The burn sings under the moon, and you cannot see it; but yonder where
it bends round the dark corner of this field, it glimmers like a silver
bow. Something of witchcraft and magic is in the place and time. Above,
the sky overflooded with the moonbeams; behind, the Firth quivering and
trembling under them in an ecstasy of silent light; below, the grass
which presses upon the narrow footpath so dark and colourless, with here
and there a visible gem of dew shining among its blades like a fallen
star. Along that high-road, which stretches its broad white line
westward, lads and lasses are trooping home, and their voices strike
clearly into the charmed air, but do not blend with it, as does that
lingering music which dies away in the distance far on the other side of
the town, and the soft voice of this burn near at hand. The homeward
procession to the Milton is different from the outward bound. Yonder,
steadily at their sober everyday pace, go the miller and his wife. You
can see her crimson plaid faintly, through the silvered air which pales
its colour; but you cannot mistake the broad outline of John Stewart, or
the little active figure of the mistress of the Milton. Young
Kilbrachmont and Isabell have gone home by another road, and Janet and
her betrothed are “convoying” some of their friends on the way to
Pittenweem, and will not turn back till they pass that little eerie
house at the Kirk Latch, where people say the Red Slippers delight to
promenade; so never look doubtingly over your shoulder, anxious Willie
Morison, in fear lest the noisy couple yonder overtake you, and spoil
this silent progress home. Now and then Mrs Stewart, rapidly marching on
before, turns her head to see that you are in sight; but nothing
else—for gradually these voices on the road soften and pass away—comes
on your ear or eye unpleasantly to remind you that there is a host of
beings in the world, besides yourself and this shy reluctant companion
whose hand rests on your arm.
For under the new laced mantle, of which she was so proud this morning,
Katie Stewart’s heart is stirring like a bird. She is a step in advance
of him, eager to quicken this slow pace; but he lingers—constantly
lingers, and some spell is on her, that she cannot bid him hasten.
Willie Morison!—only the mate of that pretty Levant schooner which lies
in Leith harbour; and the little proud Katie tries to be angry at the
presumption which ventures to approach her—her, to whom Sir Alexander
did respectful homage—whom the Honourable Andrew signalled out for
admiration; but Katie’s pride, only as it melts and struggles, makes the
magic greater. He does not speak a great deal; but when he does, she
stumbles strangely in her answers; and then Katie feels the blood flush
to her face, and again her foot advances quickly on the narrow path, and
her hand makes a feint to glide out of that restraining arm. No, think
it not, little Katie—once you almost wooed your heart to receive into
it, among all the bright dreams which have their natural habitation
there, the courtly youthful knight, whose reverent devoirs charmed you
into the land of old romance; but, stubborn and honest, the little
wayward heart refused. Now let your thoughts, alarmed and anxious, press
round their citadel and keep this invader out. Alas! the besieged
fortress trembles already, lest its defenders should fail and falter;
and angry and petulant grow the resisting thoughts, and they swear to
rash vows in the silence. Rash vows—vows in which there lies a hot
impatient premonition, that they must be broken very soon.
Under those reeds, low beneath those little overhanging banks, tufted
with waving rushes, you scarcely could guess this burn was there, but
for the tinkling of its unseen steps; but they walk beside it like
listeners entranced by fairy music. The silence does not oppress nor
embarrass them now, for that ringing voice fills it up, and is like a
third person—a magical elfin third person, whose presence disturbs not
their solitude.
“Katie!” cries the house-mother, looking back to mark how far behind
those lingerers are; and Katie again impatiently quickens her pace, and
draws her companion on. The burn grows louder now, rushing past the idle
wheel of the mill, and Mrs Stewart has crossed the little bridge, and
they hear, through the still air, the hasty sound with which she turns
the great key in the door. Immediately there are visible evidences that
the mistress of the house is within it again, for a sudden glow
brightens the dark window, and throws a cheerful flickering light from
the open door; but the moon gleams in the dark burn, pursuing the
foaming water down that descent it hurries over; and the wet stones,
which impede its course, glimmer dubiously in the light which throws its
splendour over all. Linger, little Katie—slower and slower grow the
steps of your companion; linger to make the night beautiful—to feel in
your heart as you never felt before, how beautiful it is.
