And Governments, while charged with maintaining the political unity of a country, ought also to retain its economic unity by subordinating all local interests to the general interest, by preserving intact the liberty of internal trade, by organising railways and canals on a national basis, by keeping watch over the central bank, and by aiming at a uniform code of commercial legislation. This was the programme outlined by List in his paper the _Zollvereinsblatt_. This belief in the power which a unified economic organisation can bring to a nation is by no means too common among individualists, who at bottom are often particularists. But List possessed it in the highest degree. He devoted many years of his life to advocating the establishment of a German railway system, and it was he who traced the principal highways which have since been established in Germany. Protection, in his opinion, was one means of increasing the economic cohesion of Germany, because of the solidarity of interests which would result from the presence of a powerful industry. With similar enthusiasm he devoted himself to two apparently contradictory tasks—the suppression of inter-State duties and the establishment of protective rights. To him there was no element of contradiction in this, any more than there would be for us in a national system of political economy with no protective rights.[617] He also extended the political horizon of the Classical school and substituted a dynamic for their purely static conception of national development. His thorough examination of the conditions of economic progress is a contribution to the study of international trade exactly analogous to the contribution made by Sismondi to the study of national welfare. But, unlike Sismondi, who wished to retard this progress, he is anxious to stimulate it, and so he charges the State with the duty of safeguarding the future prosperity of the country and with furthering its production. The actual procedure, involving as it did the establishment of protective rights, may appear to us to be unfortunate.[618] But the idea which inspires it—the recognition that in the interests of the future national power has a definitely economic _rôle_—is essentially sound. To-day it is a mere commonplace, but when List enunciated it it was quite a novel idea.