The two great parties into which the country was divided on the subject
of our commercial relations with foreign states, maintained principles
diametrically opposite on the effects to be anticipated from the
adoption of their respective systems. The Free-Traders constantly
alleged, that the great thing was to increase our _importations_; and
that, provided this was done, government need not disquiet themselves
about our _exportations_. Individuals, it was said, equally with
nations, do not give their goods for nothing: if foreign produce of some
sort comes in, British produce of some sort must go out. Both parties
will gain by the exchange. The inhabitants of this country will devote
their attention to those branches of industry in which we can undersell
foreign nations, and they will devote their attention to those branches
of industry in which they can undersell us. Neither party will waste
their time, or their labour, upon vain attempts to raise produce for
which nature has not given them the requisite facilities. Both will buy
cheaper than they could have done if an artificial system of protection
had forced the national industry into a channel which nature did not
intend, and experience does not sanction. We may be fed by the world,
but we will clothe the world. The abstraction of the precious metals is
not to be dreaded under such a system, for how are the precious metals
got but in exchange for manufactures? Their existence in this country
presupposes the exit of a proportionate amount of the produce of British
industry. Nobody gives dollars, any more than corn, for nothing. Our
farmers must take to dairy and pasture cultivation to a greater extent
than heretofore. A certain number of agricultural labourers, may, it is
true, be thrown out of employment by the displacing of rural industry in
making the transition from the one species of country labour to the
other; but the evil will only be temporary, and they will speedily be
absorbed in the vast extension of our manufacturing industry. High
prices need never be feared under such a system: a bad season is never
universal over the world at the same time; and free-trade will
permanently let in the superfluity of those countries where food is
abundant, to supply the deficiencies of those in which, from native
sources, it is scanty.
The Protectionists reasoned after an entirely different manner. The
doctrines of free-trade, they observed, perfectly just in their
application to different provinces of the same empire, are entirely
misplaced if extended to different _countries_ of the world, the more
especially if placed in similar, or nearly similar, circumstances. The
state of smothered or open hostility in which they are in general placed
to each other, if their interests are at all at variance; the necessity
of sheltering infant manufacturing industry from the dangerous
competition of more advanced civilisation, or protecting old-established
agricultural industry from the ruinous inroad of rude produce from
poorer states, in which it is raised cheaper because money is less
plentiful, render it indispensable that protection should exist on both
sides. If it does not, the inevitable result will be, that the
cultivators of the young state will destroy the agriculture of the old
one, and the manufacturers of the old one extinguish the fabrics of the
young. This effect is necessary, and, to all appearance, will ever
continue; for the experience of every age has demonstrated that, so
great is the effect of capital and civilisation applied to manufactures,
and so inconsiderable, comparatively speaking, their influence upon
agriculture, that the old state can always undersell the new one in the
industry of towns, and the new one undersell the old one in the industry
of the country. The proof of this is decisive. England, by the aid of
the steam-engine, can undersell the inhabitants of Hindostan in the
manufacture of muslins from cotton growing on the banks of the Ganges;
but with all the advantages of chemical manure and tile draining, it is
undersold in the supply of food by the cultivators on the Mississippi.
This being a fixed law of nature, evidently intended to check the growth
of old states, and promote the extension of mankind in the uncultivated
parts of the earth, it is in vain to contend against it. So violently
does free-trade displace industry on both sides, where it is fully
established, that it is scarcely possible to conceive that two nations
should at the same time run into the same glaring mistake; and thence
the common complaint that no benefit is gained, but an infinite loss
sustained, by its establishment in any one country, and that reciprocity
is on one side only. As no adequate exchange of manufactures for
subsistence is thus to be looked for, there must arise, in the old
state, a constant exportation of the precious metals, attended by
frequent commercial crises, and a constant increase in the weight of
direct taxation. Should it prove otherwise, and two nations both go into
the same system, it could lead to no other result but the stoppage of
the growth of civilisation in the young one, and the destruction of
national independence in the old. The former would never succeed in
establishing commerce or manufactures, from the competition of the
steam-engine in its aged neighbour; the latter would become dependent
for subsistence on the plough of the young one. The rising agricultural
state would be chained for ever to the condition of the serfs in Poland,
or the boors in America; the stationary commercial state would fall into
the degrading dependence of ancient Rome on the harvests of Egypt and
Lybia.
