The National Review tells us that ten years have passed since Britain voted to leave the European Union, and the verdict — at least as that publication reads it — is that the move has proved sound. The prospect of rejoining, it adds, is now remote. I was not there, of course, and I hold no brief for any particular outcome. But the question the story raises is one I have turned over many times in my own life: what does it actually cost a people to govern their own trade, and are they prepared to pay that cost in the coin of discipline?

I spent years in London and Paris as a colonial agent and then as a diplomat, watching the way metropolitan powers set the terms of commerce for those who lived at a distance. The colonists I represented knew the price of that arrangement — not in abstract principle, but in the rates they paid, the markets they were barred from, the paper money they were forbidden to issue. The desire to set one's own commercial rules is entirely legitimate. The harder question is what you do with the freedom once you have it.

Here is my usual test: what does the working tradesman or the small farmer actually receive when the policy is in force? If Britain outside the EU has gained the power to negotiate its own trade terms, sign its own agreements, and issue its own regulations without deference to a distant body — that is a real gain, and not a trivial one. Self-government over commerce is a form of self-government full stop. I would not minimize it.

And yet — I mark what follows as inference, not recollection, since I cannot have observed it — freedom of this kind is only as valuable as the habits it produces. A household that escapes a bad landlord has done something admirable; a household that then spends recklessly, borrows without discipline, and neglects its productive trades has squandered the advantage. The National Review's report does not detail Britain's fiscal position, its trade balances, or the wages of its ordinary workers. Those are the numbers I would wish to see before writing the full verdict.

I have one further thought on the matter of information and union. In my time as Postmaster, I learned that the roads which carry commerce also carry ideas, and that cutting a road — even a badly maintained one — can isolate as well as liberate. Trade agreements are, among other things, infrastructure for the movement of goods and the settlement of accounts. Britain has presumably built new roads in the decade since. Whether they are as well-traveled as the old ones is a question of fact, not philosophy, and I would counsel any reader to seek the trade data before reaching a comfortable conclusion.

My counsel to the working person watching this story: do not let the symbolic victory of independence substitute for the practical audit of what independence has produced. A nation, like a household, grows rich by producing more than it consumes and being honest about both. Count the goods; count the debts; then form your opinion. The liberty to manage your own affairs is precious — but liberty does not balance the ledger for you.