Make Free Trade Great Again

       "It is only the coward's policy to kneel down in the dust, and wail, and confess inferiority, as regards the producers of other nations.  Take up the challenge bravely, from whatever quarter it comes;  improve method and process and machinery-- above all improve the relations between capital and labor;  on that, more perhaps than on anything else, industrial victory depends.  Be willing to learn from all, of any country, who have anything useful to teach.  Never be tempted to build Chinese walls for your protection, and to go indolently to sleep behind them.  Your system of free trade is another great world trust placed in your hands.  You stand before all nations holding a bright and shining light, that if you are true to the great destiny of our country you will never allow to be dimmed or extinguished.  Mr. Cobden spoke the truth when he said that you would convert the other nations to your own brave way of competition;  only he did not allow enough for all the reactionary influences, the narrow unenlightened so-called patriotism, the timidities of some traders and their desire to take their ease comfortably, and not to overexert themselves, so long as they could compel the public to buy at their own price, and to accept their own standard of good workmanship, the warlike emperors, the chauvinists of all countries, the extravagant spendings with the resulting difficulties of getting blood from a stone, and the temptation of scraping revenue together in any mischievous fashion that offered itself, the party intrigues, the effort to discover something that would serve as an attractive policy, the unavowed purpose of some politicians, living for party, and keen for power, to bind a large part of the people by the worst of bonds to their side by means of a huge and corrupt money interest.  But the consequences of protection are fighting their battle everywhere on the side of free trade--as the consequences of folly and blindness always fight on the side of the better things;  and if we remain faithful to our great trust will in their due time fulfill Mr. Cobden's words.  The high prices and dear living, the harassing interferences with trade, the rings and corners, the trickeries and corruption, that all tread so close on the heels of protection, the wild extravagance, the domineering insolent attitude of the state-made monopolists, the ever-growing power of the governments to go their own way, where they can gather vast sums of money so easily through their unseen tax collectors, the ever-spreading socialism, that is protection made universal--all these things are preaching their eloquent lesson, and slowly preparing the way in other countries for free trade."  Auberon Herbert , A Plea for Voluntaryism