Great Britain has had at least one sharp reminder of the advantage which would accrue to a country so dependent as she is on the outside world of having the areas of production under the national flag. This reminder was one which gave a rough shock to the generally accepted theory that if the consumer wants to buy and the producer wants to sell, all the conditions for satisfactory commercial intercourse between countries are fulfilled without reference to national relationship. In 1865 the War of Secession broke out in America, and the ports of the cotton-producing states were blockaded. Millions of bales of cotton were wasting on the wharves and in the warehouses at New Orleans, Charleston, and other Southern towns. On the other hand, in Lancashire millions of spindles were idle, and vast bodies of people were reduced to extreme need or thrown for a long period upon the charity of the benevolent from want of the raw material of their industry. The producers certainly wished to sell, the consumers to purchase. English manufacturers had money with which to buy--English shippers had the vessels to carry--the English Government had the men-of-war which could easily have forced a way to the supplies which were needed. Between was the barrier of international law and national honour, which forbid a neutral nation to interfere with belligerents. The barrier was respected, {113} and England passed triumphantly through the moral strain involved in resisting the temptation to go to war for an industrial end alone. The lesson to be learned from such an example appears manifest. The retention of the national right to keep open the communication between the centre of consumption and the areas of supply is alike desirable for the industry of the one and of the other. To give an obvious illustration. The vast woollen industries of Yorkshire are supplied almost exclusively from regions now within the Empire--New Zealand, Australia, India, and South Africa. So long as these countries remain under a common British flag the working man who produces the wool and the working man who spins it retain the national right to keep their industries in touch with each other: the moment they pass out from under the flag that right is given up. Great Britain would have no more right to force her way into the ports of an independent Australia or New Zealand, blockaded by a German, French, or Chinese fleet, than she had to force her way into the harbours of Louisiana or South Carolina. The neutral flag may furnish a way of escape for Britain's industry when she is herself in direct conflict with another power; it gives no assistance when a nation with which she is at peace chooses to close the ports of a country from which she draws her food or the material of her industry. The reader will find that the illustration is a far-reaching one if he extends it to the whole range of Britain's wants either for supply or for markets for