[Footnote 60:  Life of Cobden, Morley, vol. i. p. 231.]

[Footnote 61:  Sir Robert Peel, as is well known, did not fall into this error, and even Mr. Cobden appears to have recognised so early as 1849 that his original forecasts on this point were too optimistic.  Speaking on January 10, 1849, he said:  “At the last stage of the Anti-Corn Law Agitation, our opponents were driven to this position:  ’Free Trade is a very good thing, but you cannot have it until other countries adopt it too.’  And I used to say:  ’If Free Trade be a good thing for us, we will have it; let others take it if it be a good thing for them; if not, let them do without it.’”]

[Footnote 62:  Hirst, Life of Friedrich List, p. 134.]

[Footnote 63:  Essay on the Influence of Commerce on International Conflicts; F. Greenwood, Ency.  Brit. (Tenth Edition).]

[Footnote 64:  In connection with this branch of the question, I wish to draw attention to the fact that Professor Shield Nicholson, in his recent brilliant work, A Project of Empire, has conclusively shown that it is a misapprehension to suppose that Adam Smith, in advocating Free Trade, looked merely to the interests of the consumer, and neglected altogether those of the producer.  Mr. Gladstone’s statement on this subject, made in 1860, is well known.]

[Footnote 65:  Reports on the Tariff wars between certain European States, Parliamentary paper, Commercial, No. 1 (1904), p. 46.]

VI

CHINA

"The Nineteenth Century and After,” May 1913

Mr. Bland’s book, entitled Recent Events and Present Policies in China (1912), is full of instruction not only for those who are specially concerned in the affairs of China, but also for all who are interested in watching the new developments which are constantly arising from the ever-increasing contact between the East and the West.

The Eastern world is at present strewn with the debris of paper constitutions, which are, or are probably about to become, derelict.  The case of Egypt is somewhat special, and would require separate treatment.  But in Turkey, in Persia, and in China, the epidemic, which is of an exotic character, appears to be following its normal course.

Constitutions when first promulgated are received with wild enthusiasm.  In Italy, during the most frenzied period of Garibaldian worship, my old friend, Lear the artist, asked a patriotic inn-keeper, who was in a wild state of excitement, to give him breakfast, to which the man replied:  “Colazione!  Che colazione!  Tutto e amore e liberta!” In the Albanian village in which Miss Durham was residing when the Young Turks proclaimed their constitution, the Moslem inhabitants expressed great delight at the news, and forthwith asked when the massacre of the Giaours—­without which a constitution would wholly miss its mark—­was to begin.[66] Similarly, Mr. Bland says that throughout China, although “the word ‘Republic’ meant no more to the people at large than the blessed word ‘Mesopotamia,’ men embraced each other publicly and wept for joy at the coming of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.”