GOLD—EMIGRATION—FOREIGN DEPENDENCE—TAXATION.
Before the following pages issue from the press, the contest involved in the Parliamentary Elections will be over. It is useless to speculate, therefore, on what will so soon be determined by a result which, for the time at least, will settle who is to hold the reins of power. Recording our confident hope that the Conservative party will obtain such a majority as may enable them to carry on the Government on those principles which can alone heal the wounds and allay the feuds which the policy of their predecessors have implanted in this country, it is of more importance at this time to inquire into the great and lasting interests of the nation, and the present circumstances in our ever-changing situation which most loudly call for attention, and must ere long force themselves upon the consideration of whatever Government is placed by the people at the head of affairs. The observations we are to offer are chiefly of a practical and remedial kind; for the changes to which they refer are such as are altogether beyond the reach of dispute, and on which all parties, however much divided on other subjects, are agreed.
The first of these subjects, in point of importance, beyond all question, both to the present interests and future destinies of the Empire, is the vast increase in the annual supply of gold for the use of the globe, which the late discoveries in California and Australia have made. Here, fortunately, there is no room for dispute; and, in fact, there is no dispute about the facts. It is conceded on all sides that the annual supply of the precious metals, before the new discoveries, was somewhat below £10,000,000 a-year; of which about £6,000,000 was the annual waste by the wearing of coin, or the absorption of the precious metals in objects of luxury; and that before the end of 1851 this annual supply had risen to £30,000,000. There has been very little addition to the annual waste; so that the quantity annually added to the sum total of the precious metals in this world has been multiplied at leastfivefoldduring the last three years. It has risen from £4,000,000 annually to at least £20,000,000. And the recent accounts from Australia leave no room for doubt that this increase in the supply, how great soever, will be largely added to; for it appears that from 9th October to 9th April the yield of the Australian gold mines was above £3,000,000; and there appears to be no limits to the extent of the auriferous regions. It is quite certain, therefore, that the annual addition to the stock of the precious metals in the globe, will this year, and for a long period to come, be at leastSIX TIMESwhat it was before Providence revealed these hidden treasures to a suffering world.
The effect of this upon the price of gold may be judged of by the fact, that that metal is now selling at Melbourne for £3 an ounce, while the Mint price is £3, 17s. 10½d., which the bank is still obliged to give for all the gold brought to its doors! Sir Robert Peel said that “he could not by any effort of his understanding form any other idea of a pound sterling but a certain determinateweight of gold metal;” and theTimes, in the pride of its heart at the vast effect of his monetary system in depressing the price of produce of every soil, and enhancing the value of money, boasted, within the last three years, that that system “hadrendered the sovereign worth two sovereigns.” We have not observed lately anything said in that able journal about the incomparable steadiness of a standard of value founded on “a determinate weight of gold;” nor do we hear any repetition, by its gifted authors, of its boasts about having rendered “the sovereign worth two sovereigns.” On the contrary, according to their usual system, when they see a change fairly set in, and likely to be lasting, they have gone at once over to the other side, and fairly out-Heroded Herod in their estimate of the prodigious effect upon general prices of the vast additions recently made to the metallic treasures of the world. The journal which was so strong upon Sir Robert Peel’s policy having rendered the sovereign worth two sovereigns, has lately issued the following just and striking observations upon the probable effect on prices of all sorts of the entire repeal of that policy by the hand of nature:—
“To arrive at an exact solution, it would be necessary to ascertain the amount of gold and silver in the world, and the present annual consumption for coinage and the arts. This is impossible, and conjectural quantities must consequently be taken. The total of coin has been guessed at £400,000,000. Of this £150,000,000 may be assumed to be gold, and £250,000,000 silver. The annual consumption of gold is believed to be under £6,000,000.
“Starting with these figures, if the demand for gold were likely to continue limited to its ordinary amount, an estimate of the effect of the supplies now pouring upon us could easily be formed. Those supplies within the few years since the discovery of California have probably in the aggregate left us an excess of upwards of £30,000,000 over what has hitherto been found sufficient for current wants, and to maintain an equilibrium in the general relations of property. The increase, therefore, has been equal to 20 per cent on the whole sum in existence; in other words, the measure of value would appear to have been extended one-fifth, (just as if a 25-inch measure were extended to 30 inches,) and hence the effect to be looked for is obvious. Where gold is the standard, the price of every article adjusts itself to the relation it bears to that metal. If sovereigns were twice as numerous, a man would demand two where he now takes one. An increase of 20 per cent in the supply should, therefore, have been followed by a proportionate advance in the nominal value of all things.
“We have now, however, to consider the future. So long as there is any silver, to be supplanted in countries where, owing to the existence of a double standard, it is optional for the debtor to pay either in gold or in silver, the effects of the increased production will continue to be extended to both metals, and consequently, if the surplus of gold this year should be, as has been estimated, £25,000,000, its influence upon prices could be but 6 or 7 per cent. But the period must rapidly approach when the displacement of silver will have ended, and when the changes brought about will be upon gold alone. In France the existing amount of silver is still, doubtless, very large; but this is not the case in the United States, and the proposed law by which the coins below a dollar are to be deteriorated 6.91 per cent will prevent for the present any action upon that portion of the stock. In Germany the debased state of the silver coinage will likewise for a long time preserve it from displacement. In Holland, silver has been already established as the standard, and cannot therefore be driven out. With regard to Eastern nations, it is difficult to form any estimate. On the whole, however, we may infer the possibility of the displacement process still occupying three or four years, and that during that time, therefore, the effects to be produced will be spread, as they have thus far been, over both metals.
