It is vain, therefore, for the Free-traders to push forward extraneous and separate events, as the cause of the dreadful calamities which have overtaken the country since October 1847; calamities which all the witnesses examined in both Houses of Parliament, in the committees on commercial distress, described asaltogether unparalleled. They arose, evidently, not from the failure of crops in a particular place, or the temporary stoppage in the foreign vent for a particular branch of manufacture—causes which only touched the extremities—but from some great cause affecting the heart of the empire, and which through it paralysed all its members. And when it is recollected that, after having landed the nation in extra domestic engagements, for the next four years, to the amount of £360,000,000, the government adopted the most decisive and effective measures to contract the currency, and, after making it mainly dependant on the retention of gold in the country, they took steps which sent that gold headlong abroad—in exchange for enormously increased importations, the fruit of free trade—it is not difficult to discover what that cause was.
But all these evils, it is said, are over. We have passed through the desert, and arrived at the promised land. Free trade, disjoined from the extraneous circumstances which have hitherto concealed its real effect, is at length beginning to appear in its true colours. The Continent is pacified; the trade to France and Germany has revived; the revenue is improving; the exports in September were £2,000,000 more than in the corresponding month of last year: wait a little and we shall soon be in Elysium, and free trade and a fettered currency will realise all their promised advantages. We are not unaware of theIo Pæanswhich are already sung from the Liberal camp on this subject, and it is precisely for that reason that, when FREE TRADE IS AT ITS ZENITH, we have taken the opportunity to examine its effects. We have seen that the prosperity from 1842 to 1845 arose from extraneous causes, with which the tariff of the first of these years had nothing to do; and that the disasters from 1847 to 1849 were not in any sensible degree owing to external or separate calamities, but were the direct and inevitable effect of the establishment of a system of free trade, at the very time when the industry of the nation was manacled by the restriction of absurd and destructive monetary laws. Let us now examine our present condition, and see whether or not we are in an enviable position athome or abroad; whether the industry of the country can possibly survive, or its revenue be maintained, under the present system; and whether the seeds of another catastrophe, as terrible as that of 1847, are not already spread in the land.
In one particular the Free-traders are unquestionably right. Beyond all doubt, the external circumstances of the nation, at present, are in the highest degree favourable to its manufacturing and trading interests. We are at peace with all the world, and, thank God, there is no immediate appearance of its being broken. The markets of continental Europe have, for six months past, been entirely laid open to our merchants, by the settlement of France under thequasiempire of Louis Napoleon, and the extinction of the war in Italy and Germany. Rome is taken; Hungary is subdued; Baden is pacified; the war in Schleswig is at an end; the Danish blockade is raised; California has given an extraordinary impulse to activity and enterprise in the West; the victory of Goojerat has extinguished, it is to be hoped for a long period, all appearance of disturbance in the East. The harvest, just reaped, has been uncommonly fine in grain, both in Great Britain and Ireland: that of the potatoes above an average in the latter island. The Chartists of England and Scotland, astounded at the failure of all their predictions and the defeat of all their hopes, are silent; the revolutionists of Ireland, in utter despair, are leaving the Emerald Isle. Amidst the general pacification and cessation of alarms, old wants and necessities begin to be felt. Men have discovered that revolting will not mend their clothes or fill their bellies. New garments are required, from the old being worn out; the women are clamorous for bonnets and gowns; the men are sighing for coats and waistcoats. Provisions are cheap to a degree unexampled for fourteen years; wheat is at 41s. the quarter, meat at 5d. a pound. Capital in London can be borrowed at 2-1/2per cent, in the provinces at 3-1/2. That great Liberal panacea for all evils, ahuge importationof foreign produce, is in full operation. This year it will probably reach in value at least £100,000,000 sterling. Let us then, in these eminently favourable circumstances, examine the effects of the free-trade system.
First, with regard to the revenue, that never-failing index of the national fortunes. The revenue for the year ending Oct. 10, 1849, being the last quarter that has been made up, was only £236,000 more than that for the year ending Oct. 10, 1848. That is to say, during a year when free trade was acting under the most favourable possible circumstances, and when the pacification of the world was reopening markets long closed to our manufactures, the revenue only rose a mere trifle above what it had been in the year wasted by the triple curse of a monetary crisis, European revolutions, Chartist disturbances and Irish rebellion. Why is this? Evidently because the effect of free trade and a restricted currency acting together, and the dread of a fresh monetary crisis hanging over our heads from the unprecedented magnitude of our importations in every branch of commerce, have depressed industry at home to such a degree, that even the reopening of all the closed markets of the world, and the rush to fill up the void, created during fifteen months of stoppage of intercourse, has been able to produce no sensible addition to the public revenue.
Next, as to the exports. The reopening of the Continental markets, the pacification of India by the victory of Goojerat, and the impulse given to American speculation by the gold of California, has occasioned a considerable increase in our exports, on which the Free-traders are pluming themselves in an extraordinary degree. We should be glad to know in what way free trade pacified India, extinguished revolution in Europe, and vivified America by the Californian diggings. And yet, had these distant and adventitious occurrences not taken place, would we have had to congratulate the manufacturers on a rise of two millions in September, and a rise of seven or eight millions on the whole year? And what, after all, is a rise of our exports from £53,000,000 to £60,000,000 or even £63,000,000 in a year, to the total manufacturing industry of the country, which produces at least £200,000,000annually? It is scarcely the addition of athirtiethpart to the annual manufactured production. The Free-traders are hard pushed, indeed, when they are constrained to exult in an addition to the national industry so trifling, and wholly brought about by fortunate external events entirely foreign to their policy.
In the immense and increasing amount of ourImports, however, the Free-traders may indeed see, as in a mirror, the real and inevitable result of their measures. Their amount for this year is of course not yet known; although, from the returns already procured, it is certain that they will greatly exceed the level of last year, which reached £94,000,000. In all probability they will considerably exceed £100,000,000. Indeed, in the single article of grain, the excess of 1849 over 1848, since the one shilling duty began in February, has been so great as much to exceed in value the augmentation which has taken place in our exports.25The importation of grain in the first eight months of 1849 has been more than double what it was in the corresponding period of 1848, and that in the face of a fine harvest, and prices throughout the whole period varying from forty-five to forty-one shillings a quarter of wheat. The importation at these low prices has settled down to a regular average of about 1,200,000 quarters of all sorts of grain a-month, or between fourteen and fifteen millions of all sorts of grain in a year. This is just afourth of the annual subsistence, estimated in all sorts of grain at 60,000,000 of quarters. This immense proportion free trade has already caused to be derived from foreign supplies, though it has only been three years in operation, and the nominal duties only came into operation in February last.
