Gladstone (William Ewart)

Autograph manuscript signed ('WEGladstone'), being an early working draft of the article on the subject of 'Free Trade' published on "North America Review", no. 150, January 1890. The manuscript contains numerous insertions and pasted additions and reads in part "The existing difference of practice between America and Britain with respect to Free trade and Protection of necessity gives rise to a kind of international controversy on their respective merits. To interfere from across the water in such a controversy is an act which may wear the appearance of impertinence. It is prima facie an intrusion by a citizen of one country into the domestic affair of another...An American gentleman, Mr N. McKay of New York, took, according to the proverb, the bull by the horns. He visited Great Britain, made what he considered to be an inspection of the employments, wages and condition of the people, and reported the result to his countrymen, while they were warm with the animation of the national contest, under the doleful titles of “Free Trade Toilers” and “Starvation wages for men and women”. He was good enough to forward to me a copy of his most interesting tract and he did me the further honour to address to me a letter covering the pamphlet. He challenged an expression of opinion on the results of free trade in England and on “the relative value of Free Trade and Protection to English-speaking people…It would have been impertinent in me, and on other grounds impolite, to accept his invitation while the Presidential contest was yet pending. But all the agencies in that great election have now done their work, and protection has obtained her victory. But she the loveliest and most fruitful mother of the wealth of nations…must take her chance in the arena of discussion as a common contestant, entitled to free speech and fair treatment, but to nothing more. The appeal of the champion, whose call has brought me into the field, is very properly made to the wage-earners of the United States. He exhibits the deplorable condition of the British working-man, and asks whether our commercial supremacy is not upheld at his expense. The constant tenor of the argument is this: high wages by Protection, low wages by Free Trade…How can the capitalist engaged in manufacture compete with his British rival who obtain labour at half the price?...Like a phonograph of Mr Edison, the American Protectionist repeats on his side of the Atlantic what has been first and often, and long ago said on ours. But our experience has proceeded a stage further than that of the American people…The true question is whether protection offers us the way to the maximum of attainable wages…I think that in international transactions the British nation for the present enjoys commercial primacy; that no country in the world shows any capacity to wrest if from us, except for America; that if America shall frankly adopt and maintain a system of Free Trade, she will by degrees outstrip us in the race, and will probably take the place which at present belongs to us", 28 pages, with some amendments pasted onto pages, some handling wear, folding marks, v.s. but mostly 4to, n.p.,[1889]