England tries to impress the advantages of Freetrade on other Countries, because she requires to sell her manufactured goods to them.

England's freetrade policy supplies her with cheap food and raw material, which she makes up into manufactured goods. She must then find a market for them, she cannot buy without selling something in return: she must get back the price she has paid for the raw material, with something for interest on the capital invested in manufactories and cost of labour. A market must be found outside of England, and as long as the countries from which she draws her cheap food and raw material adopt the policy of freetrade they must be the countries who will be her largest customers for manufactured goods, since the price of labour in these new countries will not allow them to compete with the cheap labour of England. Freetrade, therefore, places Colonists who adopt it in the position of ploughmen, agricultural labourers, hewers of wood, and drawers of water, and nothing more, since no industries can be started to compete against those of England, owing to her cheaper labour and capital.

Now this is exactly what has happened. England got large quantities of cheap food and raw material from America and Australia and New Zealand, and sent them back manufactured goods, the profit on the manufacture being retained by herself, and the cost of freight, &c., being paid by America and the Colonies. This system answered very well in the early stages of the growth of the United States and the Colonies. The boundless extent of Canada and the United States, thinly peopled, was exactly suited to produce from a very small amount of labour the food and raw material that England required, when the English duties were repealed. America benefited too as well; she secured a better market for these products: besides the almost boundless territory of America absorbed the superabundant population in the old country, and relieved England of an incubus. England's coal and iron resources became more and more valuable; all things conspired for the good of English commerce, everybody was satisfied, Freetrade was the source, they said, of all good. But after a time the conditions changed. America, when her population increased, adopted a Protective duty as far as manufactures of which she could produce the materials were concerned, and she kept on increasing and increasing her tariff till England was shut out of the market. Other countries followed in the wake of America. They saw that the result of a Protective Tariff in America was to cause the production of these articles at home, and the profit of the manufacture to be spent in the country. Germany followed suit, and there England's market was gone; her colonies were left to her, they were always first-rate customers; what a dreadful outcry was raised when Victoria began to adopt a Protective policy. Yet it was time to do so; in 1885, while the United States of America only bought the manufactures of England to the extent of ten shillings per head of her population, and Canada at the page 10 rate of two pounds per head, Australasia took six pounds worth per head!!! What more telling argument could be used in favour of Protection for us as practised in the United States and Canada?