Show THE PASSING OF fe rree trade Ile ginning to he lie repudiated even by lnell abden on once ce confidently y predicted that within fifty yeara years tho the whole ald world would have adopted free trade it is perhaps the most notable example ot the sorry havoc time invariably has brought Mr ought with the theories of the manchester school of economists those fitly yeara years are now nearing completion from the very day of cobbens Cob dens attempt at prophecy the march of events has in tho the 0 opposite ito direction ik lua i now w all but certa ili at when the halfden half cen tuy ury shall bo be completed not a single ver igo of can be discovered discover edin in the fiscal policy of any country on the globe F for or several years it has been evident hat that the faith of english statesmen and economists in the system of cobden was growing weaker some time ago we called attention to a paper read by professor alfred marshall of cambridge university before the british association in which lie attacked the theories of the earlier economists of cobbens Cob dens time and asserted that they were being abandoned now by leading economic thinkers ho lie further stated that the conditions on which english free trade was based were exceptional some being transitional and others even at the time peculiar to england lie attributed the breakdown of free trade theories to their implicit assumption that whatever was true as regards england was universally true and says say 11 that if they referred at all to any of the points of difference between england and other countries it was only to put them impartially aside without a real answer to the arguments based on them and any En englishman gishman who attempted to point out that there was gome some force in some of the arguments which were addressed in favor of protection in other countries was denounced as unpatriotic it is now nearly two years since professor marshall thus directed attention to the growing revulsion from free trade in great britain and during that time anti sentiments have made remarkable progress among the english people so great lias has this progress be been c n that the abandonment of free trade by england can no longer be considered as outside ther pale of practical politics we havo been induced to recur to this subject again by a cable dispatch from london to the free trade new york herald of may 1 over the signature A Mem member berof of parliament it announces es that english free traders are ba badly d ly frightened over the daily increasing possibility lity of the adoption by the united kingdom of a system of differential duties in favor of british colonies as against the rest of the world which adoption would be nothing more nor less than a blow to free trade in the country of its birth and its complete effacement efla cement from the statute books of nations thus for the first time in the words of the dispatch the great grea t system of 1846 i e free trade begins to totter to its very base it is sad news for the forlorn army of american |