So vast an increase of importation is perhaps unprecedented in so short a period; for, before the change was made, the importation was so trifling that, on an average of five years ending in 1835, it had sunk to 398,000 quarters. Indeed, the importation before the five bad harvests, from 1846 to 1840, had been so trifling, that it had become nominal merely, and the nation had gained the inestimable advantage of being self-supporting.26With truth did that decided free-trader, Mr Porter, say,in the last edition of his valuable work, entitled theProgress of the Nation—"The foregoing calculations show in how small a degree this country has hitherto been dependent upon foreigners, in ordinary seasons, for a due supply of our staple article of food. These calculations are brought forward to show how exceedingly great the increase of agricultural production must have been, to have thus effectively kept in a state of independence a population which has advanced with so great a degree of rapidity. To show the fact, the one article of wheat has been selected, because it is that which is the most generally consumed in England; but the position advanced would be found to hold good, were we to go through the whole list of the consumable products of the earth. The supply of meat, during the whole years comprised in this inquiry, has certainly kept pace with the growth of the population; and, as regards this portion of human food, our home agriculturists have, during almost the whole period, enjoyed a strict monopoly."27
Things, however, are now changed. Protection to domestic industry, at least in agriculture, is at an end; prices are down to forty shillings the quarter for wheat, and half that sum for oats and barley; the prices of sheep and cattle have fallen enormously to the home-grower, though that of meat is far from having declined in the same proportion; and, as all this has taken place during a season of prices low beyond example, it is evident that it may be expected to be still greater when we again experience the usual vicissitudes of bad harvests in our variable climate. The returns prove that ever since the duties on foreign grain became nominal, in the beginning of February last, the importation of corn and flour into Great Britain and Ireland has gone on steadily at the rate of 1,200,000 quarters a-month; and that now seven-eighths of the supply of the metropolis, and of all our other great towns, comes from foreign parts.28How British agriculture is to go on staggering under such a frightful load of foreign importation into its best markets, it is not difficult to foresee. Every scholar knows how Italian agriculture decayed, under a similar importation of grain from the distant provinces of the Roman empire; and how directly the fall of the empire was owing to that fatal change.
Putting aside all minor considerations, which crowd upon the mind in considering the probable effects of this prodigious change, there are three of paramount importance which force themselves on the attention, any one of which holds the fate of the empire suspended in a doubtful balance.
The first is, How is the revenue of £55,000,000, and the interest of mortgages at least half as much more,29to be provided for under so great areduction in the value of the staple articles of British agricultural produce? It has been seen that the total value of the agricultural produce of the empire was, anterior to the late changes, about £300,000,000. If prices fall on an average a fourth, in consequence of foreign importations, which is a most moderate supposition, probably much within the truth, this £300,000,000 will be reduced at once to £225,000,000. But the disastrous effect of such a reduction is not to be measured by its absolute amount, considerable as that amount undoubtedly is. Its dreadful effect lies here, that the £75,000,000 thus cut off, absorb nearly the whole profits of cultivation, out of which both the rent is paid to the landlord, and the farmer obtains the means of livelihood. The remainder is the cost of production, and it is not lowered in any sensible degree.Thus the whole loss falls on the cultivators.This is just what has happened under a similar course of policy in the West Indies, where the indolent habits of the emancipated slaves, and free trade in sugar, acting together, have destroyed the profits of agriculture; and of course the islands are rapidly returning to the jungle and the forest.
Now, if a deficiency at all approaching to this occurs in the revenue derived from land—the sources ofthree-fifthsof the income of the United Kingdom—how, in the name of common sense, is the revenue to be paid? How are the jointures of the widows, the interest of mortgages, and the other charges on the land, to be made good, when the change of prices has absorbed nearly the whole profit of cultivation? If they are recovered, what is to remain to the landlord? How are the home manufacturers, and the numerous class of shopkeepers in towns, and, above all, in the metropolis, who are supported by their expenditure, to be maintained? It is very easy to say the fall of rents is a landlord's question, and the mass of the people have no interest in it. Who support the manufacturers and shopkeepers over the country? The landlords and holders of securities over the land furnish at the very least a half of that support. Of the £5,400,000 a-year, which the Income Tax produces, £3,200,000, or more than a half, comes from the land. How wide-spread, then, will be the distress produced over the community, and, above all, to the shopkeepers in towns, from a change which threatens to dry up the principal sources from which their sales are paid.
In the next place, How is thenational independenceto be maintained when we come to import so large a proportion as from a fourth to a third of our subsistence from foreign states? If the chances of war, or a Continental blockade, interrupt our usual sources of supply, what is to come of the people? Who is to guarantee us against famine prices on any deficiency of our usual supply from abroad, and our people from becoming, as the Romans were in former days, the sport of the winds and the waves? Observe, nearly all our foreign supply comes from two countries only, Russia, or Prussia, whom it influences, and America. If we lose our maritime superiority—and who will secure its continuance, now that the Navigation Laws are repealed?—we may be at once blockaded in our harbours, and reduced in three months to the alternative of starvation or submission. But supposing we are not at once reduced to so humiliating an alternative, is it not clear that, when we have come practically to depend for the food of athirdof our people ontwoforeign states, we are entirely at the mercy of those two countries, and can never venture to assert, even in form, our independence against them? Without fitting out a ship of the line, or equipping a battalion, they can, by the mere threat of closing their harbours, at any time starve us into submission. And what are the nations beneath whose feet proud Albion is thus content to place her neck? Russia and America, the two most rising countries in existence, and both of which are actuated by the strongest and the most undying jealousy of the ancient glory and maritime preponderance of this country.
Mr Gurney, "the greatest bill-broker in the world," has emphatically declared in public, on more than one occasion, that the country cannot go on with its present expenditure; that £15,000,000 a-year, on the chargesof the army and navy, is more than can possibly be afforded; and that, if a great reduction is not made, we shall become bankrupt. His remedy for this is to disband our troops, sell our ships of the line, and establish the reign of peace and bill-broking throughout the world. On the other hand, "the greatest captain in the world," the Duke of Wellington, has made the following remonstrance to several successive administrations, on the total inadequacy of our present establishments, by sea and land, to secure the national independence in the political changes which may be anticipated in the lapse of time:—
"I have in vain endeavoured to awaken the attention of different administrations to this state of things, as well known to our neighbours (rivals in power, at least former adversaries and enemies) as it is to ourselves.We ought to be with garrisons as follows at the moment war is declared:—
"I have in vain endeavoured to awaken the attention of different administrations to this state of things, as well known to our neighbours (rivals in power, at least former adversaries and enemies) as it is to ourselves.
We ought to be with garrisons as follows at the moment war is declared:—
I suppose that one-half of the whole regular force of the country would be stationed in Ireland, which half would give the garrison for Cork. The remainder must be supplied from the half of the whole force at home, stationed in Great Britain.The whole force employed at home in Great Britain and Ireland would not afford a sufficient number of men for the mere defence and occupation, on the breaking out of a war, of the works constructed for the defence of the dockyards and naval arsenals,without leaving a single man disposable.The measure upon which I haveearnestly entreated different administrations to decide, which is constitutional, and has been invariably adopted in time of peace for the last years, is to raise, embody, organise, and discipline the militia of the same number for each of the three kingdoms united, as during the late war. This would give an organised force amounting to about a hundred and fifty thousand men, which we might immediately set to work to discipline. This amount would enable us to establish the strength of our army. This, with an augmentation of the force of the regular army, which would cost £400,000, would put the country on its legs in respect to personal force, and I would engage for its defence, old as I am.But as we stand now, and if it be true that the exertions of the fleet alone are not sufficient to provide for our defence,we are not safe for a week after the declaration of war."..."I shall be deemed foolhardy in engaging for the defence of the empire with an army composed of such a force as militia. I may be so. I confess it, I should infinitely prefer, and should feel more confidence in, an army of regular troops. But Iknowthat I shall not have these. I can have the others; and if an addition is made to the existing regular army allotted for home defence of a force which would cost £400,000 a-year, there would be a sufficient disciplined force in the field to enable him who should command it to defend the country.This is my view of our danger and of our resources. I am aware that our magazines and arsenals were very inadequately supplied with ordnance and carriages, as well as stores of all denominations, and ammunition.The deficiency has been occasioned in part by the sale of arms, and of various descriptions of ordnance stores, since the termination of the late war, in order to diminish the demand of supply to carry on the peace service of the ordnance, in part by the conflagration of the arsenal which occurred in the Tower some years ago, and by the difficulty under which all governments in this countrylabour in prevailing upon parliament, in time of peace, to take into consideration measures necessary for the safety of the country in time of war.""I am bordering upon 77 years of age passed in honour. I hope that the Almighty may protect me from being again witness of the tragedy which I cannot persuade my contemporaries to take measures to avert."
