Whoever has travelled in the highlands of Scotland, or the mountains of
Wales, must have observed the remarkable difference which exists between
artificial plantations, and the natural woods of the country. Planted _all
at once_, the former grow up of uniform height, and all their trees
present nearly the same form and symmetry. Sown at different periods, with
centuries between their growth, the latter exhibit every variety of age
and form, from the decaying patriarchs of the forest, which have survived
the blasts of some hundred years, to the infant sapling, which is only
beginning to shoot under the shelter of a projecting rock or stem. Nor is
the difference less remarkable in the room which is severally afforded for
growth, in the artificial plantations and in the wilds of nature. The
larches or firs, in the stiff and angular enclosure, are always crowded
together; and if not thinned by the care of the woodsman, will inevitably
choke each other, or shoot up thin and unhealthy, in consequence of their
close proximity to each other, and the dense mass of foliage which
overshadows the upper part of the wood. But no such danger need be
apprehended In the natural forest. No woodman is called to thin its
denizens. No forester's eye is required to tell which should be left, and
which cut away, in the vast array. In the ceaseless warfare of the weaker
with the stronger, the feeble plants are entirely destroyed. In vain the
infant sapling attempts to contend with the old oak, the branches of which
overshadow its growth--it is speedily crushed in the struggle. Nor are the
means of removing the useless remains less effectual. The hand of nature
insensibly clears the waste of its incumbrances; the weakness of time
brings them to the ground when their allotted period is expired; and youth,
as in the generations of men, springs beside the decay of age, and finds
ample room for its expansion over the fallen remains of its paternal stems.
The difference between the artificial plantation and the natural wood,
illustrates the distinction between the imaginary communities which the
political economist expects to see grow up, in conformity with his
theories, and acting in obedience to his dictates, and the nations of
flesh and blood which exist around us, of which we form a part, and which
are immediately affected by ill-judged or inapplicable measures of
commercial regulation. Nations were planted by the hand of nature; they
were not sown, nor their place allotted by human foresight. They exist
often close to each other, and under apparently the same physical
circumstances, under every possible variety of character, age, and period
of growth. The difference even between those ruled by the same government,
and inhabited apparently by the same race, is prodigious. Who could
suppose that the Dutchman, methodical, calculating, persevering, was next
neighbour to the fiery, war-like, and impetuous Frenchman? Or that the
southern and western Irish, vehement, impassioned, and volatile, came from
the same stock which pervades the whole west of Britain? England, for
centuries the abode of industry, effort, and opulence, is subject to the
same government, and situated in the same latitude as Ireland, where
indolence is almost universal, wealth rare, and manufactures in general
unknown. Russia, ignorant, united, and ever victorious, adjoins Poland,
weak, distracted, and ever vanquished; and Prussia has risen with
unheard-of rapidity in national strength, and every branch of industry, at
the very time when Spain was fast relapsing into slavery and barbarism.
Familiar as these truths are to all they seem to have been, in an
unaccountable manner, forgotten by our modern political economists; and
the oblivion of them is the principal cause of the remarkable failure
which has attended the application to practice of all their theories. They
invariably forget the different age of nations; they overlook the
essential difference between communities with different national character,
or in different stages of manufacturing or commercial advancement, and
fall into the fatal error of supposing that one general system is to be
readily embraced by, and found applicable to, a cluster of nations
existing under every possible variety of physical, social, and political
circumstances. Fixing their eyes upon their own country, or rather upon
the peculiar interest to which they belong in their own country, they
reason as if all mankind were placed in the same circumstances, and would
be benefited by the arrangements which they find advantageous. They forget
that all nations were not planted at the same time, nor in the same soil;
that the difference in their age, the inequality in their growth, the
variety in their texture, is as great as in the trees of the forest, the
seeds of which have been scattered by the hand of nature; that the
incessant warfare of the weaker with the stronger, exists not less in the
social than the physical world; and that all systems founded on the
oblivion of that continued contest, must ever be traversed by the
strongest of all moral laws--the instinct of SELF-PRESERVATION.
