And now is there nothing we can do to help forward this great object?
Is it really the case, as the Free Traders contend, that in order to
meet the advances of the other British States and to give, as the
saying is, Preference for Preference, we should be obliged to make
excessive sacrifices, and to place intolerable burdens on the people
of this country? I believe that this is an absolute delusion. I
believe that, if only we could shake off the fetters of a narrow and
pedantic theory, and freely reshape our own system of import duties on
principles of obvious common sense, we should be able at one and the
same time to promote trade within the Empire, to strengthen our hands
in commercial negotiations with foreign countries, and to render tardy
justice to our home industries.

The Free Trader goes on the principle of placing duties on a very few
articles only, articles, generally, of universal consumption, and of
making those duties very high ones. Moreover, with the exception of
alcohol, these articles are all things which we cannot produce
ourselves. I do not say that the system has not some merits. It is
easy to work, and the cost of collection is moderate. But it has also
great defects. The system is inelastic, for the duties being so few
and so heavy it is difficult to raise them in case of emergency
without checking consumption. Moreover, the burden of the duties
falls entirely on the people of this country, for the foreign
importer, except in the case of alcoholic liquors, has no home
producer to compete with, and so he simply adds the whole of the duty
to the price of the article. Last, but not least, the burden is
inequitably distributed. It would be infinitely fairer, as between
different classes of consumers, to put a moderate duty on a large
number of articles than to put an enormous duty on two or three. But