(^452) THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS
lands to watch matches in Milan and find Italians living better and
more modern than they. Still, that kind of pain eases with time. Soon
no one will be left to remember. Besides, the world is filled with much
poorer people. In the club of advanced industrial nations, Britain may
have sunk to the lower ranks, but think how much better off it is than
Mexico or India.^25
- The issue has its religious aspects, and nothing rouses more con
tention than issues of faith. In this matter, we are talking about eco
nomic religion, the religion of free trade. Where did free trade come
in? Well, no sooner did Britain feel the heat of competition than home
producers called for a return to protection. Free trade, they said, may
have been fine when Britain was the workshop of the world, but now
other nations could make things cheaper if not so well. These nations,
moreover, did not play fair. They had tariffs and other barriers to for
eign imports, while Britain opened its doors to everyone. They subsi
dized their industries, sold (dumped) their goods at less than home
market prices, engaged in "unfair" business practices in order to gain
market share. As a result, one after another branch of British manu
facture found itself pressed into a corner, compelled to cut back on in
vestment, to close down plant.
But free trade was become a matter a matter of faith—faith not only
in the gains from trade but also in the power of material progress and
international exchange to create peace and love. The logic was eco
nomic, the rationality of comparative advantage. But the passion was
moral. Listen to John Bowring, our peripatetic agent of British com
mercial interests, recalling a visit to the Holy Land (what better place?)
and gushing about trade, peace, and love:
What a satisfaction it is to every man going from the West to the East,
when he finds one of the ancient Druses clothed in garments with which
our industrious countrymen provided him. What a delight it is in going to
the Holy City to stop within the caravan at Nazareth—to see four thousand
individuals and scarcely be able to fix upon one to whom your country has
not presented some comfort or decoration! Peace and industry have been
doing this and much more; for be assured that while this country is diffus
ing blessings, she is creating an interest, she is erecting in the minds of those
she serves an affection towards her, and that commerce is a communication
of good and a dispensing of blessings which were never enjoyed before.^26Does it make a doctrine less a matter of belief because it claims to be
scientific? Here is W. S. Jevons, one of the icons of British political