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422 ECONOMIC INQUIRIES AND STUDmS
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The fifth advantage is of the same kind, though it
requires special mention. This is, that the United
Kingdom is a country of free imports, not merely as
regards raw material, but as regards articles of food<and
manufactured articles of alii kinds. "Free imports"
may not be the same thing as .. free trade," as we are
frequently told; but it is of no small advantage in some
ways to be a " free port." A fr'ee port means abundance
and variety of everything at the lowest market price.
However some individuals may suffer at times, the com-
pensating advantage to the community as a whole, in
which the sufferers participate, is immense, and ought
not to be lightly regarded. In passing, however, I must
say that I for one do not believe that many individuals
have suffered by free imports who did not deserve to
do so by reason of their own indolence and lack of fore-
sight and intelligence.
Finally, we have an immense advantage in the United
Kingdom in the development of our free banking
system, and the bankers' tradition of assisting trade
by advances to manufacturers and tradesmen. Our
banks are full of money which comes to them from all
parts of the earth, and every man who has anything to
attempt in trade, if he has any property of his own, or
can persuade people with property to trust him, may
have ready money lent him by the bank. The tales I
have heard of a different condition of things elsewhere
are simply astonishing to business people in the United
Kingdom, who do not know what it is to go without
money to carryon their business because the banks
themselves have got none to lend. Yet what is un-
known here is frequent in the Far West of the United
States and in all new countries, and is not unknown on
the Continent, ready as Continental banks are to do
financial business with which the prudent trader is noS
concerned.
. These are aU. assets to the good which facilitate
every form of home industry, so that the United King-
dom, if it is not so well placed as other nations for the