I suppose that one-half of the whole regular force of the country would be stationed in Ireland, which half would give the garrison for Cork. The remainder must be supplied from the half of the whole force at home, stationed in Great Britain.
The whole force employed at home in Great Britain and Ireland would not afford a sufficient number of men for the mere defence and occupation, on the breaking out of a war, of the works constructed for the defence of the dockyards and naval arsenals,without leaving a single man disposable.
The measure upon which I haveearnestly entreated different administrations to decide, which is constitutional, and has been invariably adopted in time of peace for the last years, is to raise, embody, organise, and discipline the militia of the same number for each of the three kingdoms united, as during the late war. This would give an organised force amounting to about a hundred and fifty thousand men, which we might immediately set to work to discipline. This amount would enable us to establish the strength of our army. This, with an augmentation of the force of the regular army, which would cost £400,000, would put the country on its legs in respect to personal force, and I would engage for its defence, old as I am.
But as we stand now, and if it be true that the exertions of the fleet alone are not sufficient to provide for our defence,we are not safe for a week after the declaration of war."...
"I shall be deemed foolhardy in engaging for the defence of the empire with an army composed of such a force as militia. I may be so. I confess it, I should infinitely prefer, and should feel more confidence in, an army of regular troops. But Iknowthat I shall not have these. I can have the others; and if an addition is made to the existing regular army allotted for home defence of a force which would cost £400,000 a-year, there would be a sufficient disciplined force in the field to enable him who should command it to defend the country.
This is my view of our danger and of our resources. I am aware that our magazines and arsenals were very inadequately supplied with ordnance and carriages, as well as stores of all denominations, and ammunition.
The deficiency has been occasioned in part by the sale of arms, and of various descriptions of ordnance stores, since the termination of the late war, in order to diminish the demand of supply to carry on the peace service of the ordnance, in part by the conflagration of the arsenal which occurred in the Tower some years ago, and by the difficulty under which all governments in this countrylabour in prevailing upon parliament, in time of peace, to take into consideration measures necessary for the safety of the country in time of war."
"I am bordering upon 77 years of age passed in honour. I hope that the Almighty may protect me from being again witness of the tragedy which I cannot persuade my contemporaries to take measures to avert."
These are strong words, as all those of the Duke of Wellington, and all other men of powerful and clear intellect, are, when they are roused and thoroughly in earnest. But when charged with such a subject, the means of defence and independence to his country, would a man of his patriotic feeling use expressions less strong, when he saw both endangered by the weakness of successive administrations,acting in obedience to the dictates of a blind and infatuated people? But if our independence has been thus menaced by the inadequacy of our defensive armaments by sea and land in time past, what is it likely to be in days to come, when the public revenue, and the resources of the kingdom, are prostrated by the combined action of a currency fettered by the acts of 1844 and 1845, and national industry overwhelmed with foreign competition under the free-trade system of 1846?
In truth, the peace congresses which now amuse the world, and give an opportunity for clever but chimerical and ignorant men to declaim upon the speedy advent of a political millennium, are nothing more than an effort, on the part of the free-trade party, to escape from the consequences of their own measures. Mr Cobden and the Free-traders of England now see as clearly as any body, that cheap prices and a large revenue, either to individuals or nations, cannot by possibility co-exist; that the £100,000,000, promised us from the abolition of the corn laws, have vanished into thin air, and that the reduction of the income of the whole classes of society under its operation will be so considerable, that it is quite impossible the national expenditure can be maintained. As the touching of the dividends is not for a moment to be thought of—as that would be bringing the tempest back with a vengeance on the moneyed class who evoked it—his only resource, to make our expenditure square with our reduced income, is in disbanding the soldiers, instituting a national guard, and selling our stores and ships of war. He is quite serious in that; and, like all other fanatics, he is not in the slightest degree influenced by the decisive refutation of his principles, which the universal breaking out of hostilities, and arming of the world, in consequence of the French Revolution of 1848, and the momentary triumph of liberal principles, has afforded. He is perfectly aware, that if industry was protected, and we had a currency equal to the wants and necessities of the nation, we might, with our extended population, raise £100,000,000 a-year, with more ease than we now do fifty millions, and thus secure the independence of the country, and bid defiance to all our enemies. But that would lower the value of money in the hands of the great capitalists, and would amount to an admission that he had been wrong; and, rather than risk that, he is content to prostrate the national defences, and hand us over, unarmed, to the tender mercies of the Chartists and Repealers at home, and the Red Republicans or Cossacks abroad.
The more intelligent of the Liberal party are now intent on a different object, but one equally descriptive of their secret sense of the failure of their grand panacea of free trade. They are full of the incalculable effects of the application of science to agriculture; expatiate largely on the analysis of soils and liquid manures, and indulge in learned disquisitions on the application of the refuse of towns and common-sewers to the improvement and fertilisation of the soil. From theEdinburgh Review, which treats its readers to a learnedexposéof Liebig's principles, to Sir R. Peel's protegé, the Dean of Westminster, who boasts of having tripled the produce of his land by liquid manure, this is the grand remedy for the evils which they now see they have introduced. It is singular, if there is any truth in these discoveries, that though man has been labouring at the soil for four thousand years, and during that time had an ample supply of these fertilising streams, they have never been brought to light till free trade made them a question of life and death to a powerful party in the state. Having had ample experience of the application of these liquid manures on the largest and most favourable scale, we are able to give a decided opinion on this subject. Liquid manures are of great service in enrichingmeadowlands, or forcing upcoarse but luxuriant crops of vegetables, such as cabbage or cauliflower, of which the leaves or stems, not the seeds or roots, form an article of food. But they do notpermanentlyenrich the soil: their effect is over in a few weeks. A fresh inundation of the fertilising stream is then requisite, the effects of which are speedily evaporated. On this account they are wholly inapplicable to graincrops, and of very doubtful service to potatoes or turnips. In the emphatic language of farmers, they put noheartinto the ground. The vegetation they force on is entirely in leaves and stems, not in seeds or roots. If they come into general use, they may increase the determination of the agricultural industry of the country to grass cultivation, and render England in modern, as Italy was in ancient times, one great sheet of pasturage; but they will never overcome the difficulties with which free trade has environed our farmers in the raising ofgraincrops, or enable them to compete with the harvests of the Ukraine, or the basin of the Mississippi.
