Nations, as we know, put up tariffs against goods which come from abroad: That is, their Governments tax imports of certain goods and thereby interfere with the freedom of exchange. For instance, the French have a tax of this kind upon wheat. Wheat grown in France will cost, let us say, £1 a sack, but the Argentine can send wheat to France at an expense of only 10s. a sack, because the land there is new, and for various other causes. If the wheat from the Argentine were allowed to come in freely, and the French to export against it things which they can make more easily than wheat they would have more wheat at a less total expense; but they prefer to put a tax of ten shillings upon every sack, that is, to put up a barrier against the import of wheat from abroad, and so keep up the price artificially at home. When a nation does this with regard to any object that may be imported, if the object can also be produced within the nation (which it nearly always can) it is said to _protect_ that object, and the system of so doing is called =Protection=. The word arose from the demand of certain trades to be “protected” by their Governments without considering whether it was for the good of the whole nation or not. It obviously would be a very nice thing for people who breed sheep, for instance, in this country, if all mutton coming from the Colonies were taxed at the Ports, while the mutton grown inside the country were not taxed; for in this way the value of the mutton would rise in England, and the rise would benefit the sheep owners. But it would be at the expense of all the other people who did not grow sheep, and who would have to pay more for their mutton. As opposed to this system of _Protection_, and interfering with international exchange by a tariff, intelligent people a long lifetime ago began to agitate for what they called “=FREE TRADE=,” that is the putting of no tariff on to an import, or at least no tariff high enough to give an artificial price to the producer of the same thing at home. Thus, when England was completely Free Trading (which it was until the war) there was a tariff on tea; but that was not Protection, for those who would try to grow tea here would have to grow it in hot houses and at an enormous expense, and the tax on tea, though heavy, did not make it anything like so dear as to make it worth while to produce tea here.