The system of protection would not merely be contrary to theprinciples of cosmopolitical economy, but also to the rightlyunderstood advantage of the nation itself, were it to excludeforeign competition at once and altogether, and thus isolate fromother nations the nation which is thus protected.If themanufacturing power to be protected be still in the first period ofits development, the protective duties must be very moderate, theymust only rise gradually with the increase of the mental andmaterial capital, of the technical abilities and spirit ofenterprise of the nation.Neither is it at all necessary that allbranches of industry should be protected in the same degree.Onlythe most important branches require special protection, for theworking of which much outlay of capital in building and management,much machinery, and therefore much technical knowledge, skill, andexperience, and many workmen are required, and whose productsbelong to the category of the first necessaries of life, andconsequently are of the greatest importance as regards their totalvalue as well as regards national independence (as, for example,cotton, woollen and linen manufactories, &c.).If these mainbranches are suitably protected and developed, all other lessimportant branches of manufacture will rise up around them under aless degree of protection.It will be to the advantage of nationsin which wages are high, and whose population is not yet great inproportion to the extent of their territory, e.g.in the UnitedStates of North America, to give less protection to manufactures inwhich machinery does not play an important part, than to those inwhich machinery does the greater part of the work, providing thatthose nations which supply them with similar goods allow in returnfree importation to their agricultural products.
The popular school betrays an utter misconception of the natureof national economical conditions if it believes that such nationscan promote and further their civilisation, their prosperity, andespecially their social progress, equally well by the exchange ofagricultural products for manufactured goods, as by establishing amanufacturing power of their own.A mere agricultural nation cannever develop to any considerable extent its home and foreigncommerce, its inland means of transport, and its foreignnavigation, increase its population in due proportion to theirwellbeing, or make notable progress in its moral, intellectual,social, and political development: it will never acquire importantpolitical power, or be placed in a position to influence thecultivation and progress of less advanced nations and to formcolonies of its own.A mere agricultural State is an infinitelyless perfect institution than an agricultural manufacturing State.
The former is always more or less economically and politicallydependent on those foreign nations which take from it agriculturalproducts in exchange for manufactured goods.It cannot determinefor itself how much it will produce; it must wait and see how muchothers will buy from it.These latter, on the contrary (theagricultural-manufacturing States), produce for themselves largequantities of raw materials and provisions, and supply merely thedeficiency by importation from the purely agricultural nations.Thepurely agricultural nations are thus in the first place dependentfor their power of effecting sales on the chances of a more or lessplentiful harvest in the agricultural-manufacturing nations; in thenext place they have to compete in these sales with other purelyagricultural nations, whereby their power of sale, in itself veryuncertain, thus becomes still more uncertain.Lastly, they areexposed to the danger of being totally ruined in their trading withforeign manufacturing nations by wars, or new foreign tariffregulations whereby they suffer the double disadvantage of findingno buyers for their surplus agricultural products, and of failingto obtain supplies of the manufactured goods which they require.Anagricultural nation is, as we have already stated, an individualwith one arm, who makes use of a foreign arm, but who cannot makesure of the use of it in all cases; an agricultural-manufacturingnation is an individual who has two arms of his own always at hisdisposal.
It is a fundamental error of the school when it represents thesystem of protection as a mere device of speculative politicianswhich is contrary to nature.History is there to prove thatprotective regulations originated either in the natural efforts ofnations to attain to prosperity, independence, and power, or inconsequence of wars and of the hostile commercial legislation ofpredominating manufacturing nations.
The idea of independence and power originates in the very ideaof 'the nation.' The school never takes this into consideration,because it does not make the economy of the separate nation, butthe economy of society generally, i.e.of the whole human race, theobject of its investigations.If we imagine, for instance, that allnations were united by means of a universal confederation, theirindividual independence and power would cease to be an object ofregard.The security for the independence of every nation would insuch a case rest on the legal provisions of the universal society,just as e.g.the security of the independence of the states ofRhode Island and Delaware lies in the union of all the free statesconstituting the American Union.Since the first foundation of thatUnion it has never yet occurred to any of these smaller states tocare for the enlargement of its own political power, or to considerits independence less secured than is that of the largest states ofthe Union.
