f human nature and the world at large has found no trouble in
forgetting it. Adam Smith himself was under no confusion of mind as to
his subject when he wrote about political economy. He knew that he was
dealing with questions of a selfish character, of an enlightened
selfishness, no doubt, but none the less questions of self-interest.
He never for a moment thought of putting his political economy on a
plane of pure morality.

When the great political movement toward free trade began in England,
it was largely a movement of the middle classes and of the industrial
interests of Great Britain. The great middle class of England, which
furnishes the backbone and sinew of the nation, is essentially a moral
class, and in appealing to it the political leader is always tempted
to put forward the moral aspect of his theme, even if he has to twist
his argument and his facts to find one. The manufacturers of England
believed that free trade would be profitable, but it soothed them to
be assured that the system was also highly moral. It is to the
Manchester School, therefore, that we owe the attempt to give to the
entire free trade system a moral coloring for which the narrower
question of the repeal of the corn laws afforded an opportunity. Our
own free traders for the most part are devout followers of the
Manchester School, and take all their teachings and practices with
little discrimination. They are essentially imitative. The anti-corn
law agitators pointed their arguments by exhibiting loaves of bread of
different sizes, and so our free traders, during a campaign, have gone
about in carts and held up pairs of trousers, a more humorous if less
intelligent form of object lesson. They attempt, too, in like fashion,
to give the weight of morality to their doctrines. Unfortunately for
them, inasmuch as everyone likes to be moral at some one's else
expense, their position is untenable. Adam Smith's distinction was a
broad and sound one; and deeply important as political economy and
questions of tariff are, they are in no sense matters of morals. They
are purely questions of self-interest, of profit and loss, and can be
decided properly on these grounds alone.

In the second place, the assumption made tacitly, at least, if not
avowedly, that political economy is an exact science is wholly
misleading. Political economy covers a wide range of subjects of which
the tariff is only one; but in none of its branches is it an exact
scienc