In the third place—and this is perhaps a more vital consideration than any—How is the constant recurrence of monetary crises, similar to that which has left such woful desolation behind it, to be avoided upon every recurrence of a deficient harvest at home, or a straitened importation from abroad? The people of England are sensitively alive on this subject. They watch the rain in autumn with the most intense anxiety; and, if it falls a few days more than usual, the utmost alarm pervades all classes. They know well what rain in autumn portends. They see rising up, in dismal perspective before them, a great importation of grain, a vast export of sovereigns, the screw put on by the Bank of England, a contraction of credits by every bank, every man finding his creditors on his back, and one-half of his debtors bankrupt. All this they see, and see clearly; but the minds of a large portion of them are so benighted by the free-trade dogmas, that it never occurs to them that all this is the creation of their own policy, and is in no degree imputable to the laws of Providence. They think the thing is inevitable. They believe that there is a natural connexion between three weeks' rain in August and a monetary crisis, just as there is between a similar deluge and flooded meadows, or destroyed bridges. The evil, however, is entirely of human creation, and may, with absolute certainty, be avoided by human means. There is no more reason why three weeks' rain in August should produce a monetary crisis, than three weeks' rain in November. It is our ruinous monetary laws which render them cause and effect.
But assuming that the monetary laws are to continue, and free trade to be persisted in, it will become the people of this country, andespecially the trading classes, to consider well the inevitable effect of such a state of things on the monetary concerns of the country, and, through them, on the solvency of every one of themselves. We have seen that the heavy rains and large importations of grain in 1839 produced the severe and long-protracted period of distress from 1839 to 1842; and that the potato failure in 1846, acting on the Bank Charter Act of 1844, occasioned the terrible catastrophe of October 1847. But what was the importation of grain, in either of these periods of distress or famine, to that which is now taking place, and hasbecome habitual in the face of exceedingly low prices? In 1839, the whole grain of all kinds imported was 4,000,000 quarters, an amount in those days unprecedented. In 1846 and 1847, 12,000,000 quarters, under the stimulus of famine prices, was imported in fifteen months. But now, after a fine harvest, and with wheat at 41s. a quarter, we are importing annually, as ouraverage amount, fifteen millions of quarters of foreign grain! How are the most terrible commercial disasters to be averted, if this immense amount receives any augmentation from bad seasons? Nay, how are they to be averted even in ordinary seasons, with so immense a drain on the metallic resources of the country? This is a question in which the mercantile classes are far more interested than the agricultural—for with them a monetary crisis is an affair of life and death. With landholders, cheap prices, unless very long continued, are merely an affair of temporary loss of income, because the land itself remains, and it is the value of the annual fruits only that is affected.
To compensate so many perils, past, present, and to come, have free trade and a fettered currency, since they were simultaneously brought into action in this country, afforded such a spectacle of internal prosperity and concord as to render them on the whole worth persisting in, at such hazardto our national independence, and even existence? Alas! the view is now, if possible, more alarming than the prospect of dangers to come, so much have the realised and experienced evils of the new system exceeded what the most sombre imagination, fraught with the most gloomy images, could have anticipated. Amidst the infinite variety of topics bearing on this subject, we select the five following, as bearing decisively on the subject:—The increase of the poor-rate, both in Great Britain and Ireland; the increase in emigration; the increase of crime; the decline in railway travelling, and the ruin of agriculture in Ireland.
With regard to the increase of the poor-rate, since free trade and the new monetary system were introduced, we have the best possible authority in the following statement in the last number of a leading journal. "It appears," says theEdinburgh Review, "from Mr Commissioner Symmon's report on pauperism, that the poor-rate in England has now becomeheavier than it was before 1835whenthe New Poor law was introduced. It was, in 1834, £7,373,807; it was in 1848, £7,817,459.Every ninth person now in England is now a pauper: and the increase of paupers during the last two years has been double in proportion to the relative numbers of criminals."30In Ireland, above 2,000,000 persons are paupers; and the poor-rate since 1846 has risen from £260,000 a-year to £1,900,000, though it was in the first of these years only (1846) that there was any general failure of the potato crop. In Scotland the poor-rate, has nearly tripled in the last three years; it has risen from £185,000 a-year to £560,000. In Glasgow, the poor-rates, which anterior to 1846 were under £30,000 yearly for the city and suburbs, rose in the year 1848-9 to £200,000, and in the present year (1849-50) amount to £138,500. Nor is it wonderful that assessments have increased so prodigiously, when the augmentation of paupers has been so alarming. The following is the increase in the city of Glasgow parish, being about a half of the city and suburbs, during the last three years:—
The total number of paupers relieved in the city of Glasgow and suburbs in the year 1848-9 was 122,000; being exactlya third of the populationreceiving parochial relief.
The enormous and unprecedented increase of emigration in the last three years is still more alarming and descriptive of the fatal disease under which the body politic is labouring. Previous to 1846 the annual emigration had stood thus:—
But free trade and a fettered currency soon doubled these numbers. The emigration stands thus in round numbers:—
For 1849 the numbers have not yet been made up; but that they have much exceeded 300,000 is well known, and may be judged of by the following facts. From the official return made up at New York, and published in theNew York Heraldof October 10, it appears that, up to that date, there had landed, inthat harbour alone, 238,487 emigrants, of whomno less than 189,800 were Irish. If to these is added the emigrants who went to Boston—where 13,000 landed in the same period, and those who have gone to Canada, where above 60,000 landed last year—it is evident that the total emigrants from the United Kingdom this year must have considerably exceeded 300,000; being probably the greatest emigration, from any country in a single year, in the whole annals of the world. It considerably exceeds the annual increment of the population of the United Kingdom, which isabout 230,000: so that, under the combined action of free trade and a fettered currency,the population of Great Britain and Ireland, which for three centuries had continually been advancing, has for the first time declined. The Free-traders may boast of an exploit which all the enemies of England have never been able to effect. This has become so notorious, that it has passed into an ordinary newspaper paragraph; which, without attracting the least attention—though it is the most striking thing that has occurred in English history for five centuries—is now making the round of the public prints.
It is in vain to put this dismal fact down to the account of the Irish famine. That occurred in the winter of 1846-7, three years ago, since which period we have had good harvests; notwithstanding which the emigration has, since that, been constantly about 250,000; and this year, in the midst of a fine harvest, has turned 300,000.
Theincrease of crimeduring the last three years has been equally alarming, and illustrative of the grievous distress which, for that period, has affected the industrial interests of the empire. Having, in the last Number of this magazine, fully discussed this subject, we shall only observe that, during the last three years, the increase of crime in the two islands has been nearly 50per cent.Sir R. Peel, in spring 1846, when the railway mania was at its height, and full employment was given to railway labourers and mechanics in every part of the country, dwelt with peculiar emphasis and complacency on the diminution of commitments which appeared in the preceding year, as the most decisive proof of the beneficial effect of his measures in 1842. We hope he will dwell with equal emphasis on theincreaseof crime since that time, and draw from it the appropriate conclusion as to the wisdom of his subsequent measures.
The woful state of therailwayinterests throughout the country, and the steady and alarming decrease of the mileage profits, on an average of all the lines, is another internal symptom of the dreadful effects of the new system which, within the last three years, has been introduced. Railway property, within the last three years, has almost everywhere declined to a half, in many great lines to a third of its former value. In one of the greatest lines in the kingdom, the £50 shares, all paid up, are now selling at £14, and were even lately down as low as £10. The following is taken from theTimesof October 21:—
"The subjoined table exhibits the number of miles opened at Michaelmas in seven consecutive years, and the average traffic per mile during the first nine months in each year:—Years.Miles opened.Traffic per mile.18431,586£2,33018441,7702,50018452,0332,64018462,4982,56018473,3752,20018484,1781,96518494,9801,780The decline in the last column, from 1845 to the present year, is sufficiently alarming, and looks like a sinking to zero."
