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PROTECTIONIST VICTORIES-FREE TRADE SUCCESSES 187
more indifferent to legislative bolstering, the public will
become more and more indifferent to the Protective
controversy."
All this, I believe you will agree with me, is most
interesting. Protection is played out in the United
States, because the economic conditions are now such
that there is nothing substantially to protect.
Some Protectionists will perhaps say that this is the
result of their policy, America having got its manufac-
tures by means of Protection in the past-a proposition
in which I cannot follow them. But, whatever the past
history may have been, the present position is clear.
The United States nolens volens must very soon become
a country of international Free Trade.

The Facts on the Side of Free Trade.
To sum up, then, you have the actual facts on the
side of Free Trade, not only of the great success of
Free-Trade policy, first in the conversion of the British
Empire and next of a very general extension of its
. policy by means of the Cobden Treaties, but you have
on the same side the consolidation of States and the
growth of great communities each with internal Free
Trade; you have also the constant tendency of science
to cheapen the cost of production and means of com-
munication; and you have, finally, the growth-of con-
ditions in the most important countries of the world
such as heralded complete Free Trade in this country
itself, causes which must produce the like results.
The old order is changing rapidly, and Protectionist
commercial policy is fast dying, if it is not as good as
dead.
The average man and politician, therefore, who talk
glibly of their Protectionist policy, are the Rip van
\Vinkles of the modern world. The world is moving
on in spite of them, and their petty interferences are
too ridiculous for serious discussion. Is it possible to
suppose that the people who propose l\I'Kinley tariffs