Had it not been for the calamitous issue of the last harvest, in a part
of the empire, it might have been difficult to say, to which side the
weight of reason preponderated in these opposite arguments; and probably
the people of the country would have continued permanently divided on
them, according as their private interests or wishes were wound up with
the buying and selling, or raising and producing classes in society. But
an external calamity has intervened;--Providence has denied for a
season, to one of the fruits of the earth, its wonted increase. The
potato-rot has appeared; and nearly the whole subsistence of the people
in the south and west of Ireland, and in the western Highlands of
Scotland, has been destroyed. Between the failure in the potato crop,
and the deficiency in that of oats, at least L15,000,000 worth of the
wonted agricultural produce has disappeared in the British Islands. And
the appearances which we now see around us are solely and entirely to be
ascribed to that deficiency. No one need be told what these appearances
are, or how deeply they have trenched upon the usual sources of
prosperity in the empire: they have been told again and again, in
parliament, at public meetings, and in the press, _usque ad nauseam_.
Government has acted, if not judiciously, at least in the right spirit;
its errors have been those of information, not of intention. The monster
meetings, the flagrant ingratitude, the broken promises of the Irish
Catholics, have been forgotten. England, as a nation, has acted nobly;
she has overlooked her wrongs: she saw only her fellow-subjects in
distress. L10,000,000 sterling have been voted by parliament in a single
year for the relief of Irish suffering. Magnificent subscriptions, from
the throne downwards, have attested the sympathy of the British heart
with the tale of Irish and Highland suffering. But, notwithstanding all
these astonishing exertions, and notwithstanding the existence of an
unprecedented demand for labour in most parts of the country, in
consequence of vast railway undertakings being on foot, on which at
least L30,000,000 a-year must be expended for three or four years to
come, distress is in many places most acute, in all severely felt. And
what is very remarkable, and may be considered, as a distinctive sign of
the times, specially worthy of universal attention, the suffering has
now spread to those classes which are _furthest removed_ from the blight
of nature, and fastened upon those interests which, according to the
generally received opinion, should have been _benefited rather than
injured_ by the calamity which has occurred.
That some millions of cultivators in the southwest of Ireland, and some
hundred thousand in the west Highlands of Scotland, should be involved,
literally speaking, in the horrors of famine, in consequence of the
universal failure of the crop which constituted at once their sole
object of labour and only means of subsistence, may easily be
understood. That this alarming failure should raise prices of every sort
of food to the scarcity-level in every part of the empire, is equally
intelligible; and that government, in conformity with the _universal_
sense of the nation, should, in such an extremity, throw open the ports
to all kinds of food, and thereby let in an unexampled amount of foreign
produce to supply the failure of that usually raised at home, is an
equally intelligible consequence. It may not be considered surprising,
that starving multitudes should issue in all directions from the scene
of wo in the Emerald Isle, to seek relief in the industry or charity of
Great Britain; and that all the great towns in the west of the island
should be overwhelmed with pauperism and typhus fever, in consequence of
their being the first to be reached by the destructive flood; although
it was hardly to be expected that a hundred and thirty-two thousand
applications for relief were to be made to the parochial authorities of
Liverpool in a _single week_; and that they returned thanks to Heaven
when the influx of Irish paupers was reduced to _two thousand a-week_!
But the remarkable thing, and the thing which the commercial classes
certainly did not expect, is this:--_The calamity has now reached
themselves_, although the hand of Providence has only stricken the
producing agricultural classes. Trade never was lower, monied distress
never more severe, markets of all sorts never were more rapidly
DECLINING, than during a period when IMPORTATIONS of all sorts have been
MOST RAPIDLY INCREASING. Nearly all the manufactories in Lancashire and
Lanarkshire are put on short time; the public funds and stocks of all
sorts are falling; the rate of bankers' advances in Scotland is raised
to _six per cent_;[7] seven per cent is charged in Liverpool and Glasgow
on railway advances, and permanent loans are taken on railway debentures
by the most experienced persons for three years at five per cent; the
Bank of England has raised its discounts; our exports are rapidly
declining; and all at a time, when the importation of all sorts of rude
produce is on an unprecedented scale of magnitude, and the warehouses of
Liverpool and Glasgow are literally _bursting_ with the prodigious mass
of grain stored in them from all parts of the world!