“At the end of that period, the consequences will be felt by gold alone, and the relations of property measured by a gold standard will proportionably exhibit a more rapid disturbance. At the same time, it must not be overlooked that the increase of gold each year will have meanwhile diminished the per-centage of alteration which would otherwise take place. For instance, the total amount of gold in the world, which is now assumed at £150,000,000, would then possibly be £250,000,000; and a production which, operating upon the first sum, would cause a rise in prices of 10 per cent, would, under those circumstances, cause only an additional rise of 6 per cent. This is a feature of great importance in the whole question, because it will constantly tend to counteract that increasing ratio of disturbance which might be anticipated if the supply of each succeeding year should prove larger and larger. It is likewise to be borne in mind that, with a diminution in the purchasing power of gold, there will be a proportionate diminution in the inducement to seek it. If the quantity of gold were doubled to-morrow, a man who is at present content to work for one ounce a-week would then not be satisfied with less than two ounces.
“In the face, however, of these qualifying circumstances, and of the uncertainty of all the assumed totals that have been dealt with, it will be plain to most persons that there is enough tosuggest some very decided ideas as to the main results that are coming on. A mistake of a hundred millions in the figures one way or the other would only make a difference of three or four years (where the annual supply is at the rate of £30,000,000) in the date of fulfilment. Even if we were to take the whole £400,000,000 of assumed money as liable to be acted upon,it would require little more than fifteen years of the existing production to cause an alteration in the relations of property of 50 per cent.”—Times, June 20, 1852.
These are abundantly curious statements to come from the leading journal in the monied interest, which has so long supported Sir Robert Peel’s monetary policy, which went to make money dear and everything else cheap, and boasted, with smiling complacency, that he had succeeded in making the sovereign worth two sovereigns, and of course doubling the weight of every tax and shilling of debt, public and private, throughout the realm. So great a change makes us despair of nothing; and we even look forward with some confidence to the advent of a period whenThe Times, as a “State necessity” which can no longer be avoided, will be the first to advocate a return to protection on every species of industry within the realm.
We should greatly err if we measured the effects of this vast addition to the metallic treasures of the globe merely by its effect in raising prices, great and important as that effect undoubtedly is. That it will raise prices, gradually, indeed, but certainly, so that in twenty years they will have reached the level they had attained during the extensive demand and plentiful paper circulation of the war, may be considered certain. No human power can arrest the change any more than it can the rays of summer or the rains of autumn; and, therefore, all concerned—money-lenders, money-borrowers, capitalists, landlords, farmers, and manufacturers—had just as well make up their minds to it asun fait accompli, and regulate their measures and calculations accordingly. But a still more important effect, in reference to our laws and social condition in the mean time, is to be found in its tendency tokeep the paper circulation out, and allay the apprehensions of bankers and money-lenders as to the risks of extending their issues, from a dread of an approaching monetary crisis, and a run upon their establishments for a conversion of their notes into gold.
These monetary crises, which have occurred so often, and been attended with such devastation, during the last thirty years, were all of artificial creation. They were never known before the fatal system was introduced of considering paper not as asubstitute for, but as arepresentative of gold, and of course entirely dependent for its extension or contraction upon the retention of, or a drain upon, the reserves of the precious metals. It is to the Bullion Committee of 1810, and the adoption of its doctrines by Sir Robert Peel by the Bill of 1819, that we owe that fatal change which not only deprived us of the chief advantages of credit, but converted it into the source of the mostunmeasured evil, by stimulating industry in the most unbounded way at one time, and as suddenly and violently contracting it at another. The true use of a paper circulation, properly based, judiciously issued, and founded upon credit, is just the reverse: it is to supply the circulation, and keep it at the level which the wants of the community require in those periods of necessary periodical recurrence to every mercantile state, when the precious metals are drained away in large quantities by the necessities of war or the demands of a fluctuating commerce; and when, unless its place is supplied by the enlarged issue of paper, nothing but ruin and misery to all persons engaged in industrial occupations can ensue. Supplied by such a succedaneum, the most entire departure of the precious metals is attended, as was proved in 1810, by no sort of distress, either to the nation or the individuals of which it is composed. Without such a reserve to fall back upon—or, what is worse, with the reserve itself rendered dependent on the retention of the precious metals—any considerable drain upon them is the certain forerunner, as was proved in 1825 and 1847, of the most unbounded public and private calamities.
