patience amounting almost to apathy, quietly looked on, while every year the great lead in the commerce of the world, which we acquired under Protection, has been gradually and surely encroached upon under our system of free imports. We have seen our traders driven from market after market. We have seen the United States, Germany, and our Colonies of Canada, Australia, and Newfoundland, so far from adhering to a policy of Free Trade, actually close their ports to us, and adopt high protective tariffs. During the past ten years, the nations of Europe have, one and all of them, increased their import duties instead of lowering them, and to such an extent has this been the case, that our goods have been all but unknown in many of their marts. We have seen, too, these nations who have adhered to this system of protection, which, we are told, is so ruinous, not only half ruin us by competition in the neutral markets of the world, but they have positively taken advantage of our free ports, and inundated our home markets with their goods so completely that many of our factories are lying idle, and many thousands of our people are only half employed or without employment at all. Asked by the Royal Commissioners inquiry into the Depression of Trade, what, in his view, was the present policy and tendency of foreign countries in regard to commercial tariffs, Mr. Kennedy, C.B., the Chief of the Commercial Department of the Foreign Office, replies: "The principal tendency is a retrograde policy from the system of commercial treaties inaugurated in 1860. The policy adopted in many countries may be described as a policy to augment custom duties and to encourage home production, rather than revert to the system which prevailed before 1860 of differential treatment."

Indeed, the evidence given before the Royal Commissioners as to the decided Protectionist policy of foreign countries is perfectly overwhelming. Mr. Carver gives evidence as to the German tariff being increased in 1883. Mr. Bousfield speaks of the same subject, and complains of the new French treaty, which has, in some cases, raised the import duties from 10 to 25 per cent. Mr. Mitchell tells how the last German tariff is " almost prohibitive"; how the trade with Russia, owing to recent alterations of her import duties, is become "merely nominal"; and how the trade with Spain for the same cause has been reduced to "6 one-fourth of its formerdimensions. Mr. Walker mentions the increased tariffs in Italy, Germany, Austria, and Russia, and speaks of the latter country in some cases imposing an ad valorem duty of 112 per cent. on goods coming from England. Mr. Dixon, too, complains, as do several other witnesses, of the recently increased tariffs of Russia, Canada, and Italy; while Mr. Donaldson, in reply to the question, "What markets have been closed against you since 1882 ?" replied

Particularly the American market, and German, French, and Russian markets to a large extent."

What then can be said of the value of Cobden's predictions as to the effect of our adopting a system of free imports? He predicted cheaper bread for the working classes; the result was that for nearly thirty years after the Corn Laws were abolished, wheat was dearer than it had been during the last few years of Protection. He predicted universal peace, and the friendship of races; the result has been double the bloodshed, and double the war expenditure that there was under the system of war-breeding Protection.

But if Cobden was not a wise statesman, he was, at all events, an honest one. He would not consent to give the full weight of his commanding influence to a policy of speculation, unless he was distinctly protected by certain safeguards from being irrevocably associated with it. He might be mistaken in his predictions. It is human to err. What if his great Free-Trade theory should prove an idle dream? a glorious idea but an impracticable .one. What if, after all, the specious Free-Trade system which he fancied we were rapidly approaching should turn out to be some too-deceptive mirage, only alluring his country far into the deep sands of commercial ruin? Such possibilities as these could not escape the shrewd perception of Cobden, and with an admirable prudence he proceeded to guard against them. He pointed out certain sure and decisive tests by which his policy might be tested, and if, tried by these tests, it should be found wanting. then he, at all events, might claim to be absolved from any further responsibility for the system of free imports. If a fall in the price of wheat was not accompanied by increased commercial prosperity, then, as to all he had said on the subject of Free Trade to his followers, he was to be considered as deserving "the character of an imposter." Again, if the nations of the world did not, "at no very distant period," alter their tariffs and adopt a policy of free imports, it was to be understood that, so far as Free Trade for this country was concerned, Cobden and his colleagues were to be considered as "mistaken in thinking their principles correct." No man can say that these two test conditions of Cobden's have been carried out. The nations of the world have not altered their tariffs in the direction of free imports, but they have altered them, and are continuing to alter them, in a precisely opposite direction. The prosperity of our trade has not increased when the price of wheat has fallen, but a rise in the price of wheat has almost without exception been followed by an increased commercial prosperity. Tried by this standard of Cobden's own choosing his happy vision of "Free Trade, Peace, and Good-will among Nations," must be reluctantly avowed to have been but an empty dream; but

