"In the course of some ninety years, the wheel has certainly turned full circle. The Protectionist case, which seemed to most of our fathers and grandfathers so outrageous, even so wicked, has been re-stated and carried to victory. Free Trade, which was almost like a sacred dogma, is in its turn rejected and despised... [M]any acute and energetic minds in the ’forties “looked to the end.” They foresaw what seemed beyond the vision of their rivals—that after the period of expansion would come the period of over-production... Disraeli] perceived only too clearly the danger of sacrificing everything to speed. Had he lived now, he would not have been surprised. The development of the world on competitive rather than on complementary lines; the growth of economic nationalism; the problems involved in the increasing productivity of labour, both industrial and agricultural; the absence of any new and rapidly developing area offering sufficient attractive opportunities for investment; finally, the heavy ensuing burden of unemployment, in every part of the world—all these phenomena, so constantly in our minds as part of the conditions of crisis, would have seemed to the men of Manchester nothing but a hideous nightmare. Disraeli would have understood them. I think he would have expected them."
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Prime Ministers of the United KingdomPoliticians from EnglandAcademics from the United KingdomPeople from LondonAutobiographers from the United Kingdom
Original Language: English
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‘Preface’ to Derek Walker-Smith, The Protectionist Case in the 1840s (1933), pp. vii-viii
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Harold_Macmillan
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Harold Macmillan
1957 – 1963
Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton OM PC (10 February 1894 – 29 December 1986) was a British Conservative politician and publisher who served six years as Prime Minister (1957–1963). As Prime Minister, he worked to decolonize the British Empire in Africa and repair United Kingdom–United States relations after the Suez Crisis. He also led the Conservative Party to accept the post-war consensus of Keynesian economics and the welfare state. However, he was forced to resign by the Profum
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