The gold of California and Australia has not entirely obviated these dangers, but it has greatly diminished the chance of their recurrence. It is still true that a sudden drain of gold for exportation, either for the purposes of commerce or the necessities of war, might, as in times past, occasion such a demand for gold on the Bank of England as would render defensive measures on the part of the Bank a matter of necessity. Till the Bank is authorised by law on such an emergence to issue an increased quantity of notesnot convertible into gold, absolute security cannot be obtained against such a catastrophe. But when the supply of gold from California and Australia is so great that £1,250,000 is received from the latter, as it has lately been, inthree weeks, and the bullion in the vaults of the Bank of England amounts to £22,220,000,nearly a million more than its whole notes in circulation, it is obvious that the chances of any such calamity are very much diminished. An ample supply has been provided by Providence for the necessities in currency, not merely of this country, but of the entire earth, and therefore the chances of any violent contraction being rendered necessary by the sudden and extensive exportation of the precious metals have been greatly diminished.
The people of Great Britain may await in patience the inevitable result of the vast increase in the supply of the precious metals upon the prices of every article of commerce. That effect is undoubtedly, at present, anarrest of the fallwhich has so long been felt as so distressing by producers and holders of commodities; and this will be followed by a gradual but uninterrupted, and, at length, very great rise of prices. Beyond all doubt, the war prices will be restored before ten years have elapsed; and if the supplies of gold shall go on as they have done for the last two years, before twenty years are over prices will be doubled. Interested parties may complain as they like of this change—the thing is inevitable, and must be submitted to. They might just as well complain of the extension of the day in spring, or its contraction in autumn; the certainty of death, or the liability to disease. It is of more importance to form a clear idea of what the effects of this rise of prices will really be, both upon the producing and consuming classes, and to show the people how they should be on their guard against the attempts which will to a certainty be made to deprive them of the benefits designed for them by Providence.
To the industrial classes, whether in the produce of land, mines, or manufactures, it need hardly be said that this gradual rise of prices will be the greatest of all possible blessings. They may easily prognosticate what these will be: experience has given them a clear mode of estimating them. They have only to figure to themselves thevery reverseof the whole seasons of distress which they have experienced during the last thirty-five years, to foresee their destiny. We shall not say that their condition will resemble what it was during the periods of excitement of 1824, 1836, or 1845; because these were artificial periods, when the effects of our monetary laws acted as ruinously in fostering speculation, as they did in the years immediately following in contracting the currency by which it was to be carried on. The change, in this instance, like all those induced by the wisdom of Nature, not occasioned by the folly or precipitation of man, will be gradual in its operation. The rise of prices will be so slow that it will from year to year be scarcely perceptible. From ten years, however, to ten years, it will be very conspicuous, and produce most important effects upon the progress of society. It will be gradual, but ceaseless, and unaccompanied by any of those vacillations which, under our monetary laws for the last thirty years, have produced such frightful devastation.
Nor need the consuming classes be under any apprehension that this rise of prices, which it is altogether beyond their power to prevent, will in the end prove detrimental to their interests. But for the delusions which, for their own purposes, the Free-Trade party have diffused through the world, it would have been superfluous, and in truth ridiculous, to have said anything on this subject. Every consumer stands on some producer:ex nihilo nihil fit. Is any argument required to show that the former cannot be in the long run injured by the bettering of the condition of the latter, by whose industry he is maintained? It is as clear as any proposition in geometry, that if the producing classes are kept in a prosperous condition, there must every year be an addition made to the sum total of the produce, which is divided among, and maintains thefainéantsconsumers. Those who depend upon fixed money-payments, indeed—as fundholders, annuitants, bondholders, and the like—will, in the first instance, undoubtedly be placed in a worse condition, because the money they receive will not go so far in the purchase of commodities as it once did. But this evil will even to them be in a degree compensated by the superior steadiness in money transactions, which a plentiful circulating medium never fails to induce, and the absence of those periodical monetary crises, the result of faulty legislation, which have so often in the last thirty years swallowed up the investments deemed the most secure.
The great and lasting relief to the nation which this gradual but certain rise in the money price of every species of produce cannot fail to produce, is the sensible diminution it will occasion in the weight of debts and taxes. If prices return, as in all probability they will, to the war level, there will be no greater difficulty in raising an adequate revenue for the State than there was during its continuance. The excuse that we cannot afford to defend ourselves, from our having become so very poor amidst our boasted Free Trade riches, will no longer avail. The taxes of £50,000,000 a-year will be practically reduced to £25,000,000; the debt of £800,000,000 to £400,000,000. The private debts, mortgages, and bonds, of £1,000,000,000, will be virtually reduced to £500,000,000. These are immense blessings, the consequence of Nature having reversed Sir R. Peel’s monetary policy, which, by rendering the sovereign, as theTimesboasted, worth two sovereigns, had to all practical purposes doubled those burdens; and they are worth tenfold more, even in a pecuniary point of view, than all that the Liberal party by their cry for economy have effected for the country during the last half-century.
