Introduction

First published in 1903, this collects together speeches given by H.H. Asquith to refute the charge that those who defended Free Trade at the turn of the century were ignorant or indifferent to actual and potential economic forces, and also clung to obsolete conceptions of the Empire. The author intends to vindicate Britain’s contemporaneous fiscal system, not as academic dogma, but as a concrete and living financial policy. In pursuit of this he undertakes to expose what he argues are the "blunders of fact and logic" of the new protectionist campaign, illustrated with extracts from the speeches of the Chancellor of the Exchequer Austen Chamberlain — whose advocacy of protectionism provides the focus for the collected speeches.