paid for by
exports, but it does not in the least follow that by increasing your
dependence on others you will necessarily increase their dependence on
you. It would be much truer to say: "Look after the exports and the
imports will look after themselves." The more you sell the more you
will be able to buy, but it does not in the least follow that the more
you buy the more you will be able to sell. What business man would go
on the principle of buying as much as possible and say: "Oh, that is
all right. I am sure to be able to sell enough to pay for it." The
first thought of a wise business man is for his markets, and you as a
great trading nation are bound to think of your markets, not only your
markets of to-day but of to-morrow and the day after to-morrow.

The Free Trade theory was the birth of a time when our imports were
practically all supplemental to our exports, all indispensable to us,
and when, on the other hand, the whole of the world was in need of our
goods, far beyond our power of supplying it. Since then the situation
has wholly altered. At this actual moment, it is true, there is
temporarily a state of things which in one respect reproduces the
situation of fifty years ago. There is for the moment an almost
unlimited demand for some of our goods abroad. But that is not the
normal situation. The normal situation is that there is an increasing
invasion of our markets by goods from abroad which we use