We can acknowledge the historical basis of the author’s reason- 
ing, and we can further concede, as the facts testify, that during 
the last 400-500 years England, especially, has done a great deal to 
protect its industry and crafts, although we need not necessarily 
agree with the system of protective tariffs. England’s example is its 
own refutation because it is precisely in England that the perni- 
cious results come into prominence of a system which is no longer 
the system of our time, however much it might have corresponded 
to medieval conditions, based on division and not on unity, which, 
in the absense of general protection, a rational state and a rational 
system of individual states, had to provide special protection for 
each particular sphere. Trade and industry ought to be protected, 
but the debatable point is precisely whether protective tariffs do in 
reality protect trade and industry. We regard such a system much 
more as the organisation of a state of war in time of peace, a state of 
war which, aimed in the first place against foreign countries, 
necessarily turns in its implementation against the country which 
organises it. But in any case an individual country, however much 
it may recognise the principle of free trade, is dependent on the 
state of the world in general, and therefore the question can be 
decided only by a congress of nations, and not by an individual 
government. 

The editorial board of the Rheinische Zeitung