Fortunately, statistical documents exist, derived from official sources,
which demonstrate beyond the possibility of doubt the coexistence of
this _vast increase_ in the amount of subsistence imported, and _vast
diminution_ in the amount of manufactures raised or exported in all
parts of the British empire. A paper has lately been presented to
parliament, showing the amount of imports, exports, and shipping during
the year 1846, compared with 1845; from which this important and
luminous fact is decisively established, how hard soever it may be to
comprehend on the part of a large and influential portion of our
politicians. From it it appears that the amount of subsistence imported
in 1846 was six times greater than in 1845, although free-trade only
commenced in the middle of the former year. It had reached the
unparalleled amount in the latter year, of grain or flour, equal to
_five millions and a half quarters of grain_. The tonnage _inwards_ had
turned five millions of tons; the custom-house duties, notwithstanding
the numerous reductions of duties on imported articles, had risen
L700,000 above the preceding year, and still kept above L22.000,000
sterling. Here, then, were all the sources and marks of prosperity, so
far as they depended on importations, in a state of unexampled vigour
and efficiency. Was this attended, as we were constantly told it would
be, by a corresponding impulse given to our fabrics? Has the increased
activity of our manufacturing cities compensated for the sterility of so
large a part of our fields? The fact is just the reverse. Though
free-trade has only been in operation for the last six months of 1846,
they were signalised by a universal _decline_ in all the principal
articles of our exportation; and, by the unanimous voice of all
practical men, trade, so far as exports or production is concerned,
never was in a more depressed state than when, so far as imports are
concerned, it had attained an unprecedented _extension_.
Never was a truer observation than is made by the Free-Traders, when
they assert that goods will not be sent into a nation for nothing; and
that, if our imports increase, something that goes out must have
received a proportional augmentation. They forget only one circumstance,
which, however, is of some little consequence, namely, that two things
may go out, goods or SPECIE. We have melancholy proof, in the present
state of the money market, that the latter occurrence has taken place to
an inconvenient and distressing extent, and that that is the direct
cause of the extravagant rate of interest charged on bankers' advances,
and the general scarcity of money felt throughout the country. That the
_capital_ of the country is not only sufficient, but abundant, is
decisively proved by the fact that, notwithstanding the vast extent of
the railway and other undertakings of a public character going on both
in Great Britain and Ireland, government has borrowed the loan of
L8,000,000 for the relief of Ireland at L3, 7s. 6d. per cent. The three
per cents are about 90, yielding about the same return for money. But is
_currency_ equally abundant? So far from it, the bankers are charging
six, and the persons making advances on railway concerns seven per cent.
The holder of capital is glad if he can get three and a half per cent;
but the holder of currency will not let his notes or sovereigns out of
his hand for less than six or seven per cent. Can there be a more
convincing proof that the currency of the country has been unduly
drained away, and that the present monetary system, which forbids any
extension of it in paper when the specie is abstracted, is based on a
wrong foundation? Nor is it surprising that the currency should be
straitened when it is notorious that every packet which goes out to
America takes out vast sums to that continent to pay for the immense
quantities of grain which are brought in. That drain only began to be
felt in a serious manner within the last two months, because the great
shipments from America took place in November and December last, when
the failure of the potato crop in this country was fully ascertained;
and consequently, the payments made in bills at three months, required
to be made in February and March. And when it is recollected that the
quantity of grain imported in seven months only--viz. from 5th July
1846, to 5th February 1847--exceeded _six millions_ of quarters, at the
very time that all our exports were diminishing; it may be imagined how
prodigious must have been the drain upon the metallic resources of the
country to make up the balance.[8]
Sorely perplexed with results so diametrically opposite to all their
doctrines as to an increase of importation being necessarily attended
with a proportionate increase of exportation, and of all apprehension of
an undue pressure thence arising on the money market being chimerical,
the Free-Traders lay it all upon the famine at home or abroad. The
potato-rot, it is said, has _concealed_ the effects of free-trade:
distress in foreign nations has disabled them to purchase our
manufactures in return for their rude produce; the increase of British
importation has come too soon to operate as yet on their purchase of our
manufactures. Here again the facts come decisively to disprove the
theoretical anticipations. So far has the increase of our importations
been from being sudden, and come last year for the first time on foreign
