Free trade and its socalled sophisms Author:Edgar Alfred Bowring Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PROTECTION WOULD DESTROY EXTERNAL TRADE.' If this be a sophism, it is one which bears a marvellous resemblance to a truism. To say that Protection, exactly i... more »n proportion as it excludes foreign produce, injures external trade, which is all that Free-Traders can be accused of asserting on the subject, is to state that which it seems somewhat paradoxical to deny. The Barrister, however, does not hesitate to deny it. After remarking upon the extent to which England has flourished under protection, he endeavours to show that England has flourished owing to protection. In the first place, (he says,) with protection and a certain home-market have arisen the means of purchase. Under a strict and jealous system of protection, we have seen the rise of Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, Merthyr, Leeds, Glasgow,Huddersfield, Bradford, Nottingham, Coventry, Leicester. We have seen skill and machinery brought to perfection. Protection has not blunted the invention or superseded the ingenuity of our countrymen. On the contrary, our cottons, and woollens, and hardware, are the best in the world. What England would have been without protection from foreign manufactures, we know not. She might have been what Ireland now is without protection from British manufactures. But it is certain, that with protection the means of purchase have been created and multiplied in a degree so marvellous that it has transcended all anticipation. Had the manufacturing prosperity of England been matter of history, it would have been deemed incredible and fabulous. Our means of purchase are immense and inexhaustible. All we now want is markets; but markets for the support and existence of these means of purchase, as well as for their increase. A sure market created them; insecure and precarious markets will d...« less