"The subjoined table exhibits the number of miles opened at Michaelmas in seven consecutive years, and the average traffic per mile during the first nine months in each year:—
The decline in the last column, from 1845 to the present year, is sufficiently alarming, and looks like a sinking to zero."
To what is this lamentable sinking of property, in so important a branch of public investment, to be ascribed? We are aware that much of it is owing to unproductive branch lines; but what is the main cause of these branch lines having, contrary to general expectation, proved so unproductive? It is in vain to ascribe it to the cholera: that only temporarily affected parts of the kingdom; and, at any rate, it is now over, and government have very properly appointed a public thanksgiving for its termination. It is equally in vain to ascribe it to the monetary crisis of 1847; that is long since past: capital is overflowing, and interest in London is again down to 3 and 2-1/2per cent. It is evidently owing to one cause, worse than plague, pestilence, and famine put together—viz. the wasting away of the internal resources of the country, under the combined operation of free trade and a restricted currency: free trade deluging us with foreign goods in every department of industry, and a restricted currency paralysing every attempt at competition in our own. We are very complacent: we not only present our shoulders bare to the blows of the enemy, but we tie up our own hands, lest, under the smart of the injury, we should be tempted to return them.
But by far the most deplorable effect of free trade and a fettered currency is to be seen in Ireland, where, for the last three years, misery unexampled and unutterable has existed. We shall mention only three facts of a general nature, descriptive of the state of that unhappy country since the simoom of the new principles blew over it, and leave our readers to judge of the state of things to which they point.
In the first place it appears, from a parliamentary return, that the holders of farms who, in 1845, were 310,000 over the Emerald Isle, had sunk in 1848 to 108,000.Two hundred and two thousand cultivators of landhave disappeared in three years, and with them at least half of the capital by means of which the land was made to produce anything.
In the second place, as we noticed in our last Number, the bank returns corroborate, in the most fearful manner, this alarming decrease in the agricultural capital and industry of the country. Ireland, it is well known, is almost entirely an agricultural country. Now, from the returns of the bank-notes in circulation in Ireland, as made to government in terms of the act of 1845, it appears that, while in August 1846,there were £7,500,000, they had sunk, in August 1849, to £3,833,000! Othello's occupation is gone! The bank-notes can find no employment: the bankers no customers. Free trade and the bank restrictions have in three years reduced the circulation which the country could take off to half of its former amount.
In the third place, if we cast our eyes across the Atlantic, we shall see where the cultivators and agricultural capital of Ireland have gone. During the years 1847 and 1848, out of the 250,000 emigrants who annually left the British Isles, about 180,000 were from Ireland. But this year 1849, when the duties on grain became nominal in February, outdid all its predecessors in the magnitude of the stream of human beings which it caused the Emerald Isle to send across the Atlantic. It has been already mentioned that, up to October 10, 1849, 189,800 Irish emigrants had landed at New York, besides 10,000 at Boston. If to these we add the probable number to Canada, perhaps 30,000, we shall have at least 230,000 Irish who have emigratedin one yearto America—and that a year of general peace, a fine harvest, reopened Continental markets, and revived manufacturing industry in the empire. And the Irishcountymembers formed a large part of Sir R. Peel's majority which carried free trade in 1846. Truly they have smote their constituents hip and thigh.
After these facts, and the woful one, that about 2,000,000 paupers are kept alive in Ireland by a poor-rate of £1,900,000 a-year, which is crushing the little that remains of industry and cultivation in the country, it is superfluous to go into details. But the following extracts from that powerful free-trade journal,The Times, are so graphic and characteristic of the effect of its own favourite measures, that we cannot forego the satisfaction of presenting them:—
"The landed gentry and farmholders in this county, [Limerick,] impelled by a national calamity, now at a crisis without example in Ireland, have in contemplation a meeting to represent to his Excellency the Lord-Lieutenant the utterly prostrate condition of all agricultural property, and the universal failure of every expedient in the best rural economy to sustain the Irish farmer—destitute of capital, bereft of legitimate protection, and overwhelmed by poor-rates and taxes—against the free-trade imports of the whole world. The ministerial policy of Great Britain, under sanction of a law which thousands of her loyal subjects deprecated, invitesthe foreign trader from all ports known to the compass to import at a nominal duty, and then suffers him to export in specie only, for his own country! What other ballast have the fleets of foreign vessels conveyed from our shore for the last three yearsbut metallic and bank currency? With such immeasurably unequal competition at his very door, the native grower findsno market for the produce of his honest industry, unless at a price wholly incompatible with the position of a solvent man. He sells, alas! only to lose, and the selfish foreigner is sure of profit on every cheap venture; while his speculation renders no equivalent whatever to the revenue or taxation of that state which encourages his importations at the expense of our own independence; for the permanent independence of those kingdoms implies the prosperity of Irish produce, and its preference in the Englishmarket. Ireland, unfortunately, has no trade or manufacture to employ her people, and wherefore is best known to England; but her only staple, agriculture, which all nations, ancient and modern, loved to cultivate, will soon be little more than a name. The causes and effects of this disastrous revolution the philosopher and historian will hereafter do justice to. A preparatory meeting, relative to the above, is now being held, with closed doors, in the county court, Lord Monteagle in the chair. Poor-rate was the monster grievance of discussion. The meeting broke up at 3 o'clock, it having been decided to collect facts from every district of the country in connexion with taxation and valuation of property."—Limerick Chronicle, of Saturday, Oct. 26."The Land Question.—A letter from Kilrush, dated the 27th inst., and published in theClare Journal, says:—'So eager are the country farmers to make sale of their grain, that every day is a market. Two causes seem to influence them; first, their present and urgent necessities press upon them, and, secondly, an opinion prevails, which appears not to be confined to the west, that it is more secure to have the money in their pockets than to leave the crop to become a prey to agent or poor-rate collector; and also that, in the event of no reduction being made in the annual rent, they may have no difficulty in walking off. Such are the feelings operating on the minds of the majority of the farmers in this locality. It is now too plain and obvious, that should a reduction in the rents take place here, it will come two years too late, as the greater number of the farmers (formerly comfortable) have not as much as would support their families for half the coming year. This is a sad but true state of things, in a district where, some few years since, the rents were paid, perhaps, more regularly than in any other part of the south of Ireland. A few have left their holdings, after selling every article, leaving the naked walls of a house to the landlord, and gone to a neighbouring townland, where the quality and cheapness of the land presented a greater encouragement; but such cases of flying tenants have become so common of late, that every paper teems with similar statements.If we are to have the land cultivated here, the rents must not only be reduced to half the former price, but the tenant must be assisted to set the crop, and encouraged to introduce a proper method of cultivation, otherwise the land will be left idle, andthe majority of the present occupiers will become inmates of the workhouse.'"—Times, Oct. 31, 1849."There must also be taken into account the dire domestic privations endured for the last three years of famine, the general flight of tenants with the landlords' rent, the desertion of the land, impoverished to the last degree by the runaways, yet for whose dishonesty and abuse of solemn contract the unfortunate proprietor is held responsible—the abandoned farms being still subject to accumulation of poor-rate and taxes. Then come the distraint, the impounding, the sale and sacrifice of property; while the home market,swamped by free trade with foreigners, has left landlord and farmer no help or resource whatever to bear up against the intolerable oppression of financial burdens, sanctioned by law, under the free constitution of Great Britain! One case of grievous suffering by a respectable family in this county was communicated to the preparatory meeting on Saturday last, by one of the gentlemen present. The possessor of a rent-roll of £1500 a-year landed estate, which netted £1200annually four years ago, was absolutely compelled to subsist with his wife and seven children for three months of the past twelve, without the ordinary comfort of a meat dinner; a cup of weak tea or coffee, and the vegetables of the kitchen-garden, commonly furnishing the table of this most wretched household! Incredible and appalling as this may appear, we have been assured it is not a solitary instance of the excessive want and privation known to exist."—Times, Nov. 4, 1849.