nations, it has been _remarkably gradual_, and has gone on for years,
having received only a great impulse in the articles on which the duty
was lessened or removed last summer. Our general imports have steadily
advanced for the last three years; and in particular articles the same
progress has been conspicuous.[9] How, then, has it happened that this
general, continued, and steady _increase_ of imports has issued only in
a _diminution_ to an alarming extent of exports? And observe, the
countries from which we have imported so largely last year of grain and
articles of subsistence, have not only not suffered by the scarcity
general on the Continent, but have profited immensely by it. America has
been blessed with a splendid crop of every species of grain; and, in
consequence of the famine in Ireland and severe scarcity in France,
prices of grain have risen to triple their former amount in the United
States. It has risen so much in the southern states of Russia, that the
Emperor of Russia has prohibited the farther exportation of it from the
Black Sea. But all these floods of wealth flowing into the great grain
states from the failure of the crops in France and Ireland, have been
unavailing to produce any increased activity in our manufactures. On the
contrary, they are all declining; and our immense importations of food
are almost all paid for in direct exportations of the precious metals.
In truth, the general depression of manufactures in all the chief seats
of our fabrics is so serious, that it is evidently owing to a much more
general and stringent cause than the decline, considerable as it is, in
our exports. It is not a decrease of two millions out of fifty-three
millions--in other words, of less than a _five-and-twentieth_
part--which will explain the general putting of mills in Lancashire and
Lanarkshire on short time, the fall in the value of all kinds of stock
and general decline in the vent for all kinds of manufactured produce.
It is in the _home markets_ that the real and blighting deficiency is
experienced. And what is the cause of this decline in the home market?
The Free-Traders are the first to tell us what has done it. It is the
famine in Ireland. The total manufactured produce of the island is
certainly not under L200,000,000[10] annually, of which somewhat above
L51,000,000 is for the foreign markets of the world. What is a
deficiency of L2,000,000 in such a mass? If that had been the _only_
decline that had taken place, it would have been scarcely perceptible,
and would have left no visible effects on our commercial activity or
general prosperity. It is clear that the great falling off must have
been in the home market. Nor is it difficult to see how this has
happened. Fifteen millions' worth of agricultural produce has
disappeared; prices of wheat have risen in consequence to 80s.
a-quarter, and oats in a still higher proportion; and an alarming drain
upon the metallic resources of the country taken place. It is this which
has paralysed the manufactures and depressed the commerce of the
country. And when it is recollected that the home market now consumes
little short of L150,000,000 a-year, it may easily be conceived what a
serious check to industry a diminution to the amount of even an eighth
or a tenth of the usual domestic purchases must occasion.
The Free-Traders say, that the famine in Ireland has _concealed_ the
effects of the adoption of their system of policy; and that all the
distress and suffering which has ensued is to be ascribed to that cause.
From the observations now made, however, it is apparent that the effect
of the famine has been, not to conceal the effects of free-trade, but to
_accelerate_ them. For what has the famine done? It has simply caused
fifteen millions' worth of domestic agricultural produce to be exchanged
for fifteen millions' worth of foreign agricultural produce. The potato
crop, which has perished in Ireland, is estimated at fifteen millions'
worth; and, supposing that statement is a little exaggerated, it is
probable that, taking into account the simultaneous failure in the crop
of oats, both there and in Great Britain, the total amount of home
agricultural produce that is deficient may amount to that value. _But
foreign agricultural produce, to an equal or greater amount, has been
imported._ Six millions of quarters, between grain of all sorts and
flour, have been entered for home consumption in seven months preceding
5th February 1847. Taking these quarters, on an average, as worth fifty
shillings to the consumer--which is certainly no extravagant estimate,
seeing wheat is up at seventy-nine shillings--we shall have, then, six
millions of quarters, worth fifteen millions sterling. The home
agricultural produce that has failed is just equal in value to the
foreign agricultural produce that has been imported. The distress that
prevails, therefore, is not owing to any deficiency of food for man or
animals in the United Kingdom, for as much has come in, of foreign
produce, as has disappeared of domestic. It is entirely to be ascribed
to the supplanting, _in the national subsistence, of a large part of
home produce by an equally large part of foreign produce_. And in the
social, commercial, and national effects which we see around us, we may
discern, as in a mirror, not merely the probable but certain effects of
such a substitution if perpetuated to future times.
