The Protectionist even said: “Let us make this tariff so high that the foreign goods are sold at a _dis_advantage--that is, let the tax on the foreign goods be such that, added to the cost of production abroad, they cannot be sold in England save at a _higher_ price than the English goods. In this way only the English goods will be bought here and the home industry will flourish as it did before.” Such were the two political theories, standing one against the other. Now let us look into the economic principles underlying these two opposing parties, and see which of them had the best of the argument. We have already seen, in the first part of this book, the elementary economic principle that Exchange is only the last stage in the process of production. And we have also had fixed the principle that _freedom of exchange tends to produce a maximum of wealth within the area to which it applies_, and that interference with freedom of exchange tends to reduce the total possible wealth of that area. This is so obvious that all the great modern nations are careful to let exchange be as free as possible _within their own boundaries_. Goods can be freely exchanged without interference all over the United States and all over Great Britain and all over France, etc., because if you were to set up tolls and interferences with exchange _within_ the country the total wealth of the country would necessarily be diminished. Now the Free Traders extended this principle to foreign trade. They said: “If the foreigner comes to us with something which he can sell to us cheaper than we can make it ourselves that is an advantage to us, and it is short-sighted to interfere with it under the idea that we are benefiting the existing trade which is threatened by foreign competition. For it means that we are producing something with difficulty which we could get with much less work if we turned our attention to things which we can produce with ease. Or, again, it means that with the same amount of work devoted to things we make well and exchange against the foreigner’s goods we shall get much more of the things which the foreigner can make more easily than we can.” If we take a concrete example we shall see what the Free Traders’ argument means.