The popular school has assumed as being actually in existencea state of things which has yet to come into existence.It assumesthe existence of a universal union and a state of perpetual peace,and deduces therefrom the great benefits of free trade.In thismanner it confounds effects with causes.Among the provinces andstates which are already politically united, there exists a stateof perpetual peace; from this political union originates theircommercial union, and it is in consequence of the perpetual peacethus maintained that the commercial union has become so beneficialto them.All examples which history can show are those in which thepolitical union has led the way, and the commercial union hasfollowed.(3*) Not a single instance can be adduced in which thelatter has taken the lead, and the former has grown up from it.
That, however, under the existing conditions of the world, theresult of general free trade would not be a universal republic,but, on the contrary, a universal subjection of the less advancednations to the supremacy of the predominant manufacturing,commercial, and naval power, is a conclusion for which the reasonsare very strong and, according to our views, irrefragable.Auniversal republic (in the sense of Henry IV and of the Abb?St.
Pierre), i.e.a union of the nations of the earth whereby theyrecognize the same conditions of right among themselves andrenounce self-redress, can only be realised if a large number ofnationalities attain to as nearly the same degree as possible ofindustry and civilisation, political cultivation, and power.Onlywith the gradual formation of this union can free trade bedeveloped, only as a result of this union can it confer on allnations the same great advantages which are now experienced bythose provinces and states which are politically united.The systemof protection, inasmuch as it forms the only means of placing thosenations which are far behind in civilisation on equal terms withthe one predominating nation (which, however, never received at thehands of Nature a perpetual right to a monopoly of manufacture, butwhich merely gained an advance over others in point of time), thesystem of protection regarded from this point of view appears to bethe most efficient means of furthering the final union of nations,and hence also of promoting true freedom of trade.And nationaleconomy appears from this point of view to be that science which,correctly appreciating the existing interests and the individualcircumstances of nations, teaches how every separate nation can beraised to that stage of industrial development in which union withother nations equally well developed, and consequently freedom oftrade, can become possible and useful to it.
The popular school, however, has mixed up both doctrines withone another; it has fallen into the grave error of judging of theconditions of nations according to purely cosmopoliticalprinciples, and of ignoring from merely political reasons thecosmopolitical tendency of the productive powers.
Only by ignoring the cosmopolitical tendency of the productivepowers could Malthus be led into the error of desiring to restrictthe increase of population, or Chalmers and Torrens maintain morerecently the strange idea that augmentation of capital andunrestricted production are evils the restriction of which thewelfare of the community imperatively demands, or Sismondi declarethat manufactures are things injurious to the community.Theirtheory in this case resembles Saturn, who devours his own children-- the same theory which allows that from the increase ofpopulation, of capital and machinery division of labour takesplace, and explains from this the welfare of society, finallyconsiders these forces as monsters which threaten the prosperity ofnations, because it merely regards the present conditions ofindividual nations, and does not take into consideration theconditions of the whole globe and the future progress of mankind.