free-trade in corn would be _permanent_, although the benefit to the
inhabitants of towns could only be temporary. After the destruction of
a large portion of British agriculture had been effected, by the
immense inundation of foreign grain, prices would rise again to their
former level, because the monopoly would then be vested in the hands
of the foreign growers; and the bulky nature of grain renders it
_physically_ impossible to introduce an _unlimited_ supply of that
article by sea transport. But the condition of British agriculture
would not be materially benefited by the change; because prices would
rise _solely_ in consequence of the British grower being, for the most
part, driven out of the field; and could be maintained at a high level
only by his being _kept_ from an extensive competition with the
foreign cultivator. Should the British farmers, recovering from their
consternation, recommence the active agriculture which at present
maintains our vast and increasing population, the consequence would
be, that prices would immediately fall to such a degree, as speedily
to reduce them to their natural and unavoidable state of inferiority
to the farmers of the Continent.
“In considering this subject, there are two important circumstances to
be kept in view, proved abundantly by experience, but which have not
hitherto met with the general attention which they deserve.
“The first of these is, that, in agriculture—differing in this respect
from manufactures—the introduction of machinery, or the division of
labour, can effect _no reduction whatever_ in the price of its
produce, or the facility of its production; and perhaps the best mode
of cultivation yet known is that which is carried on by the greatest
possible application of human labour, in the form of spade
cultivation. The proof of this is decisive. Great Britain, with the
aid of the steam-engine, can undersell the weavers of Hindostan with
muslins manufactured out of cotton grown on the banks of the Ganges;
but it is undersold in its own markets by the wheat-grower on the
banks of the Vistula, or in the basin of the Mississippi. It is in
vain, therefore, for a state like England, burdened with high prices
and an excessive taxation—the natural consequence of commercial
opulence—to hope that its industry can, in agriculture as in
manufactures, withstand the competition of the foreign grower.
Machinery, skill, and capital can easily counteract high prices in all
other articles of human consumption: in agriculture, they can produce
no such effect. This is a law of nature which will subsist to the end
of the world.
“The second is, that a comparatively small importation of grain
produces a prodigious effect on the prices at which it is sold. The
importation of a tenth part of the annual consumption does not, it is
calculated, lower prices a tenth, but _a half_—and so on with the
importation of smaller quantities. This has always been observed, and
is universally acknowledged by political economists. Although,
therefore, the greatest possible importation of foreign grain must
always be a part only of that required for the consumption of the
whole people, yet still the effect upon the current rate of prices
would be most disastrous. The greatest importation ever known was in
1801, when it amounted, in consequence of the scarcity, to an
_eighteenth_ part of the annual consumption; but the free introduction
of much less than that quantity would reduce the price of wheat in the
first instance, in an ordinary year, to 45s. the quarter.
“The repeal of the Corn Laws, therefore, is calculated to inflict a
_permanent_ wound on the agricultural resources of the empire, and
permanently injure all the numerous classes who depend on that branch
of industry, and confer only a _temporary_ benefit, by the reduction
of prices, on the manufacturing labourers. The benefit is temporary,
and mixed up, even at first, with a most bitter portion of alloy; the
evil lasting, unmitigated by any benefit whatever.”
We are now in the course of enduring that precise phase of suffering,
arising from the repeal of the Corn Laws, which was predicted by Mr
Alison more than eighteen years ago; and it is solely from the extent of
that suffering that we are inclined to form a better augury for the
future than we could have ventured to have done in the course of the
bygone year. Three months have not passed since, at the opening of
Parliament, the Whig Ministry with unparalleled audacity ventured to
congratulate the country on its general prosperous condition! Themselves
indeed they might congratulate, that, by means of an income and property
tax, imposed under false pretences by a former Premier, the public
revenue was still sufficient to meet its ordinary engagements; but what
other ground of congratulation there was, no host of witnesses could
tell. Could they venture to congratulate the country _now_ on the state
of the manufacturing districts? Has this little interval of three
months, at a time of universal peace and unparalleled cheapness,
sufficed to change universal prosperity into widespread and acknowledged
depression? Not so. The depression had begun long before—it commenced so
soon as falling prices warned the agricultural consumers of the fate
which was in store for them; and if Ministers did not know this, they
are utterly unfit to retain their places longer. The continuance of that
depression can be only measured by the existence of the Free-trade
system. If that is allowed to go on, and if there be indeed, as is now
the common cant of the Liberal journalists, no possibility of retracing
our steps, the next move will be one of plunder. No foreign trade can
compensate for the tithe of the loss sustained by the depreciation of
property at home. That cheapness which means nothing else than
curtailment of individual profits, from the highest to the lowest,
cannot possibly coexist with expensive government and enormous taxation.
The public creditor will be marked for the next blow; and his situation
is the more precarious from the peculiar monetary history of the
country, and the first important measure—pity also that it had not been
the last!—which Sir Robert Peel was instrumental in carrying through the
House of Commons.
We are not only hopeful but sanguine as to the power of Great Britain in
extricating herself from a difficulty, not transient as before, but
settled in its character, because we believe that the downfal of a
wretched, presuming, and ignorant faction cannot be much longer delayed.
