The Corn Laws, as existing in 1846, went beyond this: and their _alteration_, not their _abolition_, was needed. Your free-trader’s argument is like that of a man who has discovered that too much water will drown, and proceeds at once to the other extreme of killing by thirst. _All extremes are bad._ Free trade is an _extreme_. Want of competition is bad. Extreme competition is bad. _Healthy_ competition is that which is wanted. Unlimited competition defeats its own purpose by crushing out weaker industries, diminishing the supply, and enabling the successful competitors to raise their prices as soon as the rival industry has been extinguished. Even Mill admits that protection may “be defensible when imposed temporarily ... in hopes of naturalizing a foreign industry.”[17] And Cossa allows that-- “At certain times, and under certain conditions, protection has given notable advantages to industrial organization and progress.... Colbert’s system and Cromwell’s Navigation Act, contributed not a little to the economic greatness of France and England.”[18] There seems to be but little doubt that the political economist of the future will hold up England as an awful warning, but an instructive example, of a country ruined by the persistent misapplication of the principles of political economy. Alexr. Hamilton, the greatest statesman America ever produced, says:-- Though it were true that the immediate and certain effect of regulations controlling the competition of foreign and domestic fabrics was an increase of price, it is universally true that the contrary is the ultimate effect with every successful manufacture. When a domestic manufacture has been brought to perfection and has engaged in the prosecution of it a competent number of persons it invariably becomes cheaper. * * * The internal competition which takes place soon does away with anything like monopoly, and by degrees reduces the price of the article to the minimum of reasonable profit on the capital. (Treasury Report Dec. 1791.)--_Fortnightly Review_, 1873. It is not merely your misapplication of the principles of political economy to which I object; I also object to the over-bearing way in which you thrust down the throat of your opponent the opinions of your favourite political economists, as if they were infallible and settled the question beyond all possibility of further argument. This is especially the case when you quote Mill. Now Mill is no doubt an eminently able and powerful writer; but he is deplorably subject to mistakes. He constantly contradicts himself, and is contradicted by political economists equally able and more reliable than himself. For example, Professor Bonamy Price[19] accuses Mill of introducing _utter confusion_ into the topic of Wages. Cossa speaks of Mill’s “ardent concessions to socialism more apparent than real;” of his “_narrow philosophic utilitarianism_.” Also, speaking of Thornton, Cossa says:[20]--