(_b_) There was another kind of Protectionist who said: “You Free Traders take for granted, and depend upon, one capital point, to wit, _that the labour now employed in a particular form of production, and the capital employed in it, both of which will be destroyed by Free Trade, can be used more profitably in some other form of Production_. But we, the Protectionists, say that, in the particular case in question, they would _not_ be used more profitably. We say that, in point of fact, things being as they are, the national character being what it is, the arrangements of our English society and its traditions being what we know them to be, the ruined industry will go on getting worse and worse, artificially supported by relief from the community outside it, the farmer losing year after year and still hanging on, the land going back to weeds and marsh, the buildings falling down, and so forth. _We_ say that, though it may theoretically be possible to use in other ways the labour and capital thus displaced, in practice you will destroy more wealth than you will create.” These two kinds of arguments on the Protectionist side are still to be heard everywhere to-day. It ought to be perfectly clear to anyone who thinks about the matter at all that argument (_a_) was nonsense, for people and capital driven out of an industry ill suited to our present conditions are not thereby destroyed. They may very well find employment producing more total wealth in another. But argument (_b_) was a good argument _if the statement about the impossibility of changing from one trade to another were in practice true_. The whole discussion really turned upon the last point. Unfortunately for the Protectionists, those who defended their cause in this country nearly all used argument (_a_), and were very properly derided as fools by the Free Traders. Argument (_b_) was only used by a comparatively small number of thoughtful men and they were under this disadvantage--that they were arguing with regard to a possible or probable future with no past experience to guide them, and that many years must pass before it could be discovered whether, in practice, what they said was true or false; whether in practice the ruin of English agriculture would diminish the well-being of England as a whole or not. Further, the population continued to increase at a great rate, and that all in the towns and on the coal-fields. Our manufacturing productions went up and up and up, the total wealth of the country enormously increased, and these processes hid and made to seem insignificant the corresponding decay of the fields. We had no need for Protection in any domestic manufactured goods; we had begun to use coal before anybody else; we had developed machinery before anybody else. The only thing which there could be any point in protecting was agriculture, and that would have meant dearer food for the wage-earners in the towns.