We have said that the modern theories when applied to practice, have, in a
remarkable manner, failed. In saying so, we have chiefly in view the
acknowledged failure of the strenuous efforts made by England, during the
last twenty years, to effect an interchange in the advantages of free
trade, and the entire disappointment which has attended the long
establishment, on a great scale, of the reciprocity system. To the first
we shall advert in the present paper; the second will furnish ample room
for reflection in another.
The abstract principles on which the doctrines of free trade are founded,
are these; and we put it to the warmest advocates of those principles,
whether they are not fairly stated. All nations were not intended by
nature, nor are they fitted by their physical circumstances, to excel in
the same branches of industry; and it is the variety in the production
which they severally can bring to maturity, which at once imposes the
necessity for, and occasions the profit of, commercial intercourse.
Nothing, therefore, can be so unwise as to attempt, either by arbitrary
regulations, to create a branch of industry in a country for which it is
not intended by nature, or to retain it in that branch where it is created
by forced prohibitions. Banish all restrictions, therefore, from commerce;
let every nation apply itself to that particular branch of industry for
which it is adapted by nature, and receive in exchange the produce of
other countries, raised, in like manner, in conformity with their natural
capabilities. Then will the industry of each people be turned into the
channel most advantageous and lucrative to itself; each will enjoy the
immense advantage of purchasing the commodities it requires at the
cheapest possible rate; hopeless or absurd hot-bed attempts to force
extraneous industry will cease; and, in the mutual interchange of the
surplus produce of each, the foundation will be laid of an advantageous
and durable commercial intercourse. England, on this principle, should not
attempt to raise wine, nor France iron or cotton goods; but the calicoes
and hardware of Great Britain should be exchanged for the wines and fruits
of France: both nations will thus be enriched, and a vast commercial
traffic grow up, which, being founded on mutual interest and attended with
mutual advantage, may be expected to be durable, and to extinguish, in the
end, the rivalry of their respective people, or the jealousy of their
several governments.
Such is the theory of free trade; and it may be admitted it wears at first
sight a seducing and agreeable aspect. Let us now enquire how far
experience, the great test of truth, has verified its doctrines, or
demonstrated its practicability. To illustrate this matter, we shall have
recourse to no mean or doubtful authority; we shall have recourse to the
statement of an enlightened but candid contemporary, whose advocating of a
moderate system of free trade has excited no small anxiety in the British
empire; and which report, from the information and ability it displays,
has assigned to the present accomplished head of the Board of Trade.
The efforts made in Great Britain to introduce a general system of free
trade, especially within the last three years, are thus enumerated in the
_Foreign and Colonial Review_.
"England, without gaining or asking a single boon from any foreign country,
has--
"1. Reduced by about one-half the duties upon foreign corn.
"2. By nearly the same amount, the duties on foreign timber.
"3. Has removed her prohibitions against the importation of cattle and
other animals for food, and has fixed upon them duties, ranging on the
average at about ten per cent _ad valorem_.
"4. Has made flesh meat admissible.
"5. Has reduced the duty on salt provisions for home consumption by
one-third, and one-half; and has placed them on a footing of entire
equality with the British article for the supply of the whole marine
frequenting her ports.
"6. Has lowered her duties on vegetables and seeds in general to one-half,
one-sixth, and even one-twelfth (in the case of that most important
esculent the potatoe) of what they formerly were.
"7. Has made all _great_ articles of manufacture, except silk, which is
reserved for future negotiations, admissible at duties of ten, twelve and
a half, and fifteen per cent, and only in some few instances so much as
twenty per cent.
"8. Upon some minor articles of manufacture, where our people lie under
heavy disadvantages in obtaining the raw material, and where their habits
have been formed in their particular occupation, wholly under the shelter,
and therefore upon the responsibility of the law, she has retained duties
in some cases as high as thirty per cent _ad valorem_, but yet has reduced
them to rates insignificant in comparison with those formerly charged.
"9. In her colonies, she has fixed the ordinary rules of differential
duties upon foreign productions at four and seven per cent, with
exceptions altogether trifling in amount, on which a higher charge has
been laid for special reasons.
