# Protection or Free Trade (George, Henry George & Co., 1886)/Chapter 5

THE more one considers the theory that every nation ought to "protect" itself against every other nation, the more inconsistent does it seem.
Is there not, in the first place, an obvious absurdity in taking the nation or country as the protective unit and saying that each should have a protective tariff? What is meant by nation or country in the protectionist theory is an independent political division. Thus Great Britain and Ireland are considered one nation, France another, Germany another, Switzerland another, the United States, Canada, Mexico, and each ​of the Central and South American republics are others. But these divisions are arbitrary. They do not coincide with any differences in soil, climate, race or industry—they have no maximum or minimum of area or population. They are, moreover, continually changing. The maps of Europe and America used by school children to-day are very different from the maps their fathers used. The difference a hundred years ago was greater yet; and as we go further back still greater differences appear. According to this theory, when the three British kingdoms had separate governments it was necessary for the well-being of all that they should be protected from each other, and should Ireland achieve independence that necessity would recur; but while the three countries are united under one government, it does not exist. The petty states of which a few years ago Germany and Italy consisted ought upon this theory to have had, as they once had, tariffs between them. Yet, now, upon the same theory, they no longer need these tariffs. Alsace and Lorraine when provinces of France needed to be protected against Germany. Now that they are German provinces they need protection against France. Texas, when part of Mexico, required a protective tariff against the United States. Now, being a part of the United States, it requires a protective tariff against Mexico. We of the United States require a protective tariff against Canada, and the Canadians a tariff against us, but if Canada were to come into the Union the necessity for both of these tariffs would disappear.
Do not these incongruities show that the protective theory is destitute of scientific basis; that instead of originating in any deduction from principles or induc​tion from facts, it has been invented merely to serve the purposes of its inventors? Political changes in nowise alter soil, climate, or industrial needs. If the three British kingdoms do not now need tariffs against one another, they could not have needed them before the union. If it is not injurious to the various states of Italy or Germany to trade freely with each other now, it could not have been injurious before they were united. If Alsace and Lorraine are benefited by free trade with Germany now, they would have been benefited by it when French provinces. If the people of the opposite shores of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River would not be injured by the free exchange of their products should Canada enter the American Union, they could not be injured by freedom to exchange their products now.
Consider how inconsistent with the protective theory is the free trade that prevails between the states of the American Union. Our Union includes an area almost as large as Europe, yet the protectionists who hold that each European country ought to protect itself against all the rest make no objections to the free trade that exists between the American states, though some of these states are larger than European kingdoms, and the differences between them, as to natural resources and industrial development, are at least as great. If it is for the benefit of Germany and France that they should be separated by protective tariffs, does not New Jersey need the protection of a tariff from New York and Pennsylvania? and do not New York and Pennsylvania also need to be protected from New Jersey? And if New England needs protection against the Province of Quebec, and Ohio, Illinois and Michigan ​Page:Protection or Free Trade (George, Henry George & Co., 1886).djvu/57 ​Page:Protection or Free Trade (George, Henry George & Co., 1886).djvu/58 ​Page:Protection or Free Trade (George, Henry George & Co., 1886).djvu/59 ​Page:Protection or Free Trade (George, Henry George & Co., 1886).djvu/60 ​Page:Protection or Free Trade (George, Henry George & Co., 1886).djvu/61 ​Page:Protection or Free Trade (George, Henry George & Co., 1886).djvu/62