(J4 ENGLISH SAGA

day find herself confronted by "a species of Berlin decrees, more
stringent even than those of Napoleon."

Disraeli therefore pleaded, though in vain, that his country
should hesitate before abandoning the ancient protective and
reciprocal commercial principle under which she had so long
thrived for one of unrestricted imports. Her aim, he argued,
. should not be free trade, whose attainment, however desirable,
must always depend on constantly varying human factors, but
fair trade giving a just and stable reward to the producer. Pro-
tection of native industry in the broadest sense was a permanent
duty of all rulers and should be "avowed, acknowledged and
only limited because . . . protection should be practical . . .
and such as should not allow the energies of the country to
merge and moulder into a spirit of monopoly."

Human nature being what it was, fair trade could only be
achieved through reciprocity. Hostile tariffs could not be fought
as Cobdcit supposed, with free imports. "You cannot have free
trade," Disraeli argued, "unless*the person you deal with is as
liberal as yourself. If I saw a prize-fighter encountering a galley-
slave in irons, I should consider the combat equally as fair as
to make England fight hostile tariffs with free imports."1

Unlike his machine-struck contemporaries, he refused to see
cotton-spinning as the final end of British policy* Agriculture,
the source of man's nourishment, was still the most vital of
national industries. To sacrifice it for the sake of profits,
however vast, was to mortgage the country's future security.
Three years before the repeal of the Corn Laws, Disraeli, then
38, recalled in the House of Commons the words of a Venetian
Doge and merchant prince, "who, looking out from the windows
of his Adriatic palace on the commerce of the world anchored in
the lagoons beneath, exclaimed, * This Venice without terra
firma is an eagle with one wing!' "a

Many of the Corn Law reformers maintained that so far from
injuring British agriculture, free trade would benefit it. By
reducing the price of bread, it would increase the demand for
wheat and so put money even into the pockets of the stupid,
reactionary farmer and landlord. It was a mere protectionist's
bugbear to imagine that native agriculture Would be ruined by
cheap. surplus wheat from abroad since no such surpluses

& Bucklt, /, 53ft
1+th &£., /##,