But the very magnitude of these blessings which are in store for the nation, if it is not cheated out of them, renders it the more necessary that theutmost vigilanceshould be exerted, lest, by cunning on the one side, and supineness on the other, they are lost. Rely upon it, the monied class who have seen their realised capital doubled in value and practical amount, during the last thirty years, by Sir R. Peel’s artificial scarcity of the currency, will do their utmost to prevent the effects of the extension of it by Nature. Possibly they may endeavour to do this by withdrawing a large part, if not the whole, of the five-pound notes from circulation. Possibly they may attempt it by altering the standard, as by increasing the weight and quantity of gold in a pound. There is little danger of their succeeding in the first, because the inconvenience of carrying about large sums in so heavy an article as gold, will soon, as was the case with the abolition of the Sunday delivery of letters, compel their re-issue. But there is much more danger that they will succeed in the last, and, by increasing the quantity of gold in a pound sterling in proportion to the fall in its value, succeed in keeping prices at their present low level, notwithstanding all the addition which California and Australia have made to the circulating medium of the globe. Sir Robert Peel said that he could not, by any effort of his understanding, attach any other idea to a pound sterling, but “a certain determinate weight of gold bullion.” But that was when gold was every day becoming scarcer and more valuable, and therefore the value of all realised fortunes measured by that pound was daily increasing. Now that it is daily diminishing, we venture to predict that his followers will discover they can attachsome other idea to a pound than a certain number of pennyweights of gold. Their ideas will become expansive, and the pound will swell out with them. Having doubled their realised fortunes at the expense of the industrious classes when they had made money scarce, they will strive to prevent their wealth being restored to its original dimensions when the precious metals are becoming plentiful. If the standard is changed in proportion to the fall in the value of gold,though it was religiously upheld when it was dear and scarce, the result will be that the weight of debt and taxes will remain just what they were; prices measured by gold will continue nearly at their present level; and all the encouragement to industry, and relief from burdens, which must ensue from the extension of the currency, if the standard is maintained at its present weight, will be lost to the nation.
It is of the utmost moment also that all classes should be made fully aware that the evils of Free Trade to the native industry of this country will not be in any sensible degree alleviated—nay, that they will in all probability in the end be increased—by the increase of the supplies of gold for the use of the world. The reason is, that it is acatholicor universal blessing, extending over all countries, andaffecting prices, consequently, in a proportional degree in every quarter of the globe. It will, in consequence, leave the relative disadvantage of the old and rich state, in competing with the young and poor one for the supply of agricultural produce, just where it was. If it raises the price of wheat in the English market from 40s. a quarter to 60s., which in ten years, at the present rate of supply, will probably be the case, it will as certainly raise the price in Dantzic from 18s. to 27s., leaving the English farmerstill at the same disadvantage in competing with his poorer neighbour that he is at present. Nay, the disadvantage will rather be increased; for gold, like every other valuable commodity, will be attracted to the richest country and the best market, and from an unusually large portion of it flowing into England, the effect in elevating prices will be more sensibly felt there than elsewhere. Prices will rise more in proportion in the rich than in the poorer states, where much less of it can be purchased or find its resting-place; so that the last state of the industrious classes, so far as competing with foreign nations is concerned, will be worse than the first. In so far, doubtless, as our agriculturists are depressed by the weight of taxes, they will experience relief from the extension of the currency; but they will derive none save in that way from the change of prices in competing with the foreigner.
Notwithstanding this untoward circumstance, there can be no doubt that the condition of the agricultural classes will be sensibly benefited by the rise of prices, and that the depression under which they have so long suffered from the long-continued fall, will be in a great measure arrested. Great and important political benefits will follow from this change. The undue preponderance of the wealthy classes, and the shopkeepers dependent on them, owing to legislation having doubled their fortunes at the expense of the industrial, will be arrested. As it was the scarcity of money, preponderance given to capital, and depression of industry consequent on the monetary bill of 1819, which, beyond all doubt, brought about the Reform Bill, and with it the sway of the shopkeeping interest in the boroughs, which landed us in Free Trade and all its consequences, agricultural, maritime, and colonial; so a series of effects the very converse of all these may be anticipated from the expansion of the currency which has flowed from the bounty of Nature. We do not say that, in consequence of these changes, any man who now has a vote either should or will lose it; but this we do say, that many men and many places, which have now no voice in the Legislature, will be duly represented. In particular, if the monopoly and preponderance of home capital is broken up, and the interests of industry are duly represented in Parliament, it will be impossible to withhold direct seats in the Imperial Legislature from the Colonies, if Free-Trade principles have not previously severed them from the British Empire.
Connected with this subject of the extension of our circulating medium by the discoveries in California and Australia, is another not less startling, and fraught with not less important consequences upon the future destinies of the country. This is the prodigious increase ofEmigrationwhich has taken place since Free-Trade principles were carried into practice by Sir Robert Peel in 1846. To show the vast effects of that policy, it is only necessary to reflect on the subjoined Table, showing the progress of emigration for six years before and after Free Trade. By a curious coincidence, while by far the greatest part of the immense increase is to be ascribed to the depression of domestic industry by the contraction of the currency and influx of foreign commodities, a certain portion of the great exodus in the last year is to be ascribed to the newly discovered gold regions of the earth.
The emigration for the first four months of 1852, from the twelve principal harbours of Great Britain, was 103,316; nearly the same as in the corresponding period of last year, when it was 103,280. Since that, in May and June, the emigration, especially to the gold regions of Australia, has greatly increased, and it is now going on at the rate of about 5000 a-week. In all probability the emigration this year will reach 350,000, of which at least 50,000 will be to our distant settlements on the shores of Australia.