Only Willie Morison! And yet a little curiosity prompts you to look out
and watch him from your window in the roof as you lay your cloak aside.
He is lingering still by the burn—leaving it with reluctant, slow
steps—looking back and back as if he could not make up his mind to go
away; and hastily, with a blush which the darkness gently covers, you
withdraw from the window, little Katie, knowing that it is quite
impossible he could have seen you, yet trembling lest he has.
The miller has the great Bible on the table, and bitter is the reproof
which meets the late-returning Janet, as her mother stands at the open
door and calls to her across the burn. It is somewhat late, and Janet
yawns as she seats herself in the background, out of the vigilant
mother’s eye, which, seeing everything, gives no sign of weariness; and
Katie meditatively leans her head upon her hand, and places her little
Bible in the shadow of her arm, as the family devotion begins. But again
and again, before it has ended, Katie feels the guilty blood flush over
her forehead; for the sacred words have faded from before her downcast
eyes, and she has seen only the retreating figure going slowly away in
the moonlight—a blush of indignant shame and self-anger, too, as well as
guilt; for this is no Sir Alexander—no hero—but only Willie Morison.
“Send that monkey hame, Isabell,” said John Stewart. He had just
returned thanks and taken up his bonnet, as he rose from their homely
breakfast-table next morning. “Send that monkey hame, I say; I’ll no hae
my house filled wi’ lads again for ony gilpie’s pleasure. Let Katie’s
joes gang up to Kellie if they maun make fules o’ themsels. Janet’s
ser’d, Gude be thankit; let’s hae nae mair o’t noo.”
“It’s my desire, John Stewart, you would just mind your ain business,
and leave the house to me,” answered his wife. “If there’s ae sight in
the world I like waur than anither, it’s a man pitting his hand into a
house-wifeskep. I ne’er meddle with your meal. Robbie and you may be
tooming it a’ down the burn, for ought I ken; but leave the lassies to
me, John, my man. I hae a hand that can grip them yet, and that’s what
ye ne’er were gifted with.”
The miller shrugged his shoulders, threw on his bonnet, but without any
further remonstrance went away.
“And how lang are ye to stay, Katie?” resumed Mrs Stewart.
“I’ll gang up to Kilbrachmont, if ye’re wearying on me, mother,”
answered the little belle.
“Haud your peace, ye cuttie. Is that a way to answer your mother, and me
slaving for your guid, nicht and day? But hear ye, Katie Stewart, I’ll
no hae Willie Morison coming courting here; ae scone’s enow o’ a baking.
Janet there is to be cried with Alick—what he could see in her, I canna
tell—next Sabbath but twa; and though the Morisons are very decent folk,
we’re sib enough wi’ ae wedding. So ye’ll mind what I say, if Willie
Morison comes here at e’en.”
“I dinna ken what you mean, mother,” said Katie indignantly.
“I’ll warrant Katie thinks him no guid enough,” said Janet, with a
sneer.
“Will ye mind your wark, ye taupie? What’s your business with Katie’s
thoughts? And let me never mair see you sit there with a red face, Katie
Stewart, and tell a lie under my very e’en. I’ll no thole’t. Janet, redd
up that table. Merran, you’re wanted out in the East Park; if Robbie and
you canna be done with that pickle taties the day, ye’ll ne’er make saut
to your kail; and now I’m gaun in to Anster mysel’—see ye pit some birr
in your fingers the time I’m away.”
“Never you heed my mother, Katie,” said Janet benevolently, as Mrs
Stewart’s crimson plaid began to disappear over the field. “She says aye
a hantle mair than she means; and Willie may come the nicht, for a’
that.”
“Willie may come! And do you think _I_ care if he never crossed Anster
Brig again?” exclaimed Katie with burning indignation.
“Weel, I wouldna say. He’s a bonnie lad,” said Janet, as she lifted the
shining plates into the lower shelf of the oak aumrie. “And if you dinna
care, Katie, what gars ye have such a red face?”