"10. She has withdrawn the prohibition to export machinery, except so far
as regards the linen manufacture, and the spinning of the yarns employed
in it.
"11. With regard to many other articles, such as butter and cheese, indeed,
with regard to all articles to which the simple and essential interests of
the revenue will allow the same rules to be applied--it has been declared
that they are only temporarily exempted from the operations of those rules,
and it is well understood, that no time will be allowed to pass, except
such as is necessary, before the work is completed; and lastly,
"12. She has not even excluded from the benefit of these reductions the
very countries under whose simultaneous enactments, of a hostile character,
she is at this moment suffering: these advantages will be enjoyed by the
tar and cordage of Russia; by the corn and timber, the woollens, linens,
and hosiery of northern Germany; by the gloves, the boots and shoes, the
light writing-papers, the perfumery, the corks, the straw-hats, the
cottons and cambrics, the dressed skins, the thrown silk, and even (from
an incidental charge with respect to the charge of duty on the bottles)
the wines of France; by the salt provisions, the ashes, the turpentine,
the rice, the furs and skins, the sperm oil of America; and she in
particular may expect to derive advantage from the alteration in our
colonial import duties upon the great articles of flour, salt, provisions,
fish and lumber."[15]
[15] _Foreign and Colonial Review_, Vol. i. p. 235.
Such have been the sacrifices which Great Britain has recently made in
order to secure a system of free commercial enterprise throughout the
world. Let us now enquire what return she has met with for these
concessions; and the recent occurrences in this respect are detailed in
the same unexceptionable authority.
"Within the last year, France has passed an ordinance, doubling the duty
on linen yarns--a measure hostile enough, had it been uniform in its
application to all countries; but, lest there should be any ambiguity
about its meaning, she has actually left open her Belgian frontier to that
article at the former duty, on the condition that Belgium should levy the
high French duty in her custom-houses, so as to prevent the transit of the
British yarns through that country. To this disreputable and humiliating
proposal, Belgium has consented. Again, amidst the loudest professions
from the Prussian government, of an anxiety to advance the relaxation of
commercial restrictions, that government has, nevertheless, adopted a
proceeding not less hostile or mischievous than the measure of France with
regard to linen yarns. The Congress of the Deputies of the Zollverein, at
Stuttgard, have in a new tariff, which was to take effect on the 1st of
January, besides some minor alterations of an unfavourable kind, decreed,
upon the proposal of Prussia, that goods mixed of cotton and wool, if of
more than one colour, shall pay fifty thalers the centner, instead of
thirty; that is, instead of a very high, shall be liable to an exorbitant,
and, as it may prove, a prohibitory duty. Next, America, as all our
readers must be aware, has, after a struggle, passed a tariff, subverting
altogether the arrangement established by the Compromise Act of 1833, and
imposing upon the various descriptions of manufactured goods rates of duty
varying from thirty to forty and fifty per cent and upwards, which have
had the effect of stopping a great portion of the shipments of cotton
goods to that country from Great Britain during the past autumn, and,
without doubt, have added greatly to the distresses of our manufacturing
population. Besides these greater instances, Russia, according to her wont
in such matters, and Spain, have published, within the test fifteen months,
new tariffs, of which it is difficult to say whether they are still worse
than, or only as execrably bad, as those which they succeeded, but, in the
close rivalry between the old and the new, the latter seem, upon the whole,
entitled to the palm of prohibitive rigour. And Portugal, likewise, has
augmented the duties payable upon certain classes of her imports, by a
measure of the recent date of March 1841, and by another of last year. In
the mean time, Spain has concluded a treaty with Belgium for the admission
of her linens. And the king of Prussia has effected an arrangement with
the czar, which, in certain particulars, secures, upon his own frontier, a
relaxation of the iron strictness of the Russian system. England has
concluded no commercial treaty with any of these powers; and the
negotiation with France, which the measures of Lord Palmerston interrupted
in 1840, at the very period of its ripeness, appears still to
slumber--owing, we believe, in part, to the prevalence of an anti-Anglican
feeling in that country, which, for the credit of common sense and of
human nature, we trust will be temporary; but much more to the high
protective notions, and the political activity and influence of the French
manufacturers, which overawe an administration far less strong, we regret
to say, than it deserves."
