ceivable; but to think that it is better to pay for it than to get it for nothing passes beyond the utmost limits of extravagance.

We are not informed as to the manner in which the new panacea will be brought into action, but we may assume it would be in the following way:-An Act of Parliament will be passed, directing that whenever any duty is put upon any article of English growth, produce, or manufacture by a foreign State, a duty to the same amount shall be payable to her Majesty on similar articles produced by that State.

I may remark in passing that the plan would be quite inapplicable in the case of drawbacks and bounties, so that, after all this sacrifice of principle, the grievance of the sugar refiners would go utterly unredressed. It must also be remembered that we should have all sorts of different tariffs for goods of very similar quality, and frauds would be multiplied upon the earth. Nor, in my judgment, would it be a slight evil that a portion of our revenue should be withdrawn from the control of Parliament, and left intentionally to the mercy of foreign Powers, who virtually control this portion of our taxation. Instead of being the masters of our own affairs we are to allow ourselves to be played upon by our rivals and our enemies. Does history teach us that it is so difficult to blow up the flames of rivalry and discord between competing nations that we must have recourse to an elaborate machinery intended to make a quarrel between friends, and, having made it, to keep it as hot as possible?

I have reserved to the last by far the clearest and most conclusive objection to this proposal, an objection which appears to me so complete and absolute that I am convinced, had it occurred to Mr. Wallace, the article which we are considering would never have been written. The merit claimed by Mr. Wallace for his proposal is that, by neutralising the protectionist policy of others, his mode of action will place us as nearly as possible in the position we should occupy were all to become free-traders. It is evident, he says, that if we simply neutralise every step they take in the direction of protection, foreign countries will have no motive, as far as regards us, for continuing such a system. These are very high pretensions, and entitle their inventor, if he be able to establish them, to a place among the benefactors of mankind. I only regret that he has not furnished us with the reasons which induced him to believe that such a scheme is possible. At present I can only believe that he took it for granted without any examination at all, for the very slightest analysis would have shown him that his machinery is utterly unable to produce any of the results which he confidently anticipates from it.

We are all unhappily familiar with the fact that when one nation, feeling itself unable to compete in the open market with another nation in the production of some article of commerce, puts a

protective duty on that article, it is not unusual for the nation so attacked to select that article of its rival which competes most successfully with its own products to be the victim of a retaliatory duty. Political economy denounces such a proceeding, but no one ever denied that it was a substantive act of retaliation, and really did inflict on the rival State an inconvenience corresponding more or less exactly to the injury received. The assumption of Mr. Wallace obviously is that the effects, whatever they may be, which are produced by imposition of a protective duty on one article or by the imposition of a retaliatory protective duty on another article, will be just as efficiently attained by the imposing of a retaliatory duty on Unless this be so, his whole plan falls absolutely

the same article.
to the ground-

And, like the baseless fabric of a vision,

Leaves not a rack behind.

Let us then consider what is implied by the imposition of a protective duty. It is, in acts which speak more loudly than words, a confession of inferiority. It says: We cannot meet you in the open market, so we will impose a burden upon you which shall crush or at any rate cripple you.' The imposition of such a duty is the result of weakness. It is the attempt of the weak to protect themselves against the strong. If the commodity of the Stater imposing the duty had been superior to the commodity of the State on which the duty is imposed, the imposition of a duty would never have been thought of. These preliminary considerations will enable us to understand the effect which will be produced by the imposition of the proposed countervailing duty. The effect will be absolutely nil. Its only operation can be that of exclusion. But by the hypothesis there cannot possibly be anything to exclude. It is ill taking the breeks of a Highlandman. The State imposing the protective duty has confessed, not in words but by its conduct, that it cannot maintain a contest with its rival in the open market, and all the retaliatory duty of Mr. Wallace does is to exclude it from a trade into which, by the conditions of the problem, it is impossible that it should enter. The weak can injure the strong by protective duties, but it is impossible for the strong to retaliate, because it is impossible to turn people out of places which they can never enter. Protective duties may be a sword in the hands of the weak; they can never be a weapon of offence in the hands of the strong. Thus the whole system of Mr. Wallace resolves itself into accepting the situationthat is, making ourselves ridiculous by pretending to retort when every one knows that we are doing and can do nothing. You may take away in part or altogether what a man has, but omnipotence cannot extract from him what he has not. He that is down can fall no lower, and the exclusion by law of what is already excluded by its admitted inferiority is a mere waste of time and temper.

Let us take an illustration from our own experience. English iron-manufactured articles could compete successfully with American articles of the same kind. To counteract this inferiority America imposes on English iron articles a protective duty sufficient. to exclude them from her market. If we were to put a protective duty on American wheat, we might, at great loss to ourselves, inflict on America a considerable injury. Put on a protective duty on American iron, Mr. Wallace would say. Suppose this to be done, and what will be the result? Simply and solely that the American iron, which could not live in our market before, will not be able to live in it now -in other words, nothing. We should show our teeth, but only to show conclusively that we are unable to bite.