We have been cursed, for many years back, by the predominance of a race
of quacks, impostors, sham economists, and political adventurers, who,
through favour of the Reform Bill, have forced their way into
Parliament, after having failed in the ordinary occupations of trade,
and have succeeded in palming their crude and pestilential doctrines
upon Ministers too occupied with individual ambition to care much for
the public welfare. Does any one believe that such men have any interest
in maintaining the public credit, or that they would not, did an
opportunity occur, attempt to defraud the creditor, as they have already
succeeded in diminishing the means of the debtor? Surely a thoughtful
review of the political events which have occurred within the last five
years is enough to remove any lingering credulity on this point. We do
not ask any one to adopt our views, or to accept our construction. Let
him deliberately reflect upon the language of these men in 1845, when
the political and commercial fever was at its height—when private
individuals were persuaded that they might rear fortunes without the
drudgery of industry, and when statesmen were preparing to recommend the
same false principle for the general guidance of the nation. How the
upstart economists swaggered, strutted, and cackled then! Not a whit
less incompetent and treacherous, as guides in their own path, than were
the mushroom clerks and pimpled adventurers of the Stock Exchanges in
another, they stood forth like so many political John Laws, proclaiming
that unbounded wealth, increased demand for labour, and endless influx
of capital would be the immediate result of their magnificent
free-trading schemes. They had figures and blue-books, returns,
calculations and balance-sheets, painfully concocted by plodding
theorists, ready at hand to back up their asseverations, and to satisfy
the doubts of the most sceptical. This is peculiarly an age in which men
are befooled by figures. A century ago, it was enough that a statement
should pass from writing into print, and be included in the columns of a
journal, in order to secure its currency as a point of popular belief.
The increase of journalism has in some respects remedied this, most men
being now alive to the fact that typography possesses no peculiar
immunity from falsehood. But figures are—or at least were a few years
ago—untainted in their reputation. Few people were cautious enough to
resist a tempting calculation. It never entered into their heads to
suppose that there lay gross error, radical fallacy, and often
deliberate fraud, in the imposing array of cyphers which were
ostentatiously paraded for their inspection. If half-a-dozen
unscrupulous swindlers determined to start a railway, nothing more was
required to secure a rush for the scrip, than a summary of phantom
traffic, exhibiting a clear return of some fifteen or twenty per cent
after deduction of the working expenses. We all know what has been the
result of that widespread infatuation. In precisely the same manner did
the economists concoct their accounts, when they issued their Free-trade
prospectus. Less honest, or perhaps more daringly fraudulent than the
railway projectors, they did not propose to grant any compensation for
the land at all, but their traffic tables were undoubtedly an
arithmetical _chef-d’œuvre_! Two millions per week of clear gain was
about the smallest estimate; and to this result various persons, whose
previous biography, now that they have emerged as public characters,
might be interesting, pledged their valuable reputations!
That they imposed upon the leaders of party, as well as upon a large
section of the nation, is no matter of marvel. Statesmen are not exempt
from folly, imprudence, or delusion, any more than private persons. One
may be cold, selfish, and greedy; another rash, unscrupulous, and
obstinate; but, as there are few fish which will not take a bait, so
there seem to be few modern statesmen proof against the temptation of
altering their policy, if, by doing so, they believe that they can
secure possession of an unlimited lease of power. In the present case
the bait was dexterously spun between the two rivals, and the anxiety of
both to secure it was so great, that neither took the precaution of
examining curiously into the nature of its actual texture.
There is hardly a man in the country, from the peer to the artisan, who
is not asking himself at this moment, what he has gained by Free-trade.
So far as the agricultural interest is concerned, there is no dubiety on
the point. The landlord is dunned for reduction of rent, is
discontinuing his improvements, reducing his establishment, and setting
his house in order for an altered style of living. The tenant is
wellnigh ruined, furious that he has been betrayed, economising labour
as he best can, or seriously meditating emigration. The labourer finds
his wages reduced, his small comforts curtailed or abolished, work
scarce, and the workhouse at no great distance. Let them all take
comfort. According to our hopeful economists, this is a mere “transition
state of suffering.” What the next state is to be, no prophet of them
all can foretell. Meantime certain Solons advocate a wholesale
emigration—rather a strange panacea for a nation about to be so
prosperous!
Go to the towns or the manufacturing districts, and ask how they are
prospering. The cotton trade is threatening to shut up. The travellers
are returning disconsolate to their employers with the news that orders
are every day becoming more scarce, and money payments even scarcer.
There is no joy or exultation now in Leeds or Bradford. The journeymen
operatives are combining against the slop system. The _Morning
Chronicle_ harrows up the feelings of its readers, by tearful tales of
the misery and destitution which prevails throughout the large towns of
the empire, and no human being can deny the truth of the appalling
statements. Scottish philanthropists, on their midnight visits to the
wynds of Edinburgh, are struck with amazement at the squalor and vice
which they encounter, and not less with the shoals of destitute
creatures who are hurrying, with perverse infatuation, from the free
open country to the fated atmosphere of a loathsome city garret. They
want to check the stream, and drive the current back again. But whither?
