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PROTECTIONIST VICTORIES-FREE TRADE SUCCESSES 183
tries of the world Free-Trading in time, whatever
their theories of policy may be. Free Trade in England
has, in any case, come to stay.
(2) The next great Free-Trading measure, the Cob-
den Treaty of 1860, has never been really reversed.
There is much talk as if it had been. We have heard
a great deal of the revival of Protection in France and
elsewhere. I believe. also, that the policy of com-
mercial treaties is antiqu~ted. But practically the tariffs
of the leading countries of the world still show the
marks of the Great Revolution of 1860. They have
not gone back to the astonishing perversities and
absurdities of the pre-Cobden period.
(3) The great growth of large communities in ring
fences, which are of more or less recent establishment,
has itself been a continuous triumph of Free Trade
during a century or more. Little more than a century
ago Europe outside Russia was carved into almost
innumerable States, while within the boundaries of
countries like France and the United Kingdom. more
or less united, there was more than one Customs line.
At the same time, there was no Indian Empire; Russia
was comparatively a small State; and the United States
were only just beginning to be.
Look at the changes that have been made. The
Customs lines inside France were abolished with the
Revolution. Inside the United Kingdom they came
to an end early in the century. Instead of the in-
numerable German States, a Zollverein was created in
1857, followed by the creation of the German Empire
in 1871. Instead of the many Italian States. a united
Italy was formed in 1862. Instead of a small Russia,
we have an enormous empire in population as well as
area within a ring fence, while the closer political union
established with Poland and other dependent States
has also diminished Customs barriers in that empire.
Looking further afield. we find an Indian Empire
also created; and last of all, but certainly not least, we
have the United States, created by its Constitution a