into competition for employment with these foreigners, overbalances the net gain in the aggregate of national wealth.  It is this consideration which has chiefly operated in inducing the United States, Canada, and Australia to prohibit the admission of Chinese or Coolie labour, and to place close restrictions upon cheap European labour.  Sir Charles Dilke, in a general summary of colonial policy on this matter, writes, “Colonial labour seeks protection by legislative means, not only against the cheap labour of the dark-skinned or of the yellow man, but also against white paupers, and against the artificial supply of labour by State-aided white immigration.  Most of the countries of the world, indeed, have laws against the admission of destitute aliens, and the United Kingdom is in practice almost the only exception."[32]

The greater contrast between the customary standard of living of the immigrants and that of the native workers with whom they would compete, has naturally made the question seem a more vital one for our colonies, and for the United States than for us.  There can, however, be little doubt that if a few shiploads of Chinese labourers were emptied into the wharves of East London, whatever Government chanced to be in power would be compelled to adopt immediate measures of restraint on immigration, so terrible would the effect be upon the low class European labourers in our midst.  Whether any such Alien legislation will be adopted to meet the inroad of continental labour depends in large measure on the course of continental history.  It is, however, not improbable that if the organization of the workers proceeds along the present lines, when they come to realize their ability to use political power for securing their industrial position, they may decide that it will be advisable to limit the supply of labour by excluding foreigners.  Those, however, who are already prepared to adopt such a step, do not always realize as clearly as they should, that the exclusion of cheap foreigners from our labour-market will be in all probability accompanied by an exclusion from our markets of the cheap goods made by these foreigners in their own country, the admission of which, while it increases the aggregate wealth of England, inflicts a direct injury on those particular workers, the demand for whose labour is diminished by the introduction of foreign goods which can undersell them.  If an Alien law is passed, it will bring both logically and historically in its wake such protective measures as will constitute a reversal of our present Free Trade policy.  Whether such new and hazardous changes in our national policy are likely to be made, depends in large measure upon the success of other schemes for treating the condition of over-supply of low-skilled labour.  If no relief is found from these, it seems not unlikely that a democratic government will some day decide that such artificial prohibition of foreign labour, and the foreign goods which compete with the goods produced by low-skilled English labour, will benefit the low-skilled workers in their capacity as wage-earners, more than the consequent rise of prices will injure them in their capacity as consumers.