. Even misgivings about Lancashire may fail to deter
the tariffist rump.

Some of the people who even yet understand nothing of Free Trade
economics are still found to argue that, if only the duty on imported
gloves is put high enough, sufficient gloves will be made at home to
absorb all the yarns now exported to German glove-makers. They are still
blind, that is to say, to the elementary fact that since Germany
manufactures for a much larger glove-market than the English, the
exclusion of the German gloves means the probable loss to the
yarn-makers of a much larger market than England can possibly offer,
even if we make all our own gloves. In a word, instead of having to
furnish new Free Trade arguments to meet a new situation, we find
ourselves called upon to propound once more the fundamental truths of
Free Trade, which are still so imperfectly assimilated by the nation.

So far as I can gather, the circumstances alleged to constitute a new
problem are these; the need to protect special industries for war
purposes; and the need to make temporary fiscal provision against
industrial fluctuation set up by variations in the international money
exchanges. Obviously, the first of these pleas has already gone by the
board, as regards any comprehensive fiscal action. One of the greatest
of all war industries is the production of food; and during the war some
supposed that after it was over, there could be secured a general
agreement to protect British agriculture to the point at which it could
be relied on to produce at least a war ration on which the nation could
subsist without imports. That dream has already been abandoned by
practical politicians, if any of them ever entertained it. The effective
protection of agriculture on that scale has been dismissed as
impossible; and we rely on foreign imports as before. Whatever may be
said as to the need of subsidising special industries for the production
of certain war material is nothing further to the fiscal purpose,
whether the alleged need be real or not. The production of war material
is a matter of military policy on all fours with the maintenance of
Government dockyards, and does not enter into the fiscal problem
properly so called. But to the special case of dyes, considered as a
"key" or "pivotal" industry, I will return later.

How then stands the argument from the fluctuations of the exchanges? If
that argument be valid further than to prove that _all_ monetary
fl