Our recent attempts, therefore, to introduce a general system of free
trade among nations have proved a signal failure, on the admission of the
most enlightened advocates for that species of policy. Nor have our
earlier efforts been more successful. Mr Huskisson, as it is well known,
introduced, full twenty years ago, the system of free trade, and repealed
the navigation laws, in the hope of making the Northern Powers of Europe
more favourable to the admission of British manufactures, and materially
reduced the duties on French silks, watches, wines, and jewellery, in the
hope that the Government of that country would see the expedience of
making a corresponding reduction in the duties levied on our staple
manufactures in the French harbours. But after twenty years' experience of
these concessions on our part, the French Government are so far from
evincing a disposition to meet us with a similar conciliatory policy, that
they have done just the reverse. Scarce a year has elapsed without some
additional duty being imposed on our fabrics in their harbours; and the
great reductions contained in Sir R. Peel's tariff were immediately met,
as already noticed, by the imposition of an additional and very heavy duty
on British linens. Nay, so far has the free trade system been from
enlarging the market for our manufactures in Europe, that after twenty
years' experience of its effects, and an increase over Europe generally of
fully a third in numbers, and at least a half in wealth, it is an
ascertained fact, that our exports to the European-States _are less than
they were forty years ago_.[16] "That part of our commerce," says Mr
Porter, himself a decided free trader, "which, being carried on with the
rich and civilized inhabitants of European nations, should present the
greatest field for extension, will be seen to have fallen off in a
remarkable degree. The annual average exports to the whole of Europe were
_less in value by nearly twenty per cent_, on an average of five years,
from 1832 to 1836, _than they were during the five years that followed the
close of the war;_ and it affords strong evidence of the unsatisfactory
footing on which our trading regulations with Europe are established, that
our exports to the United States of America, which, with their population
of 12,000,000, (in 1837,) are situated 3000 miles from us across the
Atlantic, have amounted to more than half the sum of our shipments to the
whole of Europe, with a population fifteen times as great as that of the
United States of America, and with an abundance of productions suited to
our wants, which they are naturally desirous of exchanging for the produce
of our mines and looms."[17]
[16] _Foreign and Colonial Review_, Vol. i. p. 233.
[17] Porter's _Progress of the Nation_, Vol. i. p. 101.
This was written by Mr Porter in 1837; but while subsequent times have
evinced an increased anxiety on the part of this country to extend the
principles of free trade, they have been met by such increased
determination on the part of the European governments to _resist the
system,_ and adhere more rigorously to their protecting policy, that the
disproportion is now universal, and is every day becoming more remarkable.
The following table will show that our exports to Europe, notwithstanding
our twelve reciprocity treaties with its maritime powers, and unceasing
efforts to give a practical exemplification of the principles of free
trade, are stationary or declining.[18]
[18] Table showing the date and value of Exports of British Iron
Manufacturers to Europe in the afore-mentioned years.
Northern Europe. Southern Europe. Total.
1814 £14,113,773 £12,753,816 £26,867,589
1815 11,791,692 8,764,552 20,556,544
1816 11,369,086 7,284,467 18,653,555
1817 11,408,083 9,685,491 19,093,574
1818 11,809,243 7,639,139 19,448,382
1819 9,805,397 6,896,287 16,601,684
1820 11,289,891 7,139,042 18,428,433
1833 9,313,549 5,686,949 15,000,498
1834 9,505,892 8,501,141 18,007,033
1835 10,303,316 8,161,117 18,464,433
1836 9,999,861 9,011,205 19,000,066
1837 11,097,436 7,789,126 18,187,662
1838 11,258,473 9,481,372 20,739,845
1839 11,991,236 9,376,241 21,367,477
In one particular instance, the entire failure of the free trade system to
procure any corresponding return from the very continental states whose
harbours it was chiefly intended to open, has been singularly conspicuous.
