medicines being a luxury, it can now be used six times more freely than before. Without trade war this would never have come about. Free trade implies free competition, and that is trade-warfare. Another form of trade war is holding a country for the sake of a monopoly of trade, thus enabling a group of manufacturers—say of France—to tax all the inhabitants under their government, especially in colonies—as Algiers, Madagascar, Tahiti, &c. This is simply a form of tribute, like the taxation levied by Rome on various conquered countries; it holds back the taxed countries. If other countries wish to get a share of that trade they will have to fight, by trade or by violence, to conquer the right to join in it. And a trade war which shut, say, all English markets to France, until all French markets were open to England, would not violate any economic principle. It is meeting force by force, exclusion by exclusion; and no shudder at our using trade war ourselves will prevent for an instant the trade war which is used against us. Our principles will not weigh a feather in other nations' practice. But warfare is a temporary measure, and retaliation must only be temporary. The great danger would be in establishing a permanent system of taxation of foreign productions, which would be worked to the utmost by trades unions at home, in order to enable them to bleed the country to death by high prices. This terrible danger of ruin is the main reason against protective duties, though seldom, if ever, noticed in public discussion of the subject.