The Free Trade theory was the birth of a time when our imports were practically all supplemental to our exports, all indispensable to us, and when, on the other hand, the whole of the world was in need of our goods, far beyond our power of supplying it. Since then the situation has wholly altered. At this actual moment, it is true, there is temporarily a state of things which in one respect reproduces the situation of fifty years ago. There is for the moment an almost unlimited demand for some of our goods abroad. But that is not the normal situation. The normal situation is that there is an increasing invasion of our markets by goods from abroad which we used to produce ourselves, and an increasing tendency to exclude our goods from foreign markets. The Tariff Reform movement is the inevitable result of these altered circumstances. There is nothing artificial about it. It is not, as some people think, the work of a single man, however much it may owe to his genius and his courage, however much it may suffer, with other good causes, through his enforced retirement from the field. It is not an eccentric idea of Mr. Chamberlain's. Sooner or later it was bound to come in any case. It is the common sense and experience of the people waking up to the altered state of affairs, beginning to shake itself free from a theory which no longer fits the facts. It is a movement of emancipation, a twofold struggle for freedom--in the sphere of economic theory, for freedom of thought, in the sphere of fiscal policy, for freedom of action.