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RECENT RATE OF MATERIAL PROGRESS IN ENGLAND I 13
movement on the Continent seems again to have been
in the direction of higher tariffs. France, Italy, Austria,
Germany, and Russia have all shown protectionist lean-
ings of a more or less pronounced kind. Some of our
colonies, especially Canada, have moved in the same
direction. But, on the whole, these causes as yet have
been too newly in operation to affect our industry on a
large scale. As a matter of fact, with one exception to
be llresently noticed, the period from 1860 to 1880
was one in which the effect of the operation of foreign
Governments in regard to their tariffs could not be to
stimulate additional competition of an injurious kind
with us in the way above described. but to take away,
if anything, from the stimulus previously given. The
changes quite lately brought into operation, if big
enough, and if really having the effects supposed,
might stimulate foreign competition in the way de-
scribed in the period now commencing; but, as an
explanation of the past facts, it is impossible to urge
that foreign competition had recently been more stimu-
lated by additions to tariffs than before, and that in
consequence of this stimulus our own rate of advance
had been checked.
The one exception to notice is the United States.
Immediately after 1860 the civil war in that country
broke out, and that war brought with it the adoption of
a very high tariff. Curiously enough,. however, that
tariff operated most against us in the very years-
that is, the years before 187S-in which our rate of
advance was greater to all appearance than it has lately
been. In 1883 there was a great revision of the tariff,
having for its general result a slight lowering, and not
an enhancement of the tariff, and it is with this reduc-
tion-that is, with a diminution of the alleged adverse
stimulus-that the diminution in our own rate of ad-
vance has occurred.
Of course the explanation may be that, although
Governments have not themselves been active till quite
lately in adding to their tariffs, yet circumstances have
II. I