"The landed gentry and farmholders in this county, [Limerick,] impelled by a national calamity, now at a crisis without example in Ireland, have in contemplation a meeting to represent to his Excellency the Lord-Lieutenant the utterly prostrate condition of all agricultural property, and the universal failure of every expedient in the best rural economy to sustain the Irish farmer—destitute of capital, bereft of legitimate protection, and overwhelmed by poor-rates and taxes—against the free-trade imports of the whole world. The ministerial policy of Great Britain, under sanction of a law which thousands of her loyal subjects deprecated, invitesthe foreign trader from all ports known to the compass to import at a nominal duty, and then suffers him to export in specie only, for his own country! What other ballast have the fleets of foreign vessels conveyed from our shore for the last three yearsbut metallic and bank currency? With such immeasurably unequal competition at his very door, the native grower findsno market for the produce of his honest industry, unless at a price wholly incompatible with the position of a solvent man. He sells, alas! only to lose, and the selfish foreigner is sure of profit on every cheap venture; while his speculation renders no equivalent whatever to the revenue or taxation of that state which encourages his importations at the expense of our own independence; for the permanent independence of those kingdoms implies the prosperity of Irish produce, and its preference in the Englishmarket. Ireland, unfortunately, has no trade or manufacture to employ her people, and wherefore is best known to England; but her only staple, agriculture, which all nations, ancient and modern, loved to cultivate, will soon be little more than a name. The causes and effects of this disastrous revolution the philosopher and historian will hereafter do justice to. A preparatory meeting, relative to the above, is now being held, with closed doors, in the county court, Lord Monteagle in the chair. Poor-rate was the monster grievance of discussion. The meeting broke up at 3 o'clock, it having been decided to collect facts from every district of the country in connexion with taxation and valuation of property."—Limerick Chronicle, of Saturday, Oct. 26.
"The Land Question.—A letter from Kilrush, dated the 27th inst., and published in theClare Journal, says:—'So eager are the country farmers to make sale of their grain, that every day is a market. Two causes seem to influence them; first, their present and urgent necessities press upon them, and, secondly, an opinion prevails, which appears not to be confined to the west, that it is more secure to have the money in their pockets than to leave the crop to become a prey to agent or poor-rate collector; and also that, in the event of no reduction being made in the annual rent, they may have no difficulty in walking off. Such are the feelings operating on the minds of the majority of the farmers in this locality. It is now too plain and obvious, that should a reduction in the rents take place here, it will come two years too late, as the greater number of the farmers (formerly comfortable) have not as much as would support their families for half the coming year. This is a sad but true state of things, in a district where, some few years since, the rents were paid, perhaps, more regularly than in any other part of the south of Ireland. A few have left their holdings, after selling every article, leaving the naked walls of a house to the landlord, and gone to a neighbouring townland, where the quality and cheapness of the land presented a greater encouragement; but such cases of flying tenants have become so common of late, that every paper teems with similar statements.If we are to have the land cultivated here, the rents must not only be reduced to half the former price, but the tenant must be assisted to set the crop, and encouraged to introduce a proper method of cultivation, otherwise the land will be left idle, andthe majority of the present occupiers will become inmates of the workhouse.'"—Times, Oct. 31, 1849.
"There must also be taken into account the dire domestic privations endured for the last three years of famine, the general flight of tenants with the landlords' rent, the desertion of the land, impoverished to the last degree by the runaways, yet for whose dishonesty and abuse of solemn contract the unfortunate proprietor is held responsible—the abandoned farms being still subject to accumulation of poor-rate and taxes. Then come the distraint, the impounding, the sale and sacrifice of property; while the home market,swamped by free trade with foreigners, has left landlord and farmer no help or resource whatever to bear up against the intolerable oppression of financial burdens, sanctioned by law, under the free constitution of Great Britain! One case of grievous suffering by a respectable family in this county was communicated to the preparatory meeting on Saturday last, by one of the gentlemen present. The possessor of a rent-roll of £1500 a-year landed estate, which netted £1200annually four years ago, was absolutely compelled to subsist with his wife and seven children for three months of the past twelve, without the ordinary comfort of a meat dinner; a cup of weak tea or coffee, and the vegetables of the kitchen-garden, commonly furnishing the table of this most wretched household! Incredible and appalling as this may appear, we have been assured it is not a solitary instance of the excessive want and privation known to exist."—Times, Nov. 4, 1849.
So much for the working of free trade and a restricted currency in the Emerald Isle. One would suppose, in reading these melancholy accounts, we were not dealing with any people in modern times, but transported back to those dismal periods, after the fall of the Roman empire, when the contemporary annalists contemplated the extinction of the human race, from the desolation of some of its provinces.
This dreadful state of things in Ireland is but a repetition of what, under the operation of these causes, aided by the fatal step of unqualified emancipation, has for some years been going on in the West Indies. We have not room to enlarge on this prolific subject, teeming as it does with facts illustrative of the effects of the free-trade system. They are generally known. Suffice it to say, theWest Indies are totally ruined. British colonies, on which £120,000,000 sterling has been expended, and which fifteen years ago produced £22,000,000 worth of agricultural produce annually, have been irrecoverably destroyed. Thefee-simple of all the estates they contain would not sell for £5,000,000 sterling. We know an estate in the West Indies, which formerly used to net £1500 a-year, and to which £7000 worth of the best new machinery was sent within the last five years, which the proprietor would be too happy to sell, machinery and all, for £5000.
Canadahas lately shared largely in the moral earthquake which has so violently shaken all parts of the British empire. We subjoin an extract from the temperate and dignified statement of their grievances, lately published by 350 of the leading men at Montreal, to show how largely free trade enters into them.