In February 1821 the reciprocity system, in regard to shipping, was
introduced by Mr Huskisson, and acted upon by the legislature; and the
following reason was assigned by that eminent man for deviating from the
old navigation laws of Cromwell, which had so long constituted the
strength of the British navy. Mr Huskisson maintained--"That the period
had now arrived, when it had become indispensable to introduce a more
liberal system in regard to the admission of foreign shipping into our
harbours, if we would avoid the total exclusion of our manufacturers into
their harbours. The exclusive system did admirably well, as long as we
alone acted upon it; when foreign nations were content to take our goods,
though we excluded their shipping. But they had now become sensible of
the impolicy of such a system, and, right or wrong, were resolved to
resist it. Prussia, in particular, had resisted all the anxious endeavours
of this country, to effect the introduction of goods of our manufacture,
on favourable terms, into her harbours; and the reason assigned was, that
the navigation laws excluded her shipping from ours. The reciprocity
system has been rendered indispensable by the prohibitory system, which
the other European powers have adopted. The only means of meeting the
heavy duties they have imposed on our goods and shipping, is to place our
duties upon a system of perfect reciprocity with theirs. Foreign nations
have no advantage over us in the carrying trade: from the London report,
it clearly appeared, that the ships of Norway, Sweden, Russia, Prussia,
France, and Holland, cannot compete with British, either in long or short
voyages. But at any rate, the repeal of our discriminating duties has
become matter of necessity, if we would propose any trade with these
countries."[19]
[19] Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, February 13, 1823; and Annual
Register, 1823, p. 104.
Table showing the British and Foreign tonnage, with Sweden, Norway,
Denmark, and Prussia, since 1823, when the reciprocity system began,
in each of the following years:--
SWEDEN. NORWAY. DENMARK. PRUSSIA.
Years British Foreign British Foreign British Foreign British Foreign
Tons. Tons Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons.
1821 23,005 8,508 13,855 61,342 5,312 3,969 79,590 37,720
1822 20,799 13,692 13,377 87,974 7,096 3,910 102,847 58,270
1823 20,986 22,529 13,122 117,015 4,413 4,795 81,202 86,013
1824 17,074 40,092 11,419 135,272 6,738 23,689 94,664 151,621
1825 15,906 53,141 14,825 157,910 15,158 50,943 189,214 182,752
1826 11,829 16,939 15,603 90,726 22,000 56,544 119,060 120,589
1827 11,719 21,822 13,945 96,420 10,825 52,456 150,718 109,184
1828 14,877 24,700 10,826 85,771 17,464 49,293 133,753 99,195
1829 16,536 25,046 9,985 86,205 24,576 53,390 125,918 127,861
1830 12,116 23,158 6,459 84,585 12,210 51,420 102,758 139,646
1831 11,450 39,689 4,518 114,865 6,552 62,190 83,908 140,532
1832 8,335 25,755 3,798 82,155 7,268 35,772 62,079 89,187
1833 10,009 29,454 5,901 98,931 6,840 38,620 41,735 108,753
1834 15,353 35,910 6,403 98,303 5,691 53,282 32,021 118,111
1835 12,036 35,061 2,592 95,049 6,007 49,008 25,514 124,144
1836 10,865 42,439 1,573 12,875 2,152 51,907 42,567 174,439
1837 7,608 42,602 1,035 88,004 5,357 55,961 67,566 145,742
1838 10,425 38,991 1,364 110,817 3,466 57,554 86,734 175,643
1839 8,359 42,270 2,582 109,228 5,535 106,960 111,470 229,208
1840 11,933 53,337 3,166 114,241 6,327 103,067 112,709 237,984
--PORTER'S Part. Tables.
Such were Mr Huskisson's reasons. They were grounded on alleged necessity.
He said in substance:--"The navigation laws are very good things; and if
we could only persuade other nations to take our goods, while we virtually
shut out their shipping, it would, doubtless, be very advisable to
continue the present system. But you can no longer do this. Foreign
nations see the undue advantage which has been so long obtained of them.