“It’s the fire,” murmured Katie, with sudden humiliation; for her cheeks
indeed were burning—alas! as the brave Sir Alexander’s name could never
make them burn.
“Weel, he’s to sail in three weeks, and he’ll be a fule if he troubles
his head about a disdainfu’ thing that wouldna stand up for him, puir
chield. The first night ever Alick came after me, I wouldna have held my
tongue and heard onybody speak ill of him; and yesterday’s no the first
day—no by mony a Sabbath in the kirk, and mony a night at hame—that
Willie Morison has gien weary looks at you.”
“He can keep his looks to himsel,” said Katie angrily, as the wheel
_birled_ under her impatient hand. “It was only to please ye a’ that I
let him come hame with me last night; and he’s no a bonnie lad, and I
dinna care for him, Janet.”
Janet, with the firelight reddening that round, stout, ruddy arm, with
which she lifts from the crook the suspended kettle, pauses in the act
to look into Katie’s face. The eyelashes tremble on the flushed
cheek—the head is drooping—poor little Katie could almost cry with
vexation and shame.
Merran is away to the field—the sisters are alone; but Janet only
ventures to laugh a little as she goes with some bustle about her work,
and records Katie’s blush and Katie’s anger for the encouragement of
Willie Morison. Janet, who is experienced in such matters, thinks these
are good signs.
And the forenoon glides away, while Katie sits absorbed and silent,
turning the pretty wheel, and musing on all these affronts which have
been put upon her. Not the first by many days on which Willie Morison
has dared to think of her! And she remembers Sir Alexander, and that
moonlight night on which she watched him looking up at Lady Anne
Erskine’s window, but very faintly, very indifferently, comes before her
the dim outline of the youthful knight; whereas most clearly visible in
his blue jacket, and with the fair hair blown back from his ruddy, manly
face, appears this intruder, this Willie Morison.
The days are growing short. Very soon now the dim clouds of the night
droop over these afternoon hours in which Mrs Stewart says, “Naebody can
ever settle to wark.” It is just cold enough to make the people out of
doors brisk in their pace, and to quicken the blood it exhilarates; and
the voices of the field-labourers calling to each other as the women
gather up the potato baskets and hoes which they have used in their
work, and the men loose their horses from the plough, and lead them
home, ring into the air with a clear musical cadence which they have not
at any other time. Over the dark Firth, from which now and then you
catch a long glistening gleam, which alone in the darkness tells you it
is there, now suddenly blazes forth that beacon on the May. Not a sober
light, shining under glass cases with the reflectors of science behind,
but an immense fire piled high up in that iron cage which crowns the
strong grey tower; a fiery, livid, desperate light, reddening the dark
waters which welter and plunge below, so that you can fancy it rather
the torch of a forlorn hope, fiercely gleaming upon ships dismasted and
despairing men, than the soft clear lamp of help and kindness guiding
the coming and going passenger through a dangerous way.
The night is dark, and this ruddy window in the Milton is innocent of a
curtain. Skilfully the fire has been built, brightly it burns, paling
the ineffectual lamp up there, in its cruise on the high mantelpiece.
The corners of the room are dark, and Merran, still moving about here
and there, like a wandering star, crosses the orbit of this homely
domestic sun, and anon mysteriously disappears into the gloom. Here, in
an arm-chair, sits the miller, his bonnet laid aside, and in his hand a
Caledonian Mercury, not of the most recent date, which he alternately
elevates to the lamplight, and depresses to catch the bright glow of the
fire; for the miller’s eyes are not so young as they once were, though
he scorns spectacles still.
Opposite him, in the best place for the light, sits Mrs Stewart,
diligently mending a garment of stout linen, her own spinning, which
time has begun slightly to affect. But her employment does not entirely
engross her vigilant eyes, which glance perpetually round with quick
scrutiny, accompanied by remark, reproof, or bit of pithy advice—advice
which no one dares openly refuse to take.
