e of Free Trade and the
importance of putting an end to the "export of horses worn-out in work
for Englishmen--save the mark! Export that for a few pieces of
blood-money delivers up old and faithful servants to wretchedness." In
so far as the export of horses leads to cruelty and wretchedness I
agree with Mr Galsworthy that it ought to be stopped. Not because the
horses are "worn out in work for Englishmen," not because they are
"old and faithful servants"--that is mere sentimentalising and
rhetoric--but because they are living creatures which ought not to be
subjected to any pain that is not necessary. On the other hand, is not
Mr Galsworthy rather unimaginative in failing to see that Tariff
Reform might conceivably lead in present circumstances to intense pain
and distress in every town and county in England? The imposition or
non-imposition of a tariff may seem, at a superficial glance, to
belong to the mere pedantry of politics. But consider the human
consequences of such a thing. Every penny taken out of the pockets of
the poor owing to an increase in the price of goods means the
disappearance of a potential pennyworth of food from the poor man's
home. Obviously, in a country where hundreds of thousands of people
are living on the edge of starvation--and over it--even a slight rise
in the cost of things might produce the most calamitous results.
Starvation and disease and the anguish of those who have to watch
their children suffer, an increase in crime and insanity and
wretchedness--these are all quite conceivable results of a sudden
change in the poor man's capacity to buy the necessaries of life. That
is the humane Free Trader's case for Free Trade. The humane Tariff
Reformer's case for Tariff Reform, on the other hand, is that a change
in the fiscal system would increase wages and employment and quickly
put an end to the present abominations of starvation, sweating, and
unemployment. I am not concerned for the moment with the comparative
merits of Free Trade and Tariff Reform. I am concerned merely with
pointing out that Mr Galsworthy's theory that such a thing as the
export of worn-out horses causes "more suffering to innocent and
helpless creatures" than would be caused by an error in fiscal policy,
affecting millions of men and women and children, does not bear a
moment's examination.

Take, again, Mr Galsworthy's comparison of the case of the Home Rule
Bill with the case of the caging of wild song-birds. I