This view of the subject is of such vast importance that we deem it
impossible to impress it too strongly on our readers. We have been
always told that the great thing is to secure a great importation; that
such a thing must necessarily lead to a corresponding increase of
exportation;--that all apprehension about the imports being paid in
gold, and not in manufactures, are chimerical;--that the sooner the
inferior lands in the British islands go out of cultivation the
better;--that ample food for the inhabitants will be obtained from
foreign states; and that the agriculturists thrown out of employment by
the change will be rapidly absorbed, and more profitably employed in
sustaining our extended manufactures. Well, the thing has been done,
and the desired consummation has taken place, from an extraneous cause,
even more rapidly than was anticipated. The Free-Traders contemplated
the substitution of foreign for British agricultural produce to the
extent of fifteen or twenty millions as a most desirable result; but
they only lamented it could not be looked for for three or four years.
It would take that time to beat down the British farmer; to convince the
cultivators of inferior lands of the folly of attempting a competition
with the great grain districts of the Continent. Providence has done the
thing at once. We have got on at railway speed to the blessings of the
new system. Free-trade was to lead to the much-desired substitution of
six million quarters of home for six million quarters of foreign grain
in three years. But the potato-rot has done it in one. The free-trade
rot could not have done it nearly so expeditiously, but it would have
done it as effectually. It is a total mistake, therefore, to represent
the famine in Ireland and the West of Scotland, as an external calamity
which has concealed the natural effects of free-trade. It has only
brought them to light at once.
Had British agriculture, instead of being stricken with sterility by the
hand of Providence, in the poorest and worst cultivated part of the two
islands, been suffered gradually to waste away, under the effects of a
great and increasing foreign importation in all parts of the empire, the
destruction of home produce would have been equally extensive, but it
would have been more general. It would have risen to as great an amount,
but it would not have been so painfully concentrated in particular
districts. Hundreds would not have been dying of famine in Skibbereen;
seed-corn would not have been awanting in Skye and Mull; cultivation
would not have been abandoned in Tipperary; but the cessation of
agricultural produce over the whole empire would have been quite as
great. Low prices would have done the business as effectually, though
not quite so speedily, as the pestilence which has smitten the
potato-field. Whoever casts his eye on the table of prices given
below[11] for twenty years in London and Dantzic, must at once see
that, under a free-trade system, as large an importation of foreign
produce, and as extensive a contraction of home, as has taken place this
year is to be permanently looked for. The exportation and return of the
precious metals, and contraction of credit now felt as so distressing,
may be expected to be permanent. Providence has given us a warning of
the effects of our policy, before they have become irreparable. We have
only to suppose the present state of commerce and manufactures lasting,
and we have a clear vision of the blessings of free-trade.
Nor is there any difficulty in understanding how it happens that the
substitution of a large portion of foreign, for an equal amount of
home-grown produce, occasions such disastrous effects, and in particular
proves so injurious to the commercial classes, who in the first instance
generally suppose they are to be benefited by the change. If two or
three millions of rural labourers in the poorest and worst cultivated
districts of the island, are thrown out of employment, either by a
failure in the vegetable on which alone, in their rude state, they can
employ their labour, or by the gradual substitution of foreign for home
produce in the supply of food for the people, it is a poor compensation
to them to say that an equal amount of foreign grain has been brought
into the commercial emporiums of the empire--that if they will leave
Skibbereen or Skye, and come to Liverpool or Glasgow, they will find
warehouses amply stored with grain, which at the highest current prices
they will obtain to any extent they desire. The plain answer is, that
they are starving; that their employment as well as subsistence is gone;
that they have neither the means of transport, nor any money to buy
grain when they reach the neighbourhood of the bursting warehouses. But
then they will be absorbed in the great manufacturing districts, where
their labour will be more profitable to themselves and others, than in
their native wilds! Yes, there is a process of absorption goes on, on
the occurrence of such a crisis; but it is not the absorption of labour
by capital, but of capital by pauperism. Floods of starving destitutes
inundate every steam-boat, harbour, and road, on the route to the scene
of wo; and while the interior of the warehouses in the great commercial
cities are groaning beneath the weight of foreign grain, the streets in
their vicinity are thronged by starving multitudes, who spread typhus
fever wherever they go, and fall as a permanent burden on the poor-rates
of the yet solvent portions of the community.
