Whether any such Alien legislation will be adopted to meet the inroad of continental labour depends in large measure on the course of continental history.

It is, however, not improbable that if the organization of the workers proceeds along the present lines, when they come to realize their ability to use political power for securing their industrial position, they may decide that it will be advisable to limit the supply of labour by excluding foreigners.

Those, however, who are already prepared to adopt such a step, do not always realize as clearly as they should, that the exclusion of cheap foreigners from our labour- market will be in all probability accompanied by an exclusion from our markets of the cheap goods made by these foreigners in their own country, the admission of which, while it increases the aggregate wealth of England, inflicts a direct injury on those particular workers, the demand for whose labour is diminished by the introduction of foreign goods which can undersell them.

If an Alien law is passed, it will bring both logically and historically in its wake such protective measures as will constitute a reversal of our present Free Trade policy.

Whether such new and hazardous changes in our national policy are likely to be made, depends in large measure upon the success of other schemes for treating the condition of over-supply of low-skilled labour.