They insist upon an exchange of interests. We, as the richer and the more
powerful, are called on to make the first advances. We must relinquish our
navigation laws in favor of their staple manufacture, shipping, if we
would induce them to admit, on favourable terms, our staple article,
cotton goods." These were Mr Huskisson's principles; and it may be
admitted that, in the abstract, they were well-founded, for all commercial
intercourse, to be beneficial and lasting, must be founded on a mutual
exchange of advantages. But, in carrying into execution this principle,
he committed a fatal mistake, which has already endangered, without the
slightest advantage, and, if persevered in, may ultimately destroy the
commercial superiority of Great Britain. He virtually repealed, by the 4
Geo. IV. c. 77 and the 5 Geo. IV. c. 1, the navigation laws, by
authorizing the King, by an order in council, to permit the exportation
and importation of goods in foreign vessels, on payment of the same duties
as where chargeable on British vessels, in favour of those countries which
did not levy discriminating duties on British vessels bringing goods into
their harbours, and to levy on the vessels of such countries the same
tonnage duties as they charged on British vessels. This was, in effect,
to say--We will admit your vessels on the same terms on which you admit
ours; and nothing, at first sight, could seem more equitable.
But, nevertheless, this system involved a fatal mistake, the pernicious
effects of which have now been amply demonstrated by experience, and which
lies at the bottom of the whole modern doctrines of free trade. _It
stipulates for no advantages corresponding to the concession made_, and
thus the reciprocity was on one side only. Mr Huskisson repealed, in
favour of the Baltic powers, the British navigation laws; that is, he
threw open to Baltic competition, without any protection, the British
shipping interest: but _he forgot to exact from them any corresponding
favour for British iron or cotton goods in the Baltic harbours_. He
said--"We will admit your shipping on the same terms on which you admit
ours." What he should have said is--"We will admit your shipping into our
harbors on the same term you admit _our cotton goods_ into your harbours."
This would have been real reciprocity, because each side would have given
free ingress to that staple commodity in which its neighbor had the
advantage; and thus the most important branch of industry of each would
have been secured an inlet into the other's territories. The British
tonnage might have been driven out of the Baltic trade by the shipowners
of Denmark and Norway, but the Prussian cotton manufacturers would have
been crushed by the British. It might then have come to be a question of
whether the upholding of our shipping interest or the extension of our
cotton manufactures was the most advisable policy. But no such question
need be considered now. We have gained nothing by exposing our shipping
interest to the ruinous competition of the Baltic vessels. The Danish,
Norwegian and Prussian ships have come into our harbours, but the British
cotton and iron goods have not entered theirs. The reciprocity system has
been all on one side. After having been twenty years in operation, it has
failed in producing _the smallest concession_ in favour of British
manufactures, or producing in those states with whom the reciprocity
treaties were concluded, the _smallest extension of British exports_.
Since we so kindly permitted it, they have taken every thing and given
nothing. They have done worse. They have taken good and returned evil. The
vast concession contained in the repeal of our navigation laws, has been
answered by the enhanced duties contained in the Prussian Zollverein.
Twenty-six millions of Germans have been arrayed under a commercial league,
which, by levying duties, practically varying from thirty to fifty, though
nominally only ten _per cent_, effectually excludes British manufactures;
and, after twenty years' experience, our exports are only a few hundred
thousands a year, and our exports of cotton manufactures _only a few
hundreds a year_, to the whole States of Northern Europe, in favour of
whom the navigation laws were swept away, and an irreparable wound
inflicted on British maritime interests, and in whose wants Mr Huskisson
anticipated a vast market for our manufacturing industry, and an ample
compensation for the diminution of our shipping interest.
Nature has established this great and all-important distinction between
the effects of wealth and national age on the productions of agriculture
and of manufactures. The reason is this:--If capital, machinery, and
knowledge, conferred the same immediate and decisive advantage on
agricultural that they do on manufacturing industry, old and
densely-peopled states would possess an undue superiority over the ruder
and more thinly-inhabited ones; the multiplication of the human race would
become excessive in the seats in which it had first taken root, and the
desert parts of the world would never, but under the pressure of absolute
necessity, be explored. The first command of God to man, "Be fruitful, and
multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it," would be frustrated.
