Page 168 - clra62_0019-(GIPE)

160 ECONOMIC INQUIRIES AND STUDIES
cupied, the practical look of the remark would have
been entirely different from what it is. If Mill, in com-
menting on it, had introduced the question of quantity
and degree of effect, his assent would probably have
been much less appreciated by Protectionists than it
has been.
The question will naturally arise-How about new
countries, or countries with a large new area, and larger
populations than we have been dealing with? To this
the answer is, that there is more room in such countries
for promoting manufactures by means of import duties,
or by any other method. There is a larger market, and
if you can give a monopoly to any manufacturer within
the ring fence, you may establish him in such a coun-
try, though you cannot establish manufactures in a' new
country of the ordinary type. There is more possibility
of such Protection in Canada, for instance, than there
is in an Australasian colony; and when the Australasian
colonies are confederated there will be more possibility
of Protection in the united colonies than there is now
in the separate ones. This was, in fact, Mill's answer
to the American Protectionists. They could advance
New England by giving it a monopoly, he pointed
out. But the manufactures so to be set up, it should be
understood with Mill, are not manufactures complying
with the conditions in view. They will not be local
manufactures spread over the new country, but manu-
factures in one or two corners of a large territory, of as
little importance in the economic rcgime of a really
new area as manufactures in a corner of England.
United States Protectionists had thus no excuse at any
time for quoting Mill. To set up manufactures in New
England instead of Old England, thousands of miles
from the new areas, was not setting up manufactures
in the new areas themselves.
It would take me away from the present subject to
discuss whether manufacturing can be promoted to any
good purpose in a country like the United States or
Canada, or like what Australasia is going to be, by