capital nor skill has been wanting to insure their success. Indeed, it is chiefly owing to these that competition with their own country has been rendered possible in the Far East. So far from the resources of nations being generally meagre and unsuitable for manufacturing, or their people incapable, as the Manchester School assumed, the success of their manufacturing efforts, generally speaking, has been surprising. Germany has become one of the largest manufacturing countries. France and Switzerland have almost monopolised the silk manufacture in Europe. Russia is engaged in building steel and engineering works under the supervision of the most skilled American constructors; two of these establishments, now well forward, rival the best works of America, after which they are copied. Japan and China are building factories of the latest and most approved character, always with British machinery and generally under British direction. Mexico is weaving cotton cloth, manufacturing paper, and two bicycle factories are now under construction there. The jute and cotton mills of India are numerous and increasing, and Bombay is establishing an Engineering Works. It is stated that one British manufacturing concern sends abroad the complete machinery for a new mill every week. Of America it is unnecessary to speak.

Thus every nation of the first rank, or which has the elements of future rank, has rejected the rôle which the Manchester School assigned it, and aspires to manufacture for itself. Political Economy now points out that it is for the benefit of mankind that the transportation charges incurred by distance between producer and manufacturer should be saved. Attempts to manufacture by some small populations in certain directions will no doubt fail and be abandoned, but success in the main seems assured.

Some lands, notably Germany and America, not content to supply their own wants, now appear as exporters of many competing articles to other countries, several of which reach the United Kingdom, and the experience which the men of other nations have long had of innumerable articles 'made in Britain' is now being brought home to the Briton, and it is found that there is a good deal of human nature in him' not differing from that of other lands. A score of articles made in Germany' cause him irritation; contracts given to American manufacturers for engines in London, Dublin, and Edinburgh are not approved. Glasgow rejects an American bid for water-pipes, and gives it to Glasgow manufacturers at a higher price. When a great show of bicycles takes place in London, no room can be found for the American. Government contracts, even including stationery, must be filled by home-made articles. Although free entrance for importations is not denied, yet when purchases are to be made--no foreigner need apply. The mails must go by slow home-made ships, even if thereby delayed. All this is only what

we should expect and excuse. He is a poor citizen who does not prefer and patronise his own country rather than foreign lands, but the Briton should expect the American, and German, and others to be equally patriotic. With the same feelings with which he regards competing articles 'made in Germany' or America invading his own country, let him realise that the patriotic German and American naturally regard competing articles 'made in Britain' which invade theirs.

To-day it is seen that Nature has distributed more generously than was imagined the indispensable minerals, coal, lime, and ironstone, as it was known before that it had widely distributed the ability to grow raw materials; and that it has endowed the man and woman of most countries with latent ability, sufficient under the new conditions to manufacture their own raw materials, in most cases not so well, in one or two special lines perhaps as well, as the Briton or American, and that hence there is not to be only one or two but many principal manufacturing countries.

The wonderful machinery, mostly of British invention, especially in iron and steel and in textile manufactures, enables the Hindoo of India, the Paeon of Mexico, the negro of America, the Chinaman and the man of Japan, to manufacture with the more carefully educated workman of Britain and America. The mechanical skill of old is not now generally required, but, where necessary for a few positions in each huge factory, is readily obtained from the older manufacturing lands.

Automatic machinery is to be credited as the most potent factor in rendering non-essential to successful manufacturing a mass of educated mechanical labour such as that of Britain or America, and thus making it possible to create manufacturing centres in lands which, until recent years, seemed destined to remain only producers of raw materials. We see everywhere to-day the influence of this new machinery. It can be accepted as an axiom that raw materials have now power to attract capital, and also to attract and develop labour for their manufacture in close proximity, and that skilled labour is losing the power it once had to attract raw materials to it from afar. This is not change; it is revolution.

The ablest and best citizens of every country are inspired to favour the development of its resources. They cannot consider it right to hide the talents given them, and are now enabled to see clearly that the evident law of Nature is that there shall be given to many nations the blessings of diversified industries, in the pursuit of which the various aptitudes and talents of their people shall find scope.

All this the Manchester School could by no possibility have fore

seen.

It is delightful to survey the movement of the nations in the march of industrial progress under the new conditions.

VOL. XLIII-No. 252

Had one or

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two become the chief manufacturers for all, the genius of their people alone would have been enlisted in the work of improvement and invention. To-day we have the genius of many nations already at work, with more to come. It is pleasing also to note how the genius of each tends to excel in a different line. Thus France has almost monopolised the superfine in textiles, as it has long enjoyed supremacy in the department of women's rich apparel. Britain holds supremacy in machinery for textiles. The inventor of the iron and steel industry, she is also leading the world to-day in successfully developing a collateral branch, the by-product coke oven, in which even the American has so far failed. America leads in electrical appliances and machine tools. Germany is supreme in chemical dyes, and has recently invented a condenser for steam which is showing great results, as well as a remarkable new process for the making of armour. The cause of progress in things material is thus advanced by the contributions of many minds of various nationalities.