There is enough to make the most inconsiderate pause, and to fill with the most serious reflections every thoughtful mind. From three hundred to three hundred and fifty thousand persons emigrating from a single country in a single year, and this at the close of a period of six years, during which the average exodus has exceeded two hundred and fifty thousand a-year! Such a fact as this would, at any former period of English history, have excited the utmost alarm in the nation; but so habituated have the people become to disaster since the Free-Trade policy began, and so entirely have they got into the habit of looking only to the moment, and disregarding altogether all remote consequences, that it excites no sort of sensation. The annual increase of the population prior to 1845 was usually considered to be 1000 a-day, or 365,000 a-year; and this was for long a subject of congratulation and boast. The population returns of 1851, however, showed that, down to the end of 1846, it was only 230,000 a-year. But now, as 330,000 emigrants leave the British shores every year, there isAN ANNUAL DECREASE UPON THE WHOLE OF 100,000 SOULS; and that not of infants, or worn-out old persons, but chiefly young men and women in the prime of life.
The Free-Trade party, at a loss to explain this prodigious emigration, at a time when legislative principles were adopted, which, according to them, were diffusing universal prosperity, laboured hard to refer it to other causes. In the first instance, they said it was owing to the Irish famine; in the last, to Nature having scattered gold broadcast over the distant regions of the earth. Both excuses are devoid of foundation. The potato famine occurred in 1846; and since that time the harvests have been so good that,twice over, a public thanksgiving has been returned for that blessing. If Free Trade has really enriched the people of Great Britain, it should only haveenhanced, except for other competitors, the market for Irish wheat, oats, and cattle, in the British Islands. It is rather too late in 1852, six years after the famine of 1846, to be reverting to that calamity as a cause of the present exodus; the more especially as, in the interim, between death and emigration, two millions of souls have disappeared in the Emerald Isle.[7]
The pretext of the immense and increasing emigration being owing to the discovery of the Californian and Australian diggings is equally futile and unfounded. Five thousand a-week are now going there, a large proportion of whom may reasonably be considered as having been set in motion by the El Dorado visions connected with those regions. But supposing that sixty thousand emigrants this year land in Australia, of whom forty thousand have been attracted by the diggings, there will still remain three hundred thousand emigrants who have left the British shores, chiefly for the United States, irrespective of the gold mania. What is the cause of this long-continued exodus of our people?—a state of things not only unparalleled in the previous annals of this country, but unexampled in the whole previous history of the world. There is but one explanation can be given of it: theSpectator, in an able article on this subject, has very candidly stated the cause—it iswant of employmentwhich drives so many abroad. Go where you will among the middle and working-classes, and you will hear this cause assigned as the real reason why so many are going abroad; and equally universal is the lamentation, that the persons going away are the veryéliteof our people—the young, the energetic, the industrious; leaving only children, and aged or decrepit paupers to conduct the industry of the country, and furnish recruits to sustain its future fortunes.
However lightly the Free-Traders may treat the annual decrease of one hundred thousand in our population, and the commencement of a retrograde movement in a nation which has increased incessantly for four hundred years, there is here deep subject for lamentation to every lover of his country, and sincerely interested in its welfare. There can be no question that an increase of the numbers of the people, if accompanied by no decline in their circumstances, is the most decisive proof of public prosperity: the Free-Traders themselves acknowledge this, for they uniformly refer with exultation to any increase, however slight, in marriages, and decline in paupers, which has occurred while their system was in operation. It is impossible to conceive that a nation is thriving under a régime which annually sends from three hundred thousand to three hundred and thirty thousand persons into exile. You might as well say that an individual is thriving under a dysentery, which wastes him away at the rate of two pounds a-day. The bonds of country, home, habit, and companionship, are never broken on a great scale, and for a long time together, by any other force but the force of suffering. A golden El Dorado, a passing famine, may for a single season or two augment considerably the number of emigrants; but these causes are ephemeral in their operation, because the first speedily leads to the fortunate region being choked up with entrants, the last to the wasted one being bereft of inhabitants. But want of employment, declining means of obtaining a livelihood, is a chronic disorder, which presses unceasingly upon the people, and may drive them into exile for every year of a century together. It was this cause, induced also by the free admission of foreign grain, which first ruined the agriculture, and at last put a period to the existence, of the Roman Empire.
As the increase of population in a healthy and thriving state of society leads to an additional increase, and constantly adds to the breadth of the basis on which the pyramid of the national prosperity is rested, so a decline in the numbers of the people is attended by a precisely opposite effect. In the first case, the prosperity of every one class reacts upon the prosperity of every other class; in the last case, their suffering communicates itself in an equally decisive way to every class around them. As thus the great trade of every nation is that which goes on between the town and the country, and each finds its chief market in the wants of the other, it is impossible that either can suffer without the other class dependent on the sale of its produce suffering also. Extraneous causes, simultaneously acting on the market, may for a time prevent this effect becoming conspicuous; but in the long run it is sure to make itself felt. If the farmers are suffering, the manufacturers will speedily experience a falling off in the home markets; if the manufacturers, the farmers are as certain of finding a diminution in the consumption of their rude produce.
