The depression of the sugar trade in the West Indian Islands has been met by a treaty which raises the price of sugar at home, and makes those Colonies proportionately unpopular with the working classes.

It has since been proposed to carry the principle farther, and tax the British workman for the benefit of Colonial manufacturers.

For these strange results of imperial thinking neither Froude nor any of his contemporaries were prepared.

But they correspond accurately, especially the second of them, with the "attempt made by politicians ambitious of distinguishing themselves," against which Froude warned his countrymen.

Froude was no scientific economist.