But though the plan of reciprocal protective duties on the same articles of commerce- -if we could suppose that, after the exposure of its futility, it could be for a moment seriously entertained-would be utterly useless, we are not to assume that on that account it would be equally harmless. By imposing duties, not on the same but on other articles in which our rival possesses a superiority, we can at any rate remove the objection that our hostile measures are utterly harmless. We can remedy that by retaliating not upon what our adversary cannot, but what he can, sell to a profit in our country, and thus introducing into our intercourse with civilised and on the whole friendly nations the principle upon which war is founded-the bringing enormous evils on ourselves in the hope of inflicting still greater evils on our rivals. Nothing is more honourable in the history of this country than the patience with which we have endured the exclusion of our manufactures, not only by rival states but by colonies who expect us, in case they are attacked, to contribute our last man and last shilling to their defence. I trust that the complete breakdown of this scheme will not induce its projectors to substitute a mischievous reality for a comparatively harmless absurdity.

Here I close my remarks on Mr. Wallace's proposal. I claim to have shown from his own writings that he has never taken the trouble to consider what protection and free trade really mean; that he has never even alluded to that taxation of the many for the benefit of the few which constitutes the real and intolerable mischief of protection; that his notion of stability logically carries with it the protection of one trade in the same country from the competition of another; and that his retaliating duties would, if we were unwise enough to adopt them, entirely fail to attain the object for which they were designed, certainly cover us with ridicule, and possibly become the fruitful parents of the fiercest rivalry and the bitterest animosity.

ROBERT LOWE.

THE CRITIC ON THE HEARTH.

Ir has often struck me that the relation of two important members of the social body to one another has never been sufficiently considered, or treated of, so far as I know, either by the philosopher or the poet. I allude to that which exists between the omnibus driver and his conductor. Cultivating literature as I do upon a little oatmeal, and driving, when in a position to be driven at all, in that humble vehicle, the 'bus, I have had, perhaps, exceptional opportunities for observing their mutual position and behaviour; and it is very peculiar. When the 'bus is empty, they are sympathetic and friendly to one another, almost to tenderness; but when there is much traffic, a tone of severity is observable upon the side of the conductor. "What are yer a-driving on for? Will nothing suit but to break a party's neck?' 'Wake up, will yer, or do yer want the Bayswater to pass us?' are inquiries he will make in the most peremptory manner. Or he will concentrate contempt in the laconic but withering observation: 'Now then, stoopid!'

When we consider that the driver is after all the driver-that the 'bus is under his guidance and management, and may be said pro tem. to be his own—indeed, in case of collision or other serious extremity, he calls it so: What the infernal regions are yer banging into my 'bus for?' &c. &c.,-I say, this being his exalted position, the injurious language of the man on the step is, to say the least of it, disrespectful.

On the other hand, it is the conductor who fills the 'bus, and even entices into it, by lures and wiles, persons who are not voluntarily going his way at all. It is he who advertises its presence to the passers-by, and spares neither lung nor limb in attracting passengers. If the driver is lord and king, yet the conductor has a good deal to do with the administration: just as the Mikado of Japan, who sits above the thunder and is almost divine, is understood to be assisted and even conducted' by the Tycoon. The connection between those potentates is perhaps the most exact reproduction of that between the 'bus driver and his cad; but even in England there is a pretty close parallel to it in the mutual relation of the author and the professional critic.

While the former is in his spring-time, the analogy is indeed almost complete. For example, however much he may have plagiarised, the book does belong to the author: he calls it, with pardonable pride (and especially if any one runs it down), 'my book.' He has written it, and probably paid pretty handsomely for getting it published. Even the right of translation, if you will look at the bottom of the title-page, is somewhat superfluously reserved to him. Yet nothing can exceed the patronage which he suffers at the hands of the critic, and is compelled to submit to in sullen silence. When the book-trade is slack-that is, in the summer season- -the pair get

6

on together pretty amicably. This book,' says the critic, 'may be taken down to the seaside, and lounged over not unprofitably;' or, 'Readers may do worse than peruse this unpretending little volume of fugitive verse;' or even, We hail this new aspirant for the laurels of Apollo.' But in the thick of the publishing season, and when books pour into the reviewer by the cartful, nothing can exceed the violence, and indeed sometimes the virulence, of his language. That 'Now then, stoopid!' of the 'bus conductor pales beside the lightnings of his scorn.

'Among the lovers of sensation, it is possible that some persons may be found with tastes so utterly vitiated as to derive pleasure from this monstrous production.' I cull these flowers of speech from a wreath placed by a critic of the Slasher on my own early brow. Ye gods, how I hated him! How I pursued him with more than Corsican vengeance; traduced him in public and private; and only when I had thrust my knife (metaphorically) into his detested carcase, discovered I had been attacking the wrong man. It is a lesson I have never forgotten; and I pray you, my younger brothers of the pen, to lay it to heart. Believe rather that your unfriendly critic, like the bee who is fabled to sting and die, has perished after his attempt on your reputation; and let the tomb be his asylum. For even supposing you get the right sow by the ear-or rather, the wild boar with the 'raging tooth '—what can it profit you? It is not like that difference of opinion between yourself and twelve of your fellowcountrymen which may have such fatal results. You are not an Adonis (except in outward form, perhaps), that you can be ripped up with his tusk. His hard words do not break your bones. If they are uncalled for, their cruelty, believe me, can hurt only your vanity. While it is just possible-though indeed in your case in the very highest degree improbable that the gentleman may have been right.

In the good old times we are told that a buffet from the hand of an Edinburgh or Quarterly Reviewer would lay a young author dead at his feet. If it was so, he must have been naturally very deficient in vitality. It certainly did not kill Byron, though it was a knockdown blow; he rose from that combat with earth, like Antæus, all