It is now ascertained by Captain Larcom’s report, that the wheat grown in Ireland is less by 1,500,000 quarters than it was five years ago; and by the reports of the English markets for home grain, that a shortcoming to a similar amount has taken place in the home supplies of grain for the county markets. 3,000,000 quarters less of wheat is raised in England and Ireland than was done before Free Trade began. Supposing that an equal amount of other kinds of grain has gone out of cultivation, which is a most moderate supposition, seeing that 10,000,000 quarters of foreign grain are now annually imported, when there were not 2,000,000 before, we have 6,000,000 less quarters of grain annually raised in Great Britain than was done before Free Trade was introduced! The defalcation has been nearly as great in the supplies of cattle, sheep, and other animals brought to the English market. Beyond all doubt the value of the produce that is raised has sunk a fourth. The total agricultural produce of the two islands has been estimated, before Free Trade began, at £250,000,000. At this rate, the loss the cultivators have experienced from this source alone is above £60,000,000 a-year. The Free-Traders boast that it is £90,000,000; and considering the diminution in the supplies of grain and cattle raised at home, the estimate is not much overcharged. At all events, it is probably £75,000,000. This is the real cause of the prodigious emigration which is going on from every part of the country; and as this cause is permanent and ceaseless in its operation, the decline of our population may be expected to be as continuous and progressive.
This subject has been so well handled by Sir F. Kelly in his late admirable speech at Harwich, that we cannot resist the temptation of giving it publicity in a more durable form than a daily journal.
“Now let us see what is the quantity of wheat which is produced and sold in this country. In 1844, it was 5,456,307 quarters; in 1845, 6,666,240 quarters; and in 1846, 5,958,962 quarters. You will therefore see that the fair average of that production, taking the three years, was about 6,000,000 quarters of wheat produced by the farmers and cultivators of the soil in England. Now, let us see the years that succeeded 1849, for the returns pass over the intermediate years, before the repeal of the corn laws had a fair trial, during which there was only a gradual reduction of duty. In 1849 the Act of Parliament had complete effect. The production of wheat in 1849 was 4,453,983 quarters; in 1850, 4,688,274 quarters; and in 1851, 4,487,041 quarters. Now, taking the fair average, and speaking in round numbers, that would be a production in England of about 4,500,000 quarters of wheat per annum since the repeal of the corn laws. Then what is the difference?—that in the three years before the repeal of the corn laws the British farmers and cultivators of the soil produced and made a profit on 6,000,000 quarters of wheat, while in the three years succeeding, that important class of the people had fallen off in their production to 4,500,000 quarters. Here was a diminution of wheat in the country of 1,500,000 qrs. per annum. I shall not weary you by going into details figure by figure as to the diminution which has taken place in Scotland and Ireland, but I pledge myself that on these returns it will be found that the diminution is still greater in Ireland, though in Scotland it is somewhat less in proportion. The result of the whole is, that 4,500,000 quarters of wheat less was produced in England, Scotland, and Ireland during the three years after Free Trade had a fair trial, than in the three years before the passing of the act. I do not wish to trouble you further with these very painful details, but I will detain you a single moment while I refer to a return with regard to oats. In the years 1845 and 1846, there were about 2,000,000 quarters of oats produced in each year in this country. In the years 1850 and 1851, the production of oats in the country was under 1,000,000 quarters; so that while you find the falling off in the production of wheat in the country amounts to a quarter of the whole quantity, the production of oats is reduced from 2,000,000 to less than 1,000,000 quarters; and this, gentlemen, is the system of Free Trade which some of my friends among the electors say has been so highly beneficial to the people of this country.
And in answer to the common argument that, despite this rapid decline of agricultural production, the general well-being of the people has increased, Sir Fitzroy observes—
“Now, it has been asserted that the amount of poor-rates levied in the kingdom has been less in the three years since the repeal of the corn laws than in the three years before 1846. But let us look at the amount necessarily levied for the poor in England and Wales during the three years ending 1846, and the three years beginning in 1848 and ending in 1850. In 1845, there was raised for the relief of the poor £6,791,006. (“How much did the poor get out of that?”) I hope the whole of it. This I know, that we paid it all. In 1846, the amount raised was £6,800,623; in 1847, £6,964,825; in 1848, £7,817,430; in 1849,£7,674,146; in 1850, £7,270,493; and in 1851, £6,778,914; making, therefore, in round numbers, a million sterling more than was levied for the relief of the poor before the repeal of the corn laws. Now, it is easy for manufacturers, for those well-paid labourers who have not yet felt the dire and terrible effects of this fatal measure of legislation, to point to themselves, and to laud and rejoice at the increased prosperity of the country. I am not taking Manchester, Liverpool, and Stockport, any more than I do the counties of Suffolk or Essex, but I am taking the entire kingdom; and so far from the system of Free Trade having increased the general prosperity of the country, we find that £1,000,000 a-year more has been required for the support of the poor since than before the repeal of the corn laws, and before the entire system of Free Trade had arrived at its completion. But there is one more criterion by which to judge of the effects of Free Trade. No one will deny that the general prosperity of the country, and the amount of deposits in the savings banks, always proportionately increase. It is always important to see, whether what are called the lower, but I would rather say the labouring classes—a most important class, for on their labours depends not merely the well-being but the very existence of the rest of the community—it is always important to see whether, after any great legislative changes, they are really so far benefited as to be able to confer that great advantage on their families of increasing their deposits in the savings banks. Now, in 1844, the amount of deposits was £29,504,861; in 1845, £30,748,868; and in 1846, £31,743,250. Here we arrive at the dividing line, for in 1846 was passed the measure to which I am now beseeching your cool and calm attention. In the same year it began to operate on that numerous class who contribute deposits to the savings banks, and let us see what was the result. In 1847, the amount fell from £31,743,250 to £30,207,180; in the next year it was £28,114,136; in 1849, it was £28,537,010; and in 1850, £27,198,563. This is the last year to which the returns have been corrected.”