"Belonging to all parties, origins, and creeds, but yet agreed upon the advantage of co-operation for the performance of a common duty to ourselves and our country, growing out of a common necessity, we have consented, in view of a brighter and happier future, to merge in oblivion all past differences, of whatever character, or attributable to whatever source. In appealing to our fellow-colonists to unite with us in this our most needful duty, we solemnly conjure them, as they desire a successful issue, and the welfare of their country, to enter upon the task, at this momentous crisis, in the same fraternal spirit.The reversal of the ancient policy of Great Britain, whereby she withdrew from the colonies their wonted protection in her markets, has produced the most disastrous effects upon Canada.In surveying the actual condition of the country, whatbut ruin or rapid decay meets the eye? Our provincial government and civic corporations embarrassed; our banking and other securities greatly depreciated; our mercantile and agricultural interests alike unprosperous; real estate scarcely saleable upon any terms; our unrivalled rivers, lakes, and canals almost unused; while commerce abandons our shores,the circulating capital amassed under a more favourable system is dissipated, with none from any quarter to replace it! Thus, without available capital, unable to effect a loan with foreign states, or with the mother country, although offering security greatly superior to that which readily obtains money both from the United States and Great Britain, when other than colonists are the applicants:—crippled, therefore, and checked in the full career of private and public enterprise, this possession of the British crown—our country—stands before the world in humiliating contrast with its immediate neighbours, exhibiting every symptom of a nation fast sinking to decay.With superabundant water-power and cheap labour, especially in Lower Canada, we have yet no domestic manufactures; nor can the most sanguine, unless under altered circumstances, anticipate the home growth, or advent from foreign parts, of either capital or enterprise to embark in this great source of national wealth. Our institutions, unhappily, have not that impress of permanence which can alone impart security and inspire confidence, and the Canadian market is too limited to tempt the foreign capitalist.While the adjoining states are covered with a network of thriving railways, Canada possesses but three lines, which, together, scarcely exceed fifty miles in length, and the stock in two of which is held at a depreciation of from 50 to 80 per cent—a fatal symptom of the torpor overspreading the land."—Times, Oct. 31.
"Belonging to all parties, origins, and creeds, but yet agreed upon the advantage of co-operation for the performance of a common duty to ourselves and our country, growing out of a common necessity, we have consented, in view of a brighter and happier future, to merge in oblivion all past differences, of whatever character, or attributable to whatever source. In appealing to our fellow-colonists to unite with us in this our most needful duty, we solemnly conjure them, as they desire a successful issue, and the welfare of their country, to enter upon the task, at this momentous crisis, in the same fraternal spirit.
The reversal of the ancient policy of Great Britain, whereby she withdrew from the colonies their wonted protection in her markets, has produced the most disastrous effects upon Canada.In surveying the actual condition of the country, whatbut ruin or rapid decay meets the eye? Our provincial government and civic corporations embarrassed; our banking and other securities greatly depreciated; our mercantile and agricultural interests alike unprosperous; real estate scarcely saleable upon any terms; our unrivalled rivers, lakes, and canals almost unused; while commerce abandons our shores,the circulating capital amassed under a more favourable system is dissipated, with none from any quarter to replace it! Thus, without available capital, unable to effect a loan with foreign states, or with the mother country, although offering security greatly superior to that which readily obtains money both from the United States and Great Britain, when other than colonists are the applicants:—crippled, therefore, and checked in the full career of private and public enterprise, this possession of the British crown—our country—stands before the world in humiliating contrast with its immediate neighbours, exhibiting every symptom of a nation fast sinking to decay.
With superabundant water-power and cheap labour, especially in Lower Canada, we have yet no domestic manufactures; nor can the most sanguine, unless under altered circumstances, anticipate the home growth, or advent from foreign parts, of either capital or enterprise to embark in this great source of national wealth. Our institutions, unhappily, have not that impress of permanence which can alone impart security and inspire confidence, and the Canadian market is too limited to tempt the foreign capitalist.
While the adjoining states are covered with a network of thriving railways, Canada possesses but three lines, which, together, scarcely exceed fifty miles in length, and the stock in two of which is held at a depreciation of from 50 to 80 per cent—a fatal symptom of the torpor overspreading the land."—Times, Oct. 31.
In what graphic terms are the inevitable results of free trade and a restricted currency here portrayed by the sufferers under their effects! Colonial protection withdrawn; home industry swamped by foreign; canals unused! banks alarmed; capital dissipated; rivers and harbours untenanted; property unsaleable! One would have thought they were transcribing from this magazine some of the numerous passages in which we have predicted its effects. And let England recollect, Canada now employs 1,100,000 of the tonnage of Great Britain. Let it be struck off, and added to the other side, and the British tonnage, employed in carrying on our trade, will, in a few years, bemade less than the foreign.31
One would have thought, from the present state of Canada, that our colonial secretary had followed the advice of Franklin in his "Rules for making agreat Empire a small one."
"If you are told ofdiscontentsin your colonies, never believe that they are general, or that you have given occasion for them; therefore,do not think of applying any remedy or of changing any offensive measure. Redress no grievance, lest they should be encouraged to demand the redress of some other grievance. Yield no redress that is just and reasonable, lest they should make another demand that is unreasonable.Take all your informations of the state of your colonies from your governorsand officers in enmity with them....If you seerival nationsrejoicing at the prospect of your disunion with your provinces, and endeavouring to promote it—if they translate, publish, and applaud all the complaints of your discontented colonists, at the same time privately stimulating you to severer measures—let not that alarm or offend you. Why should it? You all mean the same thing."—(Rules 16 and 17.)
"If you are told ofdiscontentsin your colonies, never believe that they are general, or that you have given occasion for them; therefore,do not think of applying any remedy or of changing any offensive measure. Redress no grievance, lest they should be encouraged to demand the redress of some other grievance. Yield no redress that is just and reasonable, lest they should make another demand that is unreasonable.Take all your informations of the state of your colonies from your governorsand officers in enmity with them....
If you seerival nationsrejoicing at the prospect of your disunion with your provinces, and endeavouring to promote it—if they translate, publish, and applaud all the complaints of your discontented colonists, at the same time privately stimulating you to severer measures—let not that alarm or offend you. Why should it? You all mean the same thing."—(Rules 16 and 17.)
If our rulers had followed the advice of the sages of former times, instead of the theories of modern bullionists and interested parties, they would have avoided this unparalleled accumulation of disasters. Hear the greatest and wisest of men, Lord Bacon, on the subject:—
"'For the home trade I first commend to your consideration the encouragement of tillage, which will enable the kingdom to provide corn for the natives, and to spare for importation; and I myself have known more than once, when in times of dearth, in Queen Elizabeth's days, it drained much coin of the kingdom to furnish us with corn from foreign parts.'He added also—'Let the foundation of a profitable trade be so laid that the exportation of home commodities be more in value than the importation of foreign, so we shall be sure that the stocks of the kingdom shall yearly increase, for then the balance of trade must be returned in money.'And Lord Bacon went on to give this wholesome piece of advice:—'Instead of crying up all things which are either brought from beyond sea or wrought by the hands of strangers, let us advance the native commodities of our own kingdom, and employ our own countrymen before strangers.'"—Bacon's Essays."Trade," says Locke, "is necessary to the production of riches,and money to the carrying on of trade. This is principally to be looked after, and taken care of; for if this be neglected, we shall in vain, by contrivances among ourselves, and shuffling the little money we have from one hand to another, endeavour to prevent our wants: decay of trade will quickly waste all the remainder; and then the landed man, who thinks, perhaps, by the fall of interest, to raise the value of his land, will find himself cruelly mistaken, when, the money being gone, (as it will be if our trade be not kept up,) he can get neither farmer to rent, nor purchaser to buy, his land."..."If one-third of the money employed in trade were locked up or gone out of England, must not the landlords receive one-third less for their goods, and, consequently, rents fall—a less quantity of money by one-third being to be distributed amongst an equal number of receivers? Indeed, people, not perceiving the money to be gone, are apt to be jealous, one of another; and each suspecting another's inequality of gain to rob him of his share, every one will be employing his skill and power, the best he can, to retrieve it again, and to bring money into his pocket in the same plenty as formerly. But this is but scrambling amongst ourselves, and helps no more against our wants than the pulling of a short coverlid will, amongst children that lie together, preserve them all from the cold—some will starve, unless the father of the family provide better, and enlarge the scanty covering. This pulling and contest is usually between the candid man and the merchant."—Locke'sWorks, v. 14, 70, 71.Considerations on Rate of Interest and Raising the Value of Money.
