Protection ought to take the form of saying:-- “Any pig-meat from abroad must pay such and such a sum per pound at the ports as it enters.” This would raise the price of pig-meat in England somewhat. If it raised the price to such an amount that the English people as a whole had to pay £2 more a family, _and if at that increased rate of price agricultural people could be stimulated into feeding the right amount of pigs and taking the necessary trouble to keep the supply going_, then the total wealth of the community would be increased £2 per family. Even if the price had to increase till each family on the average paid £3 more, or £3 10s. 0d. more, it would still be of advantage to the nation _on condition that the higher price really did make the farmers breed enough pigs, without lessening their production of other things_. But if, when the charge on the community had risen to £4 per family, it did not stimulate the production of pigs in this country sufficiently to supply the market, then your Protection of Pigs would be run at a loss. BANKING During the last two hundred and fifty years there has arisen, among other modern economic institutions, the institution of _Banking_. It has origins much older; indeed, people did something of the kind at _all_ times, but Banking as a fully developed institution grew up in this comparatively short time: since the middle of the seventeenth century. It began in Holland and England and spread to other countries. Like other modern institutions, it only became really important in the latter half of this period, that is, during the last hundred years or so; quite recently--in the last fifty years--it has become of such supreme importance by the mastery it has got over the whole commonwealth that everybody ought to try to understand its character. The Power of the Banks comes to-day into the lives of all of us and largely affects the relations between different nations. Indeed, it has become so powerful quite lately that one of the principal things we have to watch in politics is the enmity which the power of the Banks has aroused and the way in which that power is being attacked. The essential of banking lies in these two combined ideas: (1) that a man will leave his money in custody of another man when that other man has better opportunities for keeping it safe than he has; (2) that the money so left in custody _may_ be used by the custodian of the money without the real owner being very anxious what is being done with it, so long as he is certain to get it when he wants it. The putting together of these two ideas--which are ideas naturally arising in everybody’s mind--is the origin of all banking, and the moral basis upon which banking reposes.