We have not observed any answer attempted by the Liberal papers to these convincing facts; they content themselves with abusing the able gentleman who brought them forward.
These considerations reveal the real causes both of the great exports and imports of last year, and the vast losses with which both were accompanied, and the decline in the main articles of our exports which is now going on. It was the failure of the home market, owing to Free Trade, which did the whole. Finding the customary channels of home consumption falling off, our merchants were constrained, at all hazards, to send their goods abroad, and thence the great exportation, amounting in all to £73,000,000 of goods, accompanied by no profit, but by a loss of £19,000,000, as we showed in a former article on the subject, to the exporters.[8]Finding credit easy, and money easily got from the influence of California, they engaged largely in importations, and swelled our total imports, as Mr Newdegate has proved, to £112,000,000. But the result soon showed them that it is impossible to import profitably into an impoverished country; and as most of these imports were sold at from 15 to 20 per cent below prime cost, implying a loss of not less than £20,000,000 to the importers on our imports, it is easy to say what species of a commerce Free Trade has brought upon the country. It is not surprising in these circumstances that there should now be a great decline in the last quarter, in the exports of our cotton goods, of nearly £500,000, and that the revenue for the year ending July 5, 1852, was above half a million less than in the preceding year.
One thing is very remarkable with reference to this prodigious stream of emigration, that it is allfrom the land of Free Trade to the land of Protection. We are told that Free Trade is the best, and Protection the worst possible thing for the working-classes; and yet above 300,000 of these very working-classes annually leave the realm where that charming thing Free Trade is in full activity, and 500,000 persons from all Europe, of whom 250,000 are from the British isles, annually land in the United States,where the most stringent system of Protection is established! Men do not sell off their whole effects, pack up their little all, and cross the Atlantic, to render their condition worse. And has the 30 per cent levied by the Americans upon all foreign imports, without exception, no hand in inducing and rendering perpetual this immense stream from the British islands to the Transatlantic realms? If the iron-works of America were exposed to the free competition of the iron-masters of South Wales and Lanarkshire, would our iron-moulders and miners go in crowds, as they are now doing, across the Atlantic? If the cotton factories of America were exposed to the competition of those of Great Britain, would our cotton-spinners and weavers be straining, as they now are, every nerve to reach the land of Protection? Nay, if the cultivators of America were not protected by the enormous import duty on wheat and oats, of which the Canadian farmers so bitterly complain, would not discouragement reach even the agriculturists of that great and growing republic? England, which is governed by shopkeepers, may adopt in her commercial policy the maxim that to buy cheap and sell dear comprises the whole of political wisdom: but America, which is governed by the working-classes, has discovered thathigh wages and good pricesare a much better thing; and it is the practical application of this maxim which is the magnet that is attracting in such multitudes the working-classes from Europe—and, above all, from free-trading England and Ireland—to the protected Transatlantic shores.
It is no wonder that the working-classes, whether in agriculture or manufactures, are hiving off in such multitudes from the land of Free Trade, and settling in that of Protection, for the disasters which have overtaken industry under the action of Free Trade, in those quarters where it has first been fully felt, have been absolutely appalling. Look at the West Indies. Lord Derby has told us in the House of Peers—and every post from those once flourishing and now ruined realms bears witness to the fact—that not only are the estates in Jamaica nearly all going out of cultivation, but the inhabitants themselves, ruined by Free Trade, are either leaving the island in quest of employment, or relapsing into barbarism. It is not surprising that this terrible effect is taking place, for a Parliamentary paper lately published gives us the following astounding return of the refined sugar imported into Great Britain and Ireland in the year 1851:—
Here is a result worked by Free Trade, in less than four years after its introduction into the colonies, sufficient to make us hold our breath, and far exceeding what the most gloomy Protectionist ever predicted as the result of Free Trade policy upon the best interests of productive industry in the empire. And the Free-Traders think that they will be vindicated in the eyes of God and man for their frightful devastation, by the reflection that,while it is going on, sugar has fallen to 5d. a pound. We say advisedly, “while it is going on;” for can there be a doubt that, when the work of destruction has been completed, and, by having ruined our own colonies, we are left entirely in the hands of the foreign growers, prices will rise again, not merely to their former, but even a far higher level?