The apprehensions of the Malthusians as to an excessive increase of
mankind, with its attendant dangers, would be realized in particular
places, while nineteen-twentieths of the earth lay neglected in a state of
nature. The desert would be left alone in its glory. The world would be
covered with huge and densely-peopled excrescences--with Babylons, Romes,
and Londons--in which wealth, power, and corruption were securely and
permanently intrenched, and from which the human race would ne'er diverge
but under the pressure of absolute impossibility to wrench a subsistence
from their over-peopled vicinities.
These dangers, threatening alike to the moral character and material
welfare of nations, are completely prevented by the simple law, the
operations of which we every day see around us--viz. that wealth,
civilization, and knowledge, add rapidly and indefinitely to the powers of
manufacturing and commercial, but comparatively slowly to those of
agricultural industry. This simple circumstance effectually provides for
the dispersion of the human race, and the check of an undue growth in
particular communities. The old state can always undersell the young one
in manufactures, but it is everlastingly undersold by them in agriculture.
Thus the equalization of industry is introduced, the dispersion of the
human race secured, and a limit put to the perilous multiplication of its
members in particular communities. The old state can never rival the young
ones around it in raising subsistence; the young ones can never rival the
old one in manufactured articles. Either a free trade takes place between
them, or restrictions are established. If the commercial intercourse
between them is unrestricted, agriculture is destroyed, and with it
national strength is undermined in the old state, and manufactures are
nipped in the bud in the young ones. If restrictions prevail, and a war of
tariffs is introduced, the agriculture of the old state, and with it its
national strength, is preserved, but its export of manufactures to the
adjoining states is checked, and they establish growing fabrics for
themselves. Whichever effect takes place, the object of nature in the
equalization of industry, the limitation of aged communities, and the
dispersion of mankind, is gained, in the first, by the ruin of the old
empire from the decay of its agricultural resources; in the second, by the
check given to its manufacturing prowess, and the transference of
mercantile industry to its younger rivals.
Generally the interests and necessities of the young states introduce a
prohibitory system to exclude the manufactures of the old one; and it is
this necessity which England is now experiencing, and vainly endeavours to
obviate, by introducing a system of free trade. But in one memorable
instance, and one only, the preponderance of a particular power rendered
this impossible, and illustrated on a great scale, and over the whole
civilized world, for a course of centuries, the effects of a perfect
freedom of trade. The Roman empire, spreading as it did round the shores
of the Mediterranean, afforded the utmost facilities for a great internal
traffic; while the equal policy of the emperors, and indeed the necessity
of their situation, introduced a perfect freedom in the interchange of
commodities between every part of their vast dominions. And what was the
result? Why, that the agriculture of Italy was destroyed--that 300,000
acres in the champaign of Naples alone reverted to a state of nature, and
were tenanted only by wild-boars and buffaloes, before a single barbarian
had crossed the Alps--that the Grecian cities were entirely maintained by
grain from the plains of Podolia--and the mistress of the world, according
to the plaintive expression of the Roman annalist, depended for her
subsistence on the floods of the Nile.[20] Not the corruption of manners,
not the tyranny of the Caesars, occasioned the ruin of the empire, for
they affected only a limited class of the people; but the practical
working of free trade, joined to domestic slavery, which destroyed the
agricultural population of the heart of the empire, and left only
effeminate urban multitudes to contend with the hardy barbarians of the
north.
[20] Tacitus, Vol. xiv. p. 21; Michelet's _Hist. de France,_
Vol. i. p. 217.
