tion; a population, too, be it remembered, not of Asiatics, not of half-civilised and half-clothed people, but of like habits and of similar civilisation to our own, inhabiting also countries easily accessible to our ships, and consequently in every respect in a condition the most favourable to the trade of this country, and doubtless requiring many of its productions.

Free schools, free churches, free land may be wanted; but above all, free importation is wanted. Labour is not free so long as the fruit of labour is not. It is not enough that the farmer should be at liberty to grow what he likes, or the handicraftsman to make what he likes; they should be free to procure, in exchange for what they have produced, the utmost of all other things that they want. "Surely," as Mrs. Somerville once said, “as much food as a man can buy with as much wages as a man can get, for as much work as a man can do, is not more than the natural, inalienable birthright of every man whom God has created with strength to labour and with hands to work."

Sir Robert Peel, Cobden, and others have stated, over and over again, that if the principle of Free Trade be good for corn it is good for everything else; and Cobden added that, if any one have doubts as to

whether indirect taxes obstruct commerce, impede manufactures, and check the production of wealth, he ought to compare the progress of a free port like Hamburg with a Custom House bound place like Havre. What does England now fear from bad harvests? She knows she may suffer from them, but she knows also she can bear the trial. The misery of the Corn Laws can never be repeated. We know that when we have bad harvests at home we can rely upon corn from distant regions whose very whereabouts as cornfields were never dreamed of during the time the Corn Laws were in existence, and would never have been thought of but for the stimulus to trade which the repeal of those laws gave. This is how it is with corn. England is becoming the corn mart of the world; she might be the same for sugar, and indeed, from her central position,* for all the commodities produced in every country on the face of the earth.

Gentlemen, although I have not mentioned the higher and nobler, the deeper and wider mission of Free Trade, I have not forgotten it. There is no

"It is a fact," wrote Sir John Herschel, "not a little interesting to Englishmen, and, combined with our insular station in that great highway of nations, the Atlantic, not a little explanatory of our commercial eminence, that London occupies nearly the centre of the terrestrial hemisphere."

country now entirely independent of all others for everything it requires. Cosmopolitanism is day by day becoming a fact. Cobden said, "Free Trade is the International Law of the Almighty," and he spoke truly. He never spoke falsely. Why, then, not recognise the truth? Why encourage anomalies? To unite nations, on the one hand, with railways, telegraphs, and the general shortening of distances, and to separate them, on the other, by the establishment of artificial barriers, are two sorts of incompatible things, of which one ought and must necessarily destroy the other.

In the earliest stage of society, robbery and plunder were more honourable than labour-commerce was unknown. In the dark ages, nations only came into contact with each other sword in hand amid the din of war. Then it was thought that the prosperity of a nation depended upon the subjection in which it could keep its neighbours. Commerce is fast making all this obsolete. The "Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the sea doctrine is giving place to the fraternal strife of industry. As Mr. Gladstone says, "It is not that one country extorts from another that which another reluctantly yields as the dictate of an imperious necessity; but that each freely and intelligently gives to each that which each can best afford, and for which it

receives in return far more than the value." The removal of all obstructions to this intercourse would tend to the annihilation of national jealousies, prejudices, misunderstandings, and the other causes which have often led to actual warfare. No one can consider the various products of different climes without seeing that fair exchanges, to the benefit of all, may be made between the frigid North and the luxurious South, the wide prairies of the West and the looms of the East. No one can fail to see an identity of interests all over the world. However much the various nations of the earth may differ in manners and customs, however widely they may be separated in religion, whatever may be their language or their colour, there is one bondFree Trade, unshackled industry—that binds them together with the golden clasps of brotherhood, and spreads from zone to zone, and from pole to pole, that goodwill among men which is the safest, the surest, and the best way of securing peace upon earth.

V.

THE NATIONAL EXPENDITURE.

In approaching the question of National Expenditure, a strong objection is met with at the very outset. It is said that it is impossible justly to criticise proposed reductions without a departmental knowledge of the offices to which those reductions refer; that no man is competent to speak of a less expenditure on our defensive forces without an intimate acquaintance with the innermost workings of the Admiralty, the Horse Guards, and the War Office; that we ought not to advocate the reduction of Ambassadors' salaries without having held the post of Foreign Secretary; nor object to the sinecural office of the Lord Privy Seal, unless we have been fortunate enough to have had a seat in the Cabinet.

There is considerable force in this objection. No man can fathom the workings of all the departments of the State, and no man is therefore competent to point out the exact places where reductions may be made. But, on the other hand, certain things come to light