Janet is knitting a grey “rig-and-fur” stocking, a duplicate of these
ones which are basking before the fire on John Stewart’s substantial
legs. Constantly Janet’s clue is straying on the floor, or Janet’s wires
becoming entangled; and when her mother’s eyes are otherwise directed,
the hoiden lets her hands fall into her lap, and gives her whole
attention to the whispered explosive jokes which Alick Morison is
producing behind her chair.
Over there, where the light falls fully on her, though it does not do
her so much service as the others, little Katie gravely sits at the
wheel, and spins with a downcast face. Her dress is very carefully
arranged—much more so than it would have been in Kellie—and the graceful
cambric ruffles droop over her gloved arms, and she holds her head,
stooping a little forward indeed, but still in a dignified attitude,
with conscious pride and involuntary grace. Richly the flickering
firelight brings out the golden gloss of that curl upon her cheek, and
the cheek itself is a little flushed; but Katie is determinedly grave
and dignified, and very rarely is cheated into a momentary smile.
For he is here, this Willie Morison! lingering over her wheel and her, a
great shadow, speaking now and then when he can get an opportunity; but
Katie looks blank and unconscious—will not hear him—and holds her head
stiffly in one position rather than catch a glimpse of him as he sways
his tall person behind her. Other lingering figures, half in the gloom,
half in the light, encircle the little company by the fireside, and
contribute to the talk, which, among them, is kept up merrily—Mrs
Stewart herself leading and directing it, and only the dignified Katie
quite declining to join in the gossip and rural raillery, which, after
all, is quite as witty, and—save that it is a little Fifish—scarcely in
any respect less delicate than the _badinage_ of more refined circles.
“It’s no often Anster gets a blink of your daughter. Is Miss Katie to
stay lang?” asked a young farmer, whom Katie’s dress and manner had awed
into humility, as she intended they should.
“Katie, ye’re no often so mim. Whatfor can ye no answer yoursel?” said
Mrs Stewart.
“Lady Anne is away to England with Lady Betty—for Lord Colville’s ship’s
come in,” said Katie sedately. “There’s nobody at the Castle but Lady
Erskine. Lady Anne is to be back in three weeks. She says that in her
letter.”
In her letter! Little Katie Stewart then receives letters from Lady Anne
Erskine! The young farmer was put down; visions of seeing her a countess
yet crossed his eyes and disenchanted him. “She’ll make a bonnie lady;
there’s few of them like her; but she’ll never do for a poor man’s
wife,” he muttered to himself as he withdrew a step or two from the
vicinity of the unattainable sour plums.
But not so Willie Morison. “I’ll be three weeks of sailing mysel,” said
the mate of the schooner, scarcely above his breath; and no one heard
him but Katie.
Three weeks! The petulant thoughts rushed round their fortress, and
vowed to defend it to the death. But in their very heat, alas! was there
not something which betrayed a lurking traitor in the citadel, ready to
display the craven white flag from its highest tower?
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 least
_fivefold_ during 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 least SIX TIMES what 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 determinate _weight of gold metal_;” and
the _Times_, 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 “had _rendered 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 to _suggest 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 when _The
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 as
_un 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 to
_keep 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 a _substitute for_, but as a
_representative 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 most
_unmeasured 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 notes _not 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, in _three 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, an _arrest of the fall_ which 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 the _very
reverse_ of 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 the _fainéants_ consumers. 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 the _Times_ boasted, 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 the _utmost vigilance_ should 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 attach _some 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 a
_catholic_ or universal blessing, extending over all countries, and
_affecting 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 farmer _still 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 of
EMIGRATION which 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.
TABLE—SHOWING THE EMIGRATION FROM THE BRITISH ISLANDS FOR SIX YEARS
BEFORE AND AFTER FREE TRADE.