And the effect of this importation of foreign grain, from whatever cause
it arises, necessarily is to _prevent_ this absorption of rural
pauperism by manufacturing capital, to which the Free-traders so
confidently look for the adjustment of society after the change has been
made. The nations who supply us with grain _do not want our
manufactures_. They will not buy them. What they want, is our money.
They have not, and will not have, the artificial wants requisite for the
general purchase of manufactures for a century to come. Generations must
go to their graves during the transition from rustic content to
civilised wants. America has sent us some millions of quarters of grain
this year, but there _is no increase in her orders for our
manufactures_. On the contrary, they are diminishing. Even the Free
Trade Journals now admit this; constrained by the evidence of their
senses to admit the entire failure of all their predictions.[12] The
reason is evident. They want our money, and our money they will have;
and if they find our manufactures are beginning to flow in, in enlarged
quantities, in consequence of our purchase of their grain, they will
soon stop the influx by a tariff. This is what we did, when situated as
they are--it is what all mankind will, and must do, in similar
circumstances. It was distinctly perceived and foretold by the
Protectionists that this effect would follow from free-trade, and that,
unless something was done to enlarge the currency to meet it, a
commercial crisis would ensue. These words published a year ago might
pass for the history of the time in which we now live:--"Under the
proposed reduced duties during the next three years, and trifling duty
after that period on all sorts of grain, there can be no doubt that a
very great impulse will be given to the corn-trade. It being now
ascertained, by a comparison of the prices during the last twenty years,
that there is annually a difference of from twenty to thirty shillings
a-quarter between the price that wheat bears in the British islands and
at the shores of the Baltic, while the cost of importation is only five
or six shillings a-quarter, there can be no question that the opening of
the ports will occasion a very large importation of foreign grain. It
may reasonably be expected that, in the space of a few years, the
quantity imported will amount to _four or five millions of quarters
annually_, for which the price paid by the importers cannot be supposed
to be less, on the most moderate calculation, than seven or eight
millions sterling. The experience of the year 1839 sufficiently tells us
what will be the effect of such an importation of grain, paid for, as it
must be, for the most part in specie, upon _the general monetary
concerns and commercial prosperity of the empire_. It is well known that
it was this condition of things which produced the commercial crisis in
this country, led to three years of unprecedented suffering in the
manufacturing districts, and, as is affirmed, destroyed property in the
manufacturing districts of Lancashire, to the amount of
L40,000,000."[13]
Lastly, the famine has taught the empire an important lesson as to Irish
Repeal. For many years past, that country has been convulsed, and the
empire harassed by the loud and threatening demand for the Repeal of the
Union, and the incessant outcry that the Irish people are perfectly
equal to the duties of self-government, and that all their distresses
have been owing to the oppression of the Saxon. The wind of adversity
has blown, and where are these menaces now? Had Providence punished them
by granting their prayer--had England cut the rope, as Mr Roebuck said,
and let them go, where would Ireland have been at this moment? Drifting
away on the ocean of starvation. Let this teach them their dependence
upon their neighbours, and let another fact open their eyes to what
those neighbours are. England has replied to the senseless clamour, the
disgraceful ingratitude, by voting ten millions sterling in a single
year to relieve the distresses which the heedlessness and indolence of
the Irish had brought upon themselves. We say advisedly, _brought upon
themselves_. For, mark-worthy circumstance! the destruction of the
potato crop has been just as complete, and the food of the people has
been just as entirely swept away in the West Highlands of Scotland, as
in Ireland, but _there has been no grant of public money to Scotland_.
The cruel Anglo-Saxons have given IT ALL to the discontented, untaxed
Gael in the Emerald isle.
_Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh._