Preface.

The following pages mostly form part of, and are, for the purpose of separate and early publication, borrowed from, a larger work on which I have been for some time engaged. That work embraces a somewhat wide range of topics, of which Free Trade only forms one. But as the larger work may not be completed for some months, and as it has been deemed advisable not farther to delay the issue of that portion of it which is here given under the title of "Pleas for Protection Examined," I am content that it should be so. I, however, hereby reserve to myself the right of re-incorporating into my larger work the whole or part of the present pages, as their subject-matter is essential to its entirety, and forms a necessary, though subordinate, part of its plan.