SECTION VII.. How Long Is Protection Justifiable?

HOW LONG IS PROTECTION JUSTIFIABLE?

All rational education keeps in view as its object, the subsequent independence of the pupil. If it desired to continue its guardianship, the payment of fees, etc., until an advanced age, it would thereby demonstrate either the pupil's want of capacity or the absurdity of its methods. The industrial protective system also can be justified as an educational measure only on the assumption that it may be gradually dispensed with; that is, that, by its means, there may be a prospect of attaining to freedom of trade.[A3-7-1] In the case of all highly civilized nations, the presumption is in favor of freedom of trade, both at home and abroad, and in such nations, the desire for a protective system must be looked upon as a symptom of disease.[A3-7-2] [A3-7-3] It is true, that recently the inferiority of young countries, even when inhabited by a very active and highly educated people, is greatly enhanced by the improvement of the means of communication. But this is richly compensated for by the simultaneous instinct towards emigration, both of capital and workmen from over-full, highly industrial countries; whereas, the prohibitions by the state, that extreme of exportation embargoes, formerly so frequently resorted to, it is no longer possible to carry out.[A3-7-4] [A3-7-5] Now the young country has the advantage of being able immediately to use the newest processes of labor, etc., without being hindered by the existence there of earlier imperfect apparatus. It is certain that international freedom of trade must be of advantage to a people's nationality the moment they have attained to the maturity of manhood, for the reason that they are thereby forced to make the most of that which is peculiar to them. Care must be taken not to confound many-sidedness with all-sidedness.[A3-7-6] The best "protection of national labor" might consist in this, that all products should be really individually characteristic (artistic), all individuals really national, and national also in their tastes as consumers. This ideal has been pretty closely approximated to by the French in respect to fashionable commodities, so that they will hardly purchase such from abroad, even without a protective tariff; and the cultured of most nations in respect to works of art. Here, too, it is worth considering, that even the most national of poets, when they are great enough to rise to the height of the universally human, possess the greatest universality.[A3-7-7]

Thus, for instance, the prohibition of foreign cloths in Florence begins in 1393, that is, at a time when the protected industry had long been developed, so that its products were exported on a great scale, but when it began to fear the young, vigorous, competition of the Flemings.]