┌──────────────────┬───────────────┬──────────────────┬────────────────┐
│In the years 1840,│ 90,743│In the years 1846,│ 129,851│
│ 1841,│ 118,592│ 1847,│ 258,270│
│ 1842,│ 128,344│ 1848,│ 248,089│
│ 1843,│ 57,212│ 1849,│ 299,498│
│ 1844,│ 70,686│ 1850,│ 280,896│
│ 1845,│ 93,501│ 1851,│ 335,966│
│ │ ——————│ │ —————————│
│ │ 6) 559,078│ │ 6) 1,552,570│
│ │ ———————│ │ —————————│
│ │Average, 93,179│ │Average, 258,761│
└──────────────────┴───────────────┴──────────────────┴────────────────┘
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 is AN 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 have _enhanced_, 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: the _Spectator_, in an able article
on this subject, has very candidly stated the cause—it is _want of
employment_ which 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 very _élite_ of 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 all _from 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 that _high wages and good prices_
are 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:—
Cwt.
British Colonies, 31,490
Foreign States, 417,051
———————
448,541
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
Debts amounting to £28,000,000
The price received for the lands burdened is only 5,400,000
Of which has been paid to the creditors 3,400,000
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,
being A FIFTH PART OF ITS FORMER VALUE. The prices which the land
fetched, the commissioners tell us, varied from _four 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 as _Free Trade in sugar_ has 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.
Before Free Trade. After Free Trade.
Qrs. Qrs.
1844 5,456,307 1849 4,453,983
1845 6,666,240 1850 4,688,274
1846 5,958,962 1851 4,487,041
“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.
Qrs.
1847 2,926,733
1848 2,945,121
1849 2,167,743
1850 1,550,196
“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 in _wheat 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 a FIFTH PART OF THE STAPLE FOOD
OF OUR PEOPLE has, 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 that _a fourth_ of
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—
“Semper inops
Ventique fidem poscebat et anni.”
Three-fourths of these immense supplies come from two countries
only—Russia and America. Can we say that we are independent for a year
together, when either of these powers, by simply closing their harbours,
can reduce us to scarcity—the two together to famine prices? If a fourth
of our subsistence is cut off by an ukase of the Autocrat of Russia, or
a mandate of the imperial people in the United States, where will be the
food of the British people? Both these powers were at war with us at the
same time in 1811;—are their dispositions now so very friendly, and our
interests and theirs so little at variance, that we can rely upon the
like thing not occurring again? And if it does occur, could we hold out
three months against a second _Non-Importation_ Act, passed in either
country?
We are often told of the great reduction of taxation which has been
effected—to the amount, it is said, of £12,000,000 sterling—since Free
Trade was introduced; but this statement is grossly exaggerated. The
following tables, taken from a late parliamentary paper, shows that the
reduction of taxation under Protection has been nearly SEVEN TIMES
GREATER than under Free Trade; for in the former period the reduction
was £41,000,000, in the latter only £6,500,000:—
1816. Property Tax, £15,500,000.——War Malt, £2,100,000.
┌───────────┬───────────┬──────────┬───────────┬───────────┬──────────┐
│ Year. │ Revenue. │ Surplus. │Deficiency.│ Taxes │ Taxes │
│ │ │ │ │ repealed. │ imposed. │
├───────────┼───────────┼──────────┼───────────┼───────────┼──────────┤
│Before 1822│ │ │ │£17,600,000│ │
│ 1822│£54,135,743│£4,744,518│ │ 2,139,101│ │
