This furtherance of trade and industry by the statesmen was almost wholly of a negative or permissive
sort, in that it consisted in the removal of restrictions previously enforced; and the like continues to be true
of the Imperial policy in trade and industry down to a late date in Bismarck’s administration. The good
effects are traceable to the removal of obstacles. Which suggests that a farther pursuit of the same policy
should have had similarly good effects in increasing the efficiency of German industry, such, e.g., as the
total abolition of the frontier, in respect of economic regulations of all kinds. The retention of the frontier
and the return to more of a mercantilist policy of tariffs and the like that presently followed, was a political
expedient, an expedient for the good of the State rather than of the industrial community. The furtherance of
the community’s material prosperity simply, regardless of the dynastic advantage of the German State,
would doubtless have dictated the practical abolition of the frontier and of all discrimination between German
and non-German business and industry; just as the same consideration dictated the abolition of frontiers
and discriminations of the same kind within the Empire