-3- of economic nationalism, applied by autocratic methods. The first system was worked out by the marvelous little group of statesmen that surrounded Charles II. In 1660-1673 the aged Earl of Clarendon, a politician and a master histor- ian, aided by the uscrupulous Duke of Buckingham, the canny Lord Arlington and the profiteer Duke of Albemarle, worked out a marvelous system which was to save England and fit all the trans-Atlantic colonies into a water-tight system. It was unlawful to ship a pound of gold out of the country. No foreign goods were to be imported except upon a sort of quota system. A monopoly market was created for sugar, tobacco and ship timber, produced in the colonies. All "quota" imports from the colonies were taxed at two to four times their producers' value to enable to government to ignore public opinion and collect taxes without the consent of the peo- ple. Merchants and manufacturers were authorized to sell their goods to the public at prices fixed by themselves. And surplus products were to be dumped upon the continen- tal market at half the prices paid at home. It was a mar- velously perfect scheme under which workers on the land were to have no return at all for their labor, landlords somehwat more and industrialists and traders princily pro- fits. His Majesty, Charles II, was to be autocratic master of the system and make war upon Holland, the one rival and free-trade advocate which might upset the scheme. But no scheme has ever worked well more than a decade or two without popular support, and when the King had beated Holland in 1674 and annexed all strategic points in North America, the craft Earl of Shaftbury counselled |