d give him an
advantage in warlike enterprise. They are kept up essentially for the
same eventual end of preparation for war. So, e.g., protective tariffs,
and the like discrimination in shipping, are still advocated as a means
of making the nation self-supporting, self-contained, self-sufficient;
with a view to readiness in the event of hostilities.

A nation is in no degree better off in time of peace for being
self-sufficient. In point of patent fact no nation can be industrially
self-sufficient except at the cost of foregoing some of the economic
advantages of that specialisation of industry which the modern state of
the industrial arts enforces. In time of peace there is no benefit
comes to the community at large from such restraint of trade with the
outside world, or to any class or section of the community except those
commercial concerns that are favored by the discrimination; and these
invariably gain their special advantage at the cost of their
compatriots. Discrimination in trade--export, import or shipping--has no
more beneficial effect when carried out publicly by the national
authorities than when effected surreptitiously and illegally by a
private conspiracy in restraint of trade within a group of interested
business concerns.

Hitherto the common man has found it difficult to divest himself of an
habitual delusion on this head, handed down out of the past and
inculcated by interested politicians, to the effect that in some
mysterious way he stands to gain by limiting his own opportunities. But
the neutralisation of international trade, or the abrogation of all
discrimination in trade, is the beginning of wisdom as touches the
perpetuation of peace. The first effect of such a neutral policy would
be wider and more intricately interlocking trade relations, coupled with
a further specialisation and mutual dependence of industry between the
several countries concerned; which would mean, in terms of international
comity, a lessened readiness for warlike operations all around.

It used to be an argument of the free-traders that the growth of
international commercial relations under a free-trade policy would
greatly conduce to a spirit of mutual understanding and forbearance
between the nations. There may or may not be something appreciable in
the contention; it has been doubted, and there is no considerable
evidence to be had in support of it. But what is more to the point is
the tangible fact that such spe