Turn again to Ireland. We shall say nothing of its 2,000,000 labourers who have disappeared from the land in the last five years, or its 1,500,000 quarters of wheat, being half the amount of that cereal it produced, which has gone out of cultivation during the same time. We refer to the report of a Parliamentary commission, a favourite measure of Sir R. Peel’s and the Free Trade party, which demonstrates in the most decisive manner the almost incredible amount of devastation which Free Trade has worked in a few years in the Emerald Isle. It appears from the Report of the Encumbered Estates Commissioners that estates have been sold by them charged with
The figures are given from memory, but they are in round numbers correct. Now we do say, that here is a decisive proof of a destruction of property which would be unexampled in history if the simultaneous ruin of the West Indies may not be considered as a parallel instance. Here is property, which must have been worth, when the debt was contracted, at least £30,000,000 (for £2,000,000 is a very small margin to leave for so huge a mass of debt) sold for less than £6,000,000, beingA FIFTH PART OF ITS FORMER VALUE. The prices which the land fetched, the commissioners tell us, varied fromfour to fourteen years’ purchase, the average being ten years. We question if the history of the world prior to 1846 will afford a parallel instance of ruin of property by pacific legislative measures. It is in vain to ascribe this to the Irish famine: that was over six years ago. Equally vain is it to ascribe it to the savage and lawless character of the Irish peasantry. They were as lawless when creditors advanced £28,000,000 on these estates as they are now, and far more formidable, because not weakened by the loss of 2,000,000 of their numbers; and if changed at all, it should have been for the better, because they have, for the last twenty-two years, been under the government of the Liberals and Free-Traders, such decided friends in principle and practice to the interests of labour, and the welfare of the poor. The frightful decline in value can be ascribed to one cause, and only one—Free Trade in grain—which has laid waste the Emerald Isle as completely in many places asFree Trade in sugarhas devastated the West Indies.
One very curious result has flowed from the effects of Free Trade, in producing so prodigious a flood of emigration from our shores, and of food supplanting native industry to them, that it has in a great degree concealed the effect of the repeal of the Navigation Laws upon our shipping. Man and his food are, it is well known, with the exception of wood for his dwelling, the most bulky of all articles of commerce. It so happens, by a curious coincidence, that the three articles, wood, corn, and human beings, are precisely the ones which Free Trade has caused to cross the ocean in the greatest quantity. Our emigration has risen, as already shown, from an average of 90,000 souls to above 300,000. Above 2000 vessels are employed from Liverpool alone in this annual exodus. The importation of grain has quadrupled: it has risen from an average of 2,500,000 quarters to one of 10,000,000 quarters. The importation of foreign wood has advanced in nearly a similar proportion. Thus changes destructive to the nation’s industry have for the time given a great impetus to its shipping. What, then, must have been the ruinous effects of Free Trade in shipping on our maritime interests, when, despite this extraordinary and unforeseen circumstance, arising from the profit which great seaport towns sometimes derive in the first instance from the causes which are inducing national ruin, so great a decline in our commercial navy has ensued from Free Trade in shipping, that it was publicly stated on the hustings at Liverpool, by one of the greatest merchants in that city, without opposition, that, in five years more, at the present rate,the foreign shipping employed in conducting its gigantic trade would be equal to the British!
The great and rapid decline in the amount of grain raised in the British islands since Free Trade was introduced, is so serious a matter with reference to our national independence, that we gladly avail ourselves of the following statistics, drawn from authentic sources, driven by an able contemporary, on the subject:—
“Wheat sold in the market towns of England and Wales.
“We have taken the three years immediately preceding the commercial changes in 1846; because, up to that period, nothing had occurred to induce our agriculturists to raise less wheat than formerly. On comparing their results with those of the three last years, which were years of complete Free Trade, we find a very striking difference. In round numbers, it may be stated that the average difference between the two periods amounts to no less than one million and a-half of quarters. During the first period, in other words, there were sold annually six millions of quarters, and during the last, four millions and a-half.
“Let us next turn to Ireland, where the returns exhibit a much larger proportionate decrease. We only possess authentic accounts from the sister island for four years; but, owing to the great care and diligence bestowed by the Government Commissioners upon the subject, we believe they approach the truth as nearly as the nature of such investigations will admit. The following are the quantities of wheat estimated to have been produced in that country during the under-stated years.
“It will be seen from these returns that the diminished production of wheat in Ireland corresponds very nearly in amount with the falling off exhibited by the returns of the corn-law inspectors in England. The aggregate amount of decrease in the two countries is about three million quarters.”—Morning Post, June 24.
Thus it appears that the falling off inwheat alone, raised in England and Ireland in four years, has been, under the action of Free Trade, about 3,000,000 quarters. The average consumption of wheat in Great Britain, prior to the late changes, was estimated by our best authorities at 14,500,000 quarters, being a quarter a head on the people, excluding infants, and persons, especially in Scotland, who live on oatmeal or potatoes. Thus more than aFIFTH PART OF THE STAPLE FOOD OF OUR PEOPLEhas, in four years of Free Trade, come to be furnished from foreign states. If the supplies of oats and Indian corn, which are immense, and amount, with wheat, to about 10,000,000 quarters annually, are taken into account, it may safely be concluded thata fourthof the food of our people has come, in four short years, to be imported! Liverpool has told us that, in five years, half of this immense supply will be brought in in foreign bottoms! Truly we are advancing at railway speed to a state of entire dependence on foreign states for the most necessary supplies; and we shall soon realise in these realms the lamentation of the Roman annalist, that the people have come to depend for their food on the winds and the waves; or, in Claudian’s words—