The stirring competition which has begun among the nations, and which we may expect to see still more strenuously pushed, is the true agency for producing the best results, and is to be welcomed and encouraged by those who can lift themselves above the narrow view of what is seemingly best for any one or two of the geographical divisions of the world, and regard what is best for the race as a whole.

The development of the industrial world is taking a different line from that predicted, but the great work accomplished by the Manchester School is neither to be belittled nor forgotten. Villiers, Cobden, Bright, and their compeers, in the repeal of the taxes upon food imports, did their country a service for which it can never be too grateful. Their devotion to the cause of peace, and to all that tended, as they thought, to create the brotherhood of nations, gives the leaders of the movement a secure place in the history of beneficent deeds, and as advocates of noble ends. That some of their predictions are nullified or reversed by forces which have come into play since their day, neither reflects upon their sagacity nor detracts from their

services.

The 'Free Trade' which Manchester saw, and for which it predicted universal acceptance, was the exchange of different and non-competing articles, and of raw materials for manufactured goods; for nations had not then begun to compete seriously with each other in the same manufactured articles. If this is not to be realised, since the principal nations are to-day becoming manufacturers of their raw material, and supplying their own needs, and competing with each other in the world's market for similar things, yet we may congratulate ourselves that something better even than the Manchester ideal for the progress of the world is rapidly being evolved.

What the effect of this change is to be upon the relative positions of nations in the future it were useless to consider, since conditions

might be transformed in a day; a chemical discovery, an electrical invention, the properties of a plant utilised-any one of such, or of other not improbable surprises upon which we seem to be sometimes on the very threshold, might work an entire change. The substitution of beet for cane sugar has just blighted the West Indies, which seemed to possess almost a monopoly. The discovery of the Mesaba Iron Mines, improved transport, and a few other minor causes have just made America the cheapest manufacturer of steel, while until recently she was the dearest. The basic process has made Germany a leading steel producer, when otherwise she seemed destined to be excluded, and promises to tell scarcely less heavily for Britain. The discovery of mines and the extension of its railway system are soon to make Russia an important manufacturing country, in which she has hitherto failed. The utilisation of waterfalls for electricity, displacing coal, is already changing some centres of manufacture. All these changes are of yesterday.

It is not wise, therefore, for any nation to plume itself unduly upon present resources or prospects, neither for any to despond. 'We know not what a day may bring forth.'

ANDREW CARNEGIE.

SIR JOHN LUBBOCK ON THE 'FINANCIAL RELATIONS COMMISSION"

A REPLY

"THE Report of the Financial Relations Commission, though a very able "document, does not seem to me to be borne out by the evidence."

This first and sweeping statement, made by Sir John Lubbock in this Review for November 1897, gives the tone to the most remarkable parcel of misstatements that has ever been put together on this subject. Sir John Lubbock does not seem to have read the Report of the Royal Commission, and I hope to make this my statement perfectly clear. He says: "They (the Royal Commissioners) were moreover placed in a difficulty by the terms of reference: for my part I "demur to the consideration of separate entities."

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Let me examine the first sentence in the terms of reference to the late Royal Commission. It runs thus: To inquire into the Financial Relations between Great Britain and Ireland and their relative capacity, and to report (1) Upon what principles of comparison, and by the application of what specific standards, the relative capacity of Great Britain and Ireland to bear taxation may be most equitably determined.' No reference could point more distinctly to Great Britain and Ireland being separate entities, or having a separate real existence,' which is the proper definition of the word entity. The whole inquiry is based upon the relative capacity of Great Britain and Ireland to bear taxation.' The reason for and the existence of the commission rested upon this, and if the 'real existence' had to be inquired into, it must be inquired into separately to arrive at the 'relative capacity.'

Sir John Lubbock then says: "Even if we are to consider Ireland "separately, the conclusions arrived at by the majority of the Com"missioners do not seem to me to be borne out by the evidence."

The conclusions arrived at by the majority were that Ireland was overtaxed. Sir John Lubbock pits his statement against the wits, the researches, and the labour of the majority of the Royal Commissioners. I feel strongly inclined to exclaim like the man at the Leeds meeting who, when Mr. A. Balfour addressed them, and in no measured tones, cried out, 'Is Lord Farrer a fool?'