│ 1823│ 52,755,564│ 4,300,747│ │ 4,050,250│ £18,596│
│ 1824│ 54,416,230│ 3,888,172│ │ 1,704,724│ 49,605│
│ 1825│ 52,347,674│ 3,049,150│ │ 3,639,551│ 48,100│
│ 1826│ 50,241,408│ │ £645,920│ 1,973,812│ 188,725│
│ 1827│ 50,241,658│ │ 826,675│ 84,038│ 21,402│
│ 1828│ 52,104,643│ 3,246,994│ │ 51,998│ 1,966│
│ 1829│ 50,786,682│ 1,711,550│ │ 126,406│ │
│ 1830│ 50,056,615│ 2,913,672│ │ 4,093,955│ 696,004│
│ 1831│ 46,424,440│ │ 698,858│ 1,623,536│ 627,586│
│ 1832│ 46,988,755│ 614,759│ │ 747,264│ 44,526│
│ 1833│ 46,271,326│ 1,513,083│ │ 1,532,128│ │
│ 1834│ 46,509,856│ 1,608,155│ │ 2,066,116│ 199,594│
│ 1835│ 46,043,663│ 1,620,941│ │ 165,877│ 5,575│
│ 1836│ 48,702,654│ 2,130,092│ │ 1,021,786│ 3,991│
│ 1837│ 46,475,194│ │ 655,760│ 234│ 630│
│ 1838│ 47,333,460│ │ 345,227│ 289│ 8,423│
│ 1839│ 47,844,898│ │ 1,512,793│ 63,418│ │
│ 1840│ 47,567,565│ │ 1,593,971│ 1,258,959│ 2,274,240│
│ 1841│ 48,084,359│ │ 2,101,370│ 27,170│ │
│ 1842│ 46,965,630│ │ 3,979,539│ 1,596,366│ 5,629,989│
│ 1843│ 52,582,817│ 1,443,304│ │ 411,821│ │
│ 1844│ 54,003,753│ 3,356,105│ │ 458,810│ │
│ 1845│ 53,060,354│ 3,817,642│ │ 4,535,561│ 23,720│
│ │ │ │ │ ——————————│ —————————│
│ │ │ │ │ 40,963,170│£9,840,768│
│ │ │ │ │ 9,840,768│ │
│ │ │ │ │ ——————————│ │
│ Net reduction of taxation before Free Trade, │£30,922,802│ │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────┴───────────┴──────────┘
TAXES REPEALED SINCE FREE TRADE.
┌───────────┬───────────┬──────────┬───────────┬───────────┬──────────┐
│ Year. │ Revenue. │ Surplus. │Deficiency.│ Taxes │ Taxes │
│ │ │ │ │ repealed. │ imposed. │
├───────────┼───────────┼──────────┼───────────┼───────────┼──────────┤
│ 1846│£53,790,138│£2,846,308│ —│ £1,151,790│ £2,000│
│ 1847│ 51,546,264│ —│ £2,956,684│ 344,886│ —│
│ 1848│ 53,388,717│ —│ 796,419│ 585,968│ —│
│ 1849│ 52,951,749│ 2,098,126│ —│ 388,798│ —│
│ 1850│ 52,810,680│ 2,578,806│ —│ 1,310,151│ —│
│ 1851│ 52,233,006│ 2,726,396│ —│ 2,679,864│ 600,000│
│ │ │ │ │ ——————————│ ————————│
│ │ │ │ │ 6,462,457│ £602,000│
│ │ │ │ │ 602,000│ │
│ │ │ │ │ ——————————│ │
│ Net reduction of taxation since Free Trade, │ £5,860,457│ │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────┴───────────┴──────────┘
Further, how has this reduction of £5,860,457 been effected? Simply by
the previous imposition of the income-tax, which produced £5,629,000
before Free Trade began. That is, Sir R. Peel took taxes off the
shoulders of the whole community, when it was so generally diffused that
it was not felt, and laid it as _an exclusive burden upon less than
300,000 individuals_ in it! This is not reduction of taxation; it is
shifting the burden, for the sake of popularity, from one class to
another, on whom it falls with crushing severity.
The Free-Traders boast of a surplus of above £2,500,000 annually under
the operation of their system. But for the income-tax it would not be a
surplus at all, but a deficit of £3,000,000 annually. So oppressive,
however, vexatious, and unjust is that tax, and so enormous the severity
with which it presses upon agricultural industry compared to commercial,
that its continuance cannot much longer be endured. It has been truly
described as an “_impost_ on the landed interest, and a _contribution_
by the commercial.” And that really is its character, so flagrant are
the frauds and evasions by which the unscrupulous among the trading
classes evade its operation. The present high state of the public funds,
owing to the long continuance of peace, the destruction of a large part
of the trading classes by Sir Robert Peel’s monetary system, and the
impulse given to industry by the repeal of that system, by the opening
of the great banks of issue by Providence in California and Australia,
has now raised the 3 per cents above 100, and gives a fair prospect of
the Chancellor of the Exchequer being able to save £1,500,000 to the
nation annually, by converting the 3 per cents into a 2½ per cent stock.