a dream so grand in its conception, so entirely free from the personal aggrandizement of the dreamer, and so purely patriotic, that it must always surround Cobden's memory with the respectful admiration of philanthropists. Joseph's dream, it will be remembered, called forth the execration of his fellows; but Cobden's excited the profound admiration of the majority of his fellow-countrymen. The sheaves which arose, in Joseph's dream, around him were making obeisance to himself and his offspring; the sheaves in Cobden's dream, the nations of mankind, were making obeisance to the commercial supremacy of his countrymen. But although "Free Trade, Peace, and Good-will among Nations" may have. cajoled by its sublimity, and convinced by the pleasing prospect it held out there were still many who, while they could not despise the dreamer, despised the dream. Among these was Disraeli. He -opposed, with all the force of his commanding geuius, the gambling spirit of the people, which, he clearly foresaw, was about to sacrifice the substance, the possession of the trade of half the world, for the shadow, Free Trade, which promised them a still greater share of it. "It may be vain, now in the midnight of their intoxication, to tell them that there will be an awakening of bitterness it may be idle now, in the spring-tide of their economic frenzy, to warn them that there may be an ebb of trouble. But the dark and inevitable hour will arise. Then, when their spirit is softened by misfortune, they will recur to those principles which made England great. Then too, perchance, they may remember, not with unkindness, those who, betrayed or deserted, were neither ashamed nor afraid to struggle for the good old cause,' the cause with which are associated principles the most popular, sentiments the most entirely national-the cause of labour, the cause of the people, the cause of England." Such was Disraeli's magnificent and prophetic peroration to his famous speech on the occasion of the system of free imports being finally acknowledged by the House of Commons. And who shall say that the "dark and inevitable" has not come upon us? Surely those who have slumbered on with Cobden's dream must now be having an "awakening of bitterness"! But in the interest of the great dreamer who is gone, every honest man should protest against Cobden's name being any further bespattered by a forced association with a policy of free imports; the supporters of which, under existing circumstances, he has termed "imposters" in advance.

H. R. FARQUHARSON.

THE writer of fictitious narrative stands in much closer relationship to his fellow-countrymen than do any of his brother workers in art, and consequently his obligations to his native land are far greater than theirs; he has to be much more national than they, both in thought and in the choice of his material. It is true, German classics have but little regarded this latter consideration, having, indeed, by preference, taken their subjects from foreign countries; although German history and German national life certainly offer materials neither inferior nor less abundant. A more national writer than Gustav Freytag, Germany has hardly ever had. All his subjects, with one exception, are drawn from German life, every fresh outburst of which he has studied and portrayed with a master hand. The entire history of the Fatherland, every step of its intellectual and political development, from the remotest era of Germanic existence, down to the struggles of the last war, is mirrored in his writings. Freytag being a German from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, it is superfluous to add that, in his views of men and things, he is an optimist; for to be a German and to be an optimist are synonymous terms. The German race are of a merry disposition, a joyous temperament, and do not consent to regard this earth as a vale of tears; willing to leave that conception of it to the few over-cultured. Not only does Freytag not believe in the worthlessness of all earthly action and conduct, but, on the contrary, he even assumes a certain immortality for all work performed with a conscious aim: "A welllived life ends not with death; it endures in the minds and deeds. of friends, and in the thoughts and labour of the people." When Freytag forsakes the current of modern life and descends into the mines of German antiquity, deep down until he is lost in the gray twilight of tradition, he is moved to do so by love for his people, the course of whose progress from one stage to another he is determined to trace out and lay bare. Therefore, he says:

For then truly is man's highest and most stable happiness attained when, relying upon the forces that are at work around him, he can look forward into the future with hope. Thus it is we live. We are surrounded by much that is weak, much that is ruined and falling into decay, but in the midst of it all there is growing up an endless

wealth of young strength. The roots and trunk of our national life are healthy. Devotion in family relationships, reverence for justice and morality, hard but able work, vigorous activity in every department. In many thousands the consciousness that they are increasing the popular strength; in millions more who still remain behind, the dawning conviction that they too will have to strive after our culture: this, to us who live in these later days, is joy and honour, helping to make us proud and brave. We know, indeed, that the glad sense of this possession may one day be dimmed for us, for to every nation there come at times interruptions to its development; but so long as these last guarantees of health and vigour exist, its growth can never be permanently hindered or destroyed.

And as the Germans can point to no more national writer, although perhaps to many a greater genius, than Freytag, neither have they produced many more industrious. He has exercised his talents in the production of almost every species of poesy, in lyrics, in small epics, in the three kinds of drama, and as a novelist. Besides this, he has written a model and masterly biography; devoted much thought to the technique of poetry; composed a great number of articles on the politics of the day, and finally, by his historical pictures, representing the progress of civilization in Germany, he has won for himself an honourable name in science. In the poet, however, let us not forget the man, but recollect that Freytag is a character of the noblest order, to which fact numberless deeds of magnanimity and unselfishness bear witness. As a friend, his hand has always been ready to help, even more so where no demand was made on him, than where assistance was actually asked. No man has ever borne adversity-of which, in the course of his life, he has not been spared his share, any more than the rest of mortals-with greater dignity or fortitude; even the heaviest blows of misfortune having been unable to crush him.

The following attempt to give a character-sketch of the man and his works may, therefore, not be unwelcome to the friends of German literature in this country.

I.

Silesia, that but recent addition to the fabric of the Prussian State, to whose union with the principal palace a mortar largely mixed with blood was necessary, has been remarkably quick in reconciling itself to the events which occasioned the change in its. political circumstances. No German race can so readily forget, or be so easily fired with enthusiasm, as the Silesians.

The Silesian is vivacious, sociable, talkative, easily excited and easily satisfied; quick to comprehend what is new, but not equally strong in patient endurance and perseverance. Ardent and sanguine, he is prone to be led from one extreme to the other; his imagination readily furnishes him with ideals, but his volatile disposition never allows him to come to a tragic conflict with reality. 6

VOL. X.