"'For the home trade I first commend to your consideration the encouragement of tillage, which will enable the kingdom to provide corn for the natives, and to spare for importation; and I myself have known more than once, when in times of dearth, in Queen Elizabeth's days, it drained much coin of the kingdom to furnish us with corn from foreign parts.'
He added also—
'Let the foundation of a profitable trade be so laid that the exportation of home commodities be more in value than the importation of foreign, so we shall be sure that the stocks of the kingdom shall yearly increase, for then the balance of trade must be returned in money.'
And Lord Bacon went on to give this wholesome piece of advice:—
'Instead of crying up all things which are either brought from beyond sea or wrought by the hands of strangers, let us advance the native commodities of our own kingdom, and employ our own countrymen before strangers.'"—Bacon's Essays.
"Trade," says Locke, "is necessary to the production of riches,and money to the carrying on of trade. This is principally to be looked after, and taken care of; for if this be neglected, we shall in vain, by contrivances among ourselves, and shuffling the little money we have from one hand to another, endeavour to prevent our wants: decay of trade will quickly waste all the remainder; and then the landed man, who thinks, perhaps, by the fall of interest, to raise the value of his land, will find himself cruelly mistaken, when, the money being gone, (as it will be if our trade be not kept up,) he can get neither farmer to rent, nor purchaser to buy, his land."...
"If one-third of the money employed in trade were locked up or gone out of England, must not the landlords receive one-third less for their goods, and, consequently, rents fall—a less quantity of money by one-third being to be distributed amongst an equal number of receivers? Indeed, people, not perceiving the money to be gone, are apt to be jealous, one of another; and each suspecting another's inequality of gain to rob him of his share, every one will be employing his skill and power, the best he can, to retrieve it again, and to bring money into his pocket in the same plenty as formerly. But this is but scrambling amongst ourselves, and helps no more against our wants than the pulling of a short coverlid will, amongst children that lie together, preserve them all from the cold—some will starve, unless the father of the family provide better, and enlarge the scanty covering. This pulling and contest is usually between the candid man and the merchant."—Locke'sWorks, v. 14, 70, 71.Considerations on Rate of Interest and Raising the Value of Money.
We add only the opinion of a great authority with the Free-traders, Mr Malthus, which seems almost prophetic of what is now passing in this country. We are indebted for it to theMorning Post, which has consistently argued the doctrines of protection and an adequate currency since they were first assailed.
"If the price of corn were to fall to 50s.a quarter, and labour and other commodities nearly in proportion, there can be no doubt that the stockholder would be benefited unfairly at the expense of the industrious classes of society. During the twenty years, beginning with 1794, and ending with 1813, the average price of wheat was about 83s.; during ten years, ending with 1813, 92s.; and during the last five years of this same twenty, the price was 108s. In the course of these twenty years, government borrowed near £500,000,000 of real capital, exclusive of the sinking fund, at the rate of about five per cent interest. But if corn shall fall to 50s. a quarter, and other commodities in proportion, instead of an interest of five per cent., the government will really pay an interest of seven, eight, and nine, and for the last £200,000,000, of ten per cent. This must be paid by the industrious classes of society, and by the landlords; that is, by all those whose nominal incomes vary with the variations in the measure of value; and if we completelysucceed in the reduction of the price of corn and labour, this increased interest must be paid in future from a revenue of abouthalf the nominal value of the national income in 1813. If we consider with what an increased weight the taxes on tea, sugar, malt, soap, candles, &c., would in this case bear on the labouring classes of society, and what proportion of their income all the active, industrious middle orders of the state, as well as the higher orders, must pay, in assessed taxes and the various articles of custom and excise,the pressure will appear to be absolutely intolerable. Indeed, if the measure of value were really to fall as we have supposed, there is great reason to fear that the country would beabsolutely unable to continue the payment of the present interest of the national debt."—Malthus's Essays.
"If the price of corn were to fall to 50s.a quarter, and labour and other commodities nearly in proportion, there can be no doubt that the stockholder would be benefited unfairly at the expense of the industrious classes of society. During the twenty years, beginning with 1794, and ending with 1813, the average price of wheat was about 83s.; during ten years, ending with 1813, 92s.; and during the last five years of this same twenty, the price was 108s. In the course of these twenty years, government borrowed near £500,000,000 of real capital, exclusive of the sinking fund, at the rate of about five per cent interest. But if corn shall fall to 50s. a quarter, and other commodities in proportion, instead of an interest of five per cent., the government will really pay an interest of seven, eight, and nine, and for the last £200,000,000, of ten per cent. This must be paid by the industrious classes of society, and by the landlords; that is, by all those whose nominal incomes vary with the variations in the measure of value; and if we completelysucceed in the reduction of the price of corn and labour, this increased interest must be paid in future from a revenue of abouthalf the nominal value of the national income in 1813. If we consider with what an increased weight the taxes on tea, sugar, malt, soap, candles, &c., would in this case bear on the labouring classes of society, and what proportion of their income all the active, industrious middle orders of the state, as well as the higher orders, must pay, in assessed taxes and the various articles of custom and excise,the pressure will appear to be absolutely intolerable. Indeed, if the measure of value were really to fall as we have supposed, there is great reason to fear that the country would beabsolutely unable to continue the payment of the present interest of the national debt."—Malthus's Essays.
This was Mr Malthus's anticipation of the effect of wheat falling to 50s. What would he have said of it at 40s., its present average price? We recommend the concluding paragraph to the notice of the fund-holders, by whose influence the late changes have mainly been introduced.
But let the Free-traders be of good cheer—they have done marvellous things. They have accomplished what no British statesmen, since the days of Alfred, have been able to effect. They have stopped the growth of our population, and, for the first time for four centuries, rendered it retrograde. They have sent from two hundred and fifty to three hundred thousand people yearly out of the country, for three years, in search of food. They have lowered the Irish circulation of notes a half. They have, with one blow, swamped the Poor-law Amendment Act in England, and rendered rates higher, even with prices extremely low, than they ever were in English history. They have extirpated 200,000 cultivators in Ireland. They have cut £80,000,000 a-year off from the remuneration of cultivation and the encouragement of the home market to our manufactures in Great Britain. They have lowered railway property more than a half. They have destroyed, at least, a half of the whole commercial and trading wealth of the manufacturing towns. They have made the nation dependant, in two years, for a fourth of its subsistence on foreign states. They have rendered the maintenance of the national independence, if the present system is persisted in, impossible. They have destroyed £100,000,000 worth of property in the West Indies. They have sown the seeds of revolt in Canada, and rendered its separation, at no distant period, from Great Britain a matter of certainty. They have repealed the Navigation Laws, and thereby cut off the right arm of our naval strength. They are fast laying the seeds of dismemberment in our colonial empire. They will soon reduce, if unchecked in their career, the immense empire of England to two islands, oppressed with taxes, eaten up by paupers, importing a third of their annual subsistence from foreign states, brought in in foreign bottoms. These are the effects ofFREE TRADE AT ITS ZENITH. What will they be at its Nadir?