The advocates of free trade are not insensible to the superior advantages
of the rising over the old state in agriculture, and of the latter over
the former in manufactures. On the contrary, it is a secret but clear
sense of the reality of this distinction, which causes them so strenuously
to contend for the removal of all restrictions. They hope, by so doing, to
effect a great extension of their sales in foreign countries, without, as
they pretend, creating any diminution in their own. But the views which
have now been given show that this is a vain conceit, and demonstrate how
it has happened, that the more strenuously England contends for the
principles of free trade, and the more energetically that she carries them
into practice, the more decided is the resistance which she meets on
foreign states in the attempt, and the more rigorously do they act on the
principles of protection. It is because they are striving to become
manufacturing and commercial communities that they do this--it is a clear
sense of the ruin which awaits them, if deluged with British goods, which
makes them so strenuous in their system of exclusion. The more that we
open our trade, the more will they close theirs. They think, and not
without reason, that we advocate unrestricted commercial intercourse only
because it would be profitable to us, and deprecate our old system of
exclusion only because it has now been turned against ourselves. "Now,
then," say they, "is the time, when England is suffering under the system
of exclusion, which we have at length had sense enough to borrow from her,
to draw closer the bonds of that system, and complete the glorious work of
our own elevation on her ruins. Our policy is clearly chalked out by hers;
we have only to do what she deprecates, and we are sure to be right." It
is evident that these views will be permanently entertained by them,
because they are founded on the strongest of all instincts that of
self-preservation. When we cease to be a great manufacturing nation, when
we are no longer formidable rivals, they will open their harbours; but not
till then. In striving to introduce a system of free trade, therefore, we
gratuitously inflict a severe wound on our domestic industry, without any
chance even of a compensation in that which is destined for the foreign
markets. We let in their goods into our harbours, but we do not obtain
admission, nor will we ever obtain admission, for ours into theirs. The
reciprocity is, and ever must be, all on one side.
It is by mistaking the dominant influence among the continental states,
that so large a portion of the community are deceived on this subject.
They say, if we take their grain and cattle, they will take our cotton
goods; that their system of exclusion is entirely a consequence of, and
retaliation for, ours. Can they produce a single instance in which our
concessions in favour of their rude produce have led to a corresponding
return in favour of ours? How can it be so, when, in all old states, the
monied is the prevailing interest which sways the determinations of
government? The landholders, separated from each other, without capital,
almost all burdened with debt, are no match in the domestic struggle for
the manufacturing and commercial interests. Their superiority is founded
on a very clear footing--the same which has rendered the British House of
Commons omnipotent. _They hold the purse._ It is their loans which support
the credit of Government; it is by the customs which their imports pay
that the public revenue is to be chiefly raised. The more popular that
governments become, the more strongly will their influences appear in the
war of tariffs. If pure democracies were established in all the
neighbouring states, we would be met in then all by a duty of sixty per
cent. Witness the American tariff of 1842, and the progressive increases
of duties against us since the popular revolutions we have fostered and
encouraged in France, Belgium, and Portugal.
Is, then, a free and unrestrained system of commercial intercourse
impossible between nations, and must it ever end in a war of tariffs and
the pacific infliction of mutual injury? We consider it is impossible
between two nations, both manufacturing, or aspiring to be so, and in the
same, or nearly the same, age and social circumstances. It is mere folly
to attempt it; because interests which must clash, are continually arising
on both parts, and reciprocity, if attempted, is on one side only. With
such nations, the only wisdom is, to conclude treaties, not of reciprocity,
but of _commerce_; that is, treaties in which, in consideration of certain
branches of our manufactures being admitted on favourable terms, we agree
to admit certain articles of their produce on equally advantageous
conditions. Thus, a treaty, by which we agreed to admit, for a moderate
duty, the wines of France, which we can never rival, in return for their
admitting our iron and cotton goods on similar terns, would be a measure
of equal benefit to both countries. It would be as wise a measure as Mr
Huskisson's reduction of the duties on French silks, gloves, and clocks,
was a gratuitous and unwarranted injury to staple branches of our own
industry. The only countries to which the reciprocity system is really
applicable, are distant states in an early state of civilization, whose
natural products are essentially different from our own, and whose stage
of advancement is not such as to have made them enter on the career of
manufacture, of jealousy, and of tariffs. Colonies unite all these
advantages; and it is in them that the real sources of our strength, and
the only secure markets for our produce, are to be found; but that subject,
so vast, so interesting, so vital to our individual and national
advancement, must be reserved for a future occasion.
* * * * *