Overview

This is undoubtedly the most scientific volume which has yet come under our notice of the series to which it belongs. Professor Bastable's previous writings on the subject of international trade form a guarantee for sound and careful reasoning, which is fulfilled in the little book before us. He has, if we may say so, made a department of economics, which is, perhaps, the most intricate and perplexing within the range of the science, in a certain sense his own; and yet he has also in this book, as it appears to us, been singularly successful in combining fullness of knowledge and profundity of thought with lucid and interesting explanation of practical fact. It is a strange coincidence that, in England at any rate, perhaps the greatest success of economics in the domain of practice has been achieved in the department-so difficult in theory-of international trade; but the success was won by the help of the inevitable logic of stubborn fact rather than by the assistance of the nice refinements of theory; and the persistency with which protectionist fallacies linger among us, and still continue to captivate even able intellects, is one indication of a failure to grasp the essential elements of the economic theory of international trade. In discussing, then, the subject of the ' commerce of nations, ' Professor Bastable is dealing with what is still a ' question of to-day, ' and will, we imagine, for some time continue to be so, although the tendency of thought and of practice may really incline in the hopeful direction indicated by him in his last chapter. He has endeavored throughout his treatment of this burning social question to be both scientific and popular, and to combine an account of facts with a statement of theory. He, therefore, begins by giving a brief review of the theory of international trade, and by examining the part played in it by money. This naturally leads to a temperate account of the mercantile system, and its later development into protection. The English customs system from 1815 to 1860, and the tariff system, so contrary in its methods and tendencies, of the United States, are then reviewed. The reform of continental tariffs from 1816 to 1865, and the recent protectionist reaction, which has succeeded to the marked and general inclination in the direction of greater commercial liberty, which followed on the adoption of free trade by England, are considered in the following chapters, and the similar recent tendencies of colonial tariffs next receive attention. Professor Bastable then passes back from the region of fact to the sphere of theory, and supplies a fair but destructive account of the modern protectionist theory. He presents and criticises successively the chief economic arguments advanced in its favour, and then proceeds to review the non-economic arguments, which are based on social or political grounds. This is followed by a criticism of the other expedients of the system besides import duties, such as bounties or export duties, and by an account of the practical complications and jobbery and smuggling to which protection seems inevitably to lead; and then two concluding chapters are devoted to the more modern proposals for reciprocity or retaliation and for commercial federation. Within the necessarily confined limits of a convenient handbook Professor Bastable has thus managed to compress what would otherwise have to be sought through many volumes of no inconsiderable size; and this is, we think, especially apparent in his chapter on the arguments put forward on behalf of protection. The same chapter reveals most manifestly another quality, which characterises the whole book, and that is the candour with which Professor Bastable endeavours to set in its most favourable light an argument, which he has nevertheless little difficulty in proving untenable.... - The Economic Journal, Vol. 2 [1892]

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