When Sir Robert Peel some forty years ago announced his conversion by the unadorned eloquence of Richard Cobden, and free trade was inaugurated, with results which were attended with the most brilliant success, every one expected that the conversion of the rest of the civilised world was only a question of time, and that a short time. Few would have been found bold enough to predict that forty years later England would stand almost alone in the world in adherence to free-trade principles, and that the protectionist heresy would not only be strengthened and confirmed among Continental nations such as France and Germany, but actually adopted by large and increasing majorities in the United States, Canada, Australia, and other English-speaking communities. Yet such is the actual fact at the present day. In spite of the Cobden Club and of arguments which to the average English mind appear irresistible, free trade has been steadily losing ground for the last twenty years, and nation after nation, colony after colony, sees its protectionist majority increasing and its free-trade minority dwindling. It is evident there must be some real cause for such a universal phenomenon. In countries like France and Russia we may attribute it to economical ignorance and the influence of cliques of manufacturers and selfish interests; but the people of Germany, and still more of the United States, Canada, and Australia, are as intelligent as ourselves, and quite as shrewd in seeing where those interests really lie. They are fettered by no traditional prejudices, and their political instincts rather lie towards freedom and against the creation of anything like an aristocracy of wealthy manufacturers. And yet, after years of free discussion, they have become more and more hardened in their protectionist heresies. What does this prove? That there are two sides to the shield, and not, as we fancied in our English insularity, only one.