This night is to decide between the policy of continued
relaxation of restriction, or the return to restraint and
prohibition. This night you will select the motto which is to
indicate the commercial policy of England. Shall it be "advance"
or "recede"? Which is the fitter motto for this great empire?
Survey our position, consider the advantage which God and nature
have given us, and the destiny for which we are intended. We
stand on the confines of western Europe, the chief connecting
link between the Old World and the New. The discoveries of
science, the improvement of navigation, have brought us within
ten days of St. Petersburg, and will soon bring us within ten
days of New York. We have an extent of coast greater in
proportion to our population and the area of our land than any
other great nation, securing to us maritime strength and
superiority. Iron and coal, the sinews of manufacture, give us
advantages over every rival in the great competition of industry.
Our capital far exceeds that which they can command. In
ingenuity, in skill, in energy, we are inferior to none. Our
national character, the free institutions under which we live,
the liberty of thought and action, an unshackled press, spreading
the knowledge of every discovery and of every advance in science-
-combine with our natural and physical advantages to place us at
the head of those nations which profit by the free interchange of
their products. And is this the country to shrink from
competition? Is this the country to adopt a retrograde policy? Is
this the country which can only flourish in the sickly,
artificial atmosphere of prohibition? Is this the country to
stand shivering on the brink of exposure to the healthful breezes
of competition?
Choose your motto. "Advance" or "recede." Many countries are
watching with anxiety the selection you may make. Determine for
"advance," and it will be the watchword which will animate and
encourage in every state the friends of liberal commercial
policy. Sardinia has taken the lead. Naples is relaxing her
protective duties and favoring British produce. Prussia is shaken
in her adherence to restriction. The government of France will be
strengthened; and backed by the intelligence of the reflecting,
and by conviction of the real welfare of the great body of the
community, will perhaps ultimately prevail over the self-interest
of the commercial and manufacturing aristocracy which now
predominates in her chambers. Can you doubt that the United
States will soon relax her hostile tariff, and that the friends
of a freer commercial intercourse--the friends of peace between
the two countries--will hail with satisfaction the example of
England?
This night, then--if on this night the debate shall close--you
will have to decide what are the principles by which your
commercial policy is to be regulated. Most earnestly, from a deep
conviction, founded not upon the limited experience of three
years alone, but upon the experience of the results of every
relaxation of restriction and prohibition, I counsel you to set
the example of liberality to other countries. Act thus, and it
will be in perfect consistency with the course you have hitherto
taken. Act thus, and you will provide an additional guarantee for
the continued contentment, and happiness, and well-being of the
great body of the people. Act thus, and you will have done
whatever human sagacity can do for the promotion of commercial
prosperity.
You may fail. Your precautions may be unavailing. They may give
no certain assurance that mercantile and manufacturing prosperity
will continue without interruption. It seems to be incident to
great prosperity that there shall be a reverse--that the time of
depression shall follow the season of excitement and success.
That time of depression must perhaps return; and its return may
be coincident with scarcity caused by unfavorable seasons. Gloomy
winters, like those of 1841 and 1842, may again set in. Are those
winters effaced from your memory? From mine they never can
be.....
These sad times may recur. "The years of plenteous-ness may have
ended," and "the years of dearth may have come"; and again you
may have to offer the unavailing expressions of sympathy, and the
urgent exhortations to patient resignation.....
When you are again exhorting a suffering people to fortitude
under their privations, when you are telling them, "These are the
chastenings of an all-wise and merciful Providence, sent for some
inscrutable but just and beneficent purpose, it may be, to humble
our pride, or to punish our unfaithfulness, or to impress us with
the sense of our own nothingness and dependence on His mercy,"
when you are thus addressing your suffering fellow-subjects, and
encouraging them to bear without repining the dispensations of
Providence, may God grant that by your decision of this night you
may have laid in store for yourselves the consolation of
reflecting that such calamities are, in truth, the dispensations
of Providence--that they have not been caused, they have not been
aggravated, by laws of man, restricting, in the hour of scarcity,
the supply of food!