… is from page 6 of historian Frank Trentmann’s 2008 book, Free Trade Nation: Commerce, Consumption, and Civil Society in Modern Britain:
Free Trade in Britain meant that there were no tariffs at all that discriminated against foreign imports in order to assist any branch of industry or agriculture. Customs duties were for revenue only. To prevent any protectionist effect, they were always matched by an excise tax on equivalent domestic goods. Britain stuck to Free Trade irrespective of the protectionist measures of other countries.
DBx: On this date, June 25th, in 1846 Parliament repealed Britain’s protectionist corn laws and moved Britain far down the road to being a Free Trade nation – a nation in which the government does not restrict the economic freedom of its citizens in order to enrich politically powerful special-interest groups at the greater expense of the general public.
