Mr. Gladstone said:
"My boyhood was spent at the mouth of the Mersey, and in those days I
used to see those beautiful American liners, the packets between New
York and Liverpool, which then conducted the bulk and the pick of the
trade between the two countries. The Americans were then deemed to be
so entirely superior to us in shipbuilding and navigation that they had
four-fifths of the whole trade between the two countries in their hands,
and that four-fifths was the best of the trade. What is the case now,
when free trade has operated and has applied its stimulus to the
intelligence of England, and when, on the other hand, the action of the
Americans has been restrained by the enactment, the enhancement and the
tightening of the protective system? The scales are exactly reversed,
and instead of America doing four-fifths and that the best, we do
four-fifths of the business, and the Americans pick up the leavings of
the British and transact the residue of the trade. Not because they are
inferior to us in anything; it would be a fatal error to suppose it; not
because they have less intelligence or less perseverance. They are your
descendants; they are your kinsmen; and they are fully equal to you in
all that goes to make human energy and power; but they are laboring
under the delusion from which you yourselves have but recently escaped,
and in which some misguided fellow-citizens seek again to entangle you.
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