Should he effect this, and, by the aid of that reduction and the
surplus, succeed in taking off the income-tax, he will confer the
greatest boon ever bestowed on his country since the former tax of 10
per cent was repealed, and do more to establish the popularity of his
administration, than by any other measures that could possibly be
devised.
THE MOOR AND THE LOCH.[9]
By many who are fond of excitement, and by some who require it, a
general election may be considered as rather a pleasant event. It
certainly does break in upon the monotony of everyday existence, and
gives a strong fillip to the latent energies of the people. The burly
energetic patriot, who can spout, and bellow, and declaim, now becomes a
man of mark and likelihood—a very Saul among his brethren. The aged
plotter of the clique—“Sesina, that old negotiator”—as he shuffles past,
with a dodge evidently concealed beneath the grizzly penthouse of his
eyebrows, is regarded with mysterious awe as the hierophant of
electioneering wiles. Even the veriest noodle finds his value rising in
the market; for, if he is fit for nothing else, he can at least call at
the electors’ houses, and leave cards for the candidates. Ever open from
morning to night are the doors of the committee-rooms, vomiting forth
shoals of canvassers, and reabsorbing them on their return with the
reports of their daily mission. All this, we allow, may be agreeable to
those whose blood, in ordinary times, is wont to stagnate; but, for our
part, we do not scruple to confess that such an occasion as the present
is exceedingly distracting and inconvenient. Our political principles,
we take it, are tolerably well known; nor is it likely that, at the
eleventh hour, we should change the tenor of our opinions: yet, in the
course of the last two days, we have been waited on by no less than six
separate sets of canvassers, “respectfully soliciting,” as they phrase
it, our interest and vote in favour of Radicals of every dye, rank
Whigs, and rampant Sectarians. In the streets no man is safe. Second
votes are esteemed of more value than the first; and every third man you
meet is intent upon nailing you for a pledge. Under these circumstances,
availing ourselves of the plea that the weather is too sultry to admit
of our stirring abroad, we have deserted our study, and emigrated to the
attics, from the windows of which we can command a wide view of the
distant Highland hills. Safe, therefore, we trust we may consider
ourselves, for an hour or so at least, from all interruption, save the
twittering of the swallows bringing food to their young in the nest at
the upper corner of the window.
Beautiful in their disarray, and recalling many memories of forest,
lake, and hill, are the implements of sylvan sport that our silent attic
contains. There, in one corner, are our rods, six in number, from
Behemoth, with which we slew the giant salmon of the Ness, to Spirling,
the liveliest little wand that ever struck midge into the tongue of a
Yarrow trout. What would we not give at this moment for a day’s fishing!
O for a fairy car to waft us away bodily from the din of cities and
hustings to the lovely bosom of Loch Awe! Soft and green wave the
beeches in the summer breeze on those islands where the wood-hyacinth is
so blue, and the honeysuckle so flush and fragrant; from the dark woods
of Innistrynich you hear the doling of the cushat; while, nearer at
hand, the mavis breaks out into a burst of melody. But there is a breeze
on the loch, and the boat is on the shore, and Dugald opines that it is
time to be up and doing. At the first cast, up rises a whopper, visibly
yellow about the fin, and weighing, we shall suppose, by the way the
line runs out, at least a pound and three quarters. Never did Limerick
steel encounter a worthier foeman. At length, in the experienced hands
of Dugald, the landing-net does its duty; and there he lies at the
bottom of the boat, in all the lustre of his stars. Are the trout not
rising to-day? With two pounders simultaneously upon your line, you may
confidently answer—Yes; indeed, there would seem to be no end at all to
their leaping. Towards evening we shall go down the loch, and try for a
_salmo ferox_ in Castle Connal bay; in the mean time, let us keep to the
islands. But who is that in the boat contending, if we mistake not, with
a salmon? Ha, Dugald! is it so indeed?—the author of the _Moor and the
Loch_!