The Value of International Trade

Abstract

THE title of this inaugural lecture may at first sight appear presumptuous. The greatness of the City of London has been built upon trade and for centuries international trade, flowing mainly through London, has been an important element in the prosperity of the United Kingdom. The important part played by this country in the modern organisation of international trade has been well described by a former teacher of this School. During that period (the igth century) the world's trade pivoted on Great Britain. She was the exchange place of the nations, the financier of the world, the developer of the undeveloped countries. Her ships, sailing or steam, were to be met with at all times within the seven seas, she girded the earth with her rails and moved bulky commodities and foodstuffs with her locomotives and steam engines. She not merely manufactured for the world but she helped to open up continents, to move millions of people to new countries to grow new products and food. She helped to make man the dominant power over nature. She stood to the world for power, enterprise, constructive capacity and financial strength. Incidentally during the century she became the centre of two great Empires, one of coloured races and mainly situated in tropical or semi-tropical areas and the other consisting of her own race reproducing her own type of institutions, the first requiring paternal government, the other a common economic, legal and fiscal agreement on the basis of free allied peoples of one race and type.2 As one who comes from the most distant of the Dominions to which Mrs. Knowles alludes, it is perhaps fitting that I