Mr Labouchere said, in the debate on this subject in the House of Commons, that the Protection Party seemed to consider every importation as in itself an evil, inasmuch as it displaced a corresponding amount of native industry; but that till he found that goods were brought by merchants into the country for nothing, he never could see how importation did not encourage domestic industry as much as home orders. This is manfully spoken: it comes home to the kernel of the question. It is pleasing to have to contend with such an antagonist. We will answer him equally briefly, and, as it seems to us, decisively. The difference between home orders and foreign orders is this, that the one encourages industry at _both ends_, viz., in the consumers and the producers; the other, at _one end only_, viz., in the consumer. This difference, however, may become vital to the national fortunes. If a London merchant pays £20,000 a-year to British shipowners and seamen, he keeps in motion at once the industry of the consumers, by whose produce the freights are ultimately paid, and the industry of the seafaring classes by whom they are earned. But if he pays the £20,000 a-year not to British but foreign shipowners, the only industry put in motion, so far as we are concerned, is that which raises the produce which is to pay the freight. The other end of the chain is placed in Norway or America, and any encouragement to industry there afforded is wholly lost to England. It is just the difference between rents spent in Great Britain, and rents spent in Paris or Naples. Doubtless they are the same thing, so far as the whole world is concerned; but are they the same thing so far as that portion of the world in which we are interested, viz., the British Islands, is concerned? Unquestionably they are not. What the Protectionists say is, not that no British industry is encouraged when importation takes place: they know perfectly it is encouraged at _their end_ of the line; what they say is, that it is not encouraged at the _other end_, because that other end rests in foreign states; and that it is unwise to encourage industry at _one end_ only, when it is possible to do so at _both_. Adam Smith saw this perfectly when he so well explained the difference between the home trade and foreign trade, and said the former was "worth all foreign trade put together." But his observations on this head are as much forgotten by the majority of our legislators as those he made on the great wisdom of our Navigation Laws, as the only security for our national independence.