=414. Reduction of customs duties.=—In this period, therefore, there was a general overhauling of the old tariffs. Export duties disappeared. Prohibitions were dropped, and import duties were reduced. Narrow restrictions, designed to favor merchant shipping, were reformed. Liberal commercial treaties became the fashion, and Europe was soon covered with a network of them after England and France had set the example in 1860. These treaties became of especial importance because they now included generally the clause of “the most favored nation,” by which a participant in the treaty was assured that it should share, without delay and without need of recompense, in any favors that might be granted to other states. The slightest concession, therefore, effected a general reduction of duties in Europe. An English author, writing in 1882, found that in the period from 1860 to 1880 tariffs had been raised in only two of the sixteen European states. Apart from these two exceptions, which were not important, tariffs had undergone substantial reductions; of 2,140 items existing in 1860 only 136 had been raised, while 900 had remained the same and no less than 1,104 had either been lowered or removed altogether from the list. These reforms were undoubtedly responsible in part for the remarkable growth of the world’s commerce in the period which they covered. =415. The return to protection.=—The free-trade movement has been followed, in the last quarter of the century, by a decided reaction to protection. Since about 1880 increase in the customs duties has been the rule in Europe, and reductions have been exceptional. No single cause can be held responsible for this change. The growth of national feeling and of international tension in Europe since 1870 has undoubtedly disposed governments to listen more readily to the complaints of citizens who suffer from competition, and ask for protection against foreigners. Competition, moreover, has widened its range of action and become more keen. The countries which gained new markets for their agricultural products, and flourished during the period of development of steam transportation in Europe, have lost their foreign markets and find their home markets menaced, as the transportation system has grown to embrace other continents and now brings cheap products from across the seas to the door of the European consumer. Countries which willingly accepted the manufactures of advanced industrial states when their own industries were in a primitive stage of development have since aspired to establish modern factories of their own at home.