In the country there is no work for these people. Machinery has forced
the hand-loom from the villages; Free Trade is reducing the wages of the
spade to nothing. From the Western Highlands, and from Ireland, those
who have money enough left to secure a passage on ship-board are
emigrating by thousands—it is, we are told by a correspondent, the
briskest trade in Liverpool. Those who have no money left are trooping
to the towns, with the prospect before them of a fate which might rend
the heart of the most callous. Who would wish to be a statesman, if for
the consequences of all his deeds he must be held accountable hereafter?
Ask the master-manufacturers themselves how they are getting on, now
that they have succeeded in their darling scheme of securing cheap food,
and paralysing the home trade? You may ask if you will, but you will
hardly obtain an answer, save through the medium of the trade circulars,
all filled with dismal forebodings. Were another Cobden testimonial to
be proposed just now, the subscriptions would scarcely purchase many
shares in the most depreciated of the lines.
Ask the gentlemen of the railway interest, what cause is in operation to
crush down their traffic and annihilate their dividends? They will tell
you to a man that it is the universal agricultural depression. Ask the
iron-masters how they are thriving? At this moment they are trembling
for the stability of their colossal fortunes.
It is utterly impossible that this state of matters can continue much
longer. If we do not reverse our mad and desperate policy—and that
soon—the pressure of taxation, still retaining its former money-level,
whilst the production which contributes to it is depreciated by a half,
will become so unendurable, that any remedy, however desperate, will
find numerous advocates; and amongst the foremost and most clamorous of
these will be the leading sham economists. The stateliest ship, when the
water is gaining upon her hold, must perforce part with her guns—the
parallel case is being practically exhibited just now, by the efforts of
the financial reformers to get rid of our warlike establishments. If we
cannot part with our defences, we must do without something else. There
is in the mean time a talk of reducing salaries, paring down judicial
emoluments, and retrenching diplomatic expenses. Lord John Russell, with
no very good grace, has been forced to refer these matters to a
committee, for the evident purpose of securing the longest possible
period of delay. But the tax-gatherer will not be idle in his function,
and still the clamour will increase. Superfluities will go first—but no
surrender of superfluities will meet the exigency. Men, when pressed to
the last extremity, become reckless of their personal obligations; and
we have already heard from various quarters intimations that, if the
land is to be permanently depreciated, the creditor who has lent his
money on the security of that land must be prepared to share the burden
of the loss with the owner. There is a smack of wild justice in this,
not at all unpalatable to the taste of a burdened debtor. Sir Robert
Peel’s favourite question, “What is a pound?” will be argued afresh,
after a fashion little likely to secure the approval of the original
propounder of the query. We shall be told, truly enough, that the pound
is the mere conventional representation of a certain amount of produce;
and a very large body of men will begin to talk of paying off their
debts, both private and public, upon a principle which, if once adopted,
would destroy the whole credit of the country. Three years ago, Mr
Doubleday demonstrated that, if the repeal of the Corn Laws should have
the effect of reducing the price of wheat on the average to 4s. or 4s.
6d. per bushel, only two courses are left—either to repeal the taxes
down to five-and-twenty millions at most; or to alter the currency law
of 1819, and reduce the value of money to half the present value. We
have now almost touched the mark.
All this was clearly foreseen and foreshadowed by Mr Alison, in his
memorable paper of 1831; and we beg of our readers to peruse with
attention the following extract, as of primary importance at the present
juncture of affairs:—
“Such a change of prices might be innocuous, if individuals and the
public could begin on a new basis, and there were no subsisting _money
engagements_, which must be provided for at a reduced rate of incomes.
But how is such a state of things to go on, when individuals and the
State are under so many engagements, which cannot be averted without
private or public bankruptcy? This is the question which, in a
complicated state of society such as we live in, where industry is so
dependent on credit, is the vital one to every interest.
“There is hardly an individual possessed of property in the country
who is not immediately or ultimately involved in money engagements.
The landlords are notoriously and proverbially drowned in debt, and it
is calculated that _two-thirds_ of the produce of the soil finds its
way ultimately into the pocket of the public or the private creditor.
Farmers are all more or less involved in engagements either to their
landlords or to the banks who have advanced their money; merchants and
manufacturers have their bills or cash-accounts standing against them,
which must be provided for, whatever ensues with regard to the prices
of the articles in which they deal; and private individuals, even of
wealthy fortunes, have provisions to their wives, sisters, brothers,
or children, which must be made up to a certain money amount, if they
would avert the evils of bankruptcy. Now, if the views of the
Reformers are well founded, and a great reduction is effected in the
price of grain, and consequently in the money-income of every man in
the kingdom, through the free trade in corn, how are these
undiminished money-obligations to be made good out of the diminished
pecuniary resources of the debtors in them? Mr Baring has estimated
that the change in the value of money, consequent on the resumption of
cash-payments, altered prices about 25 per cent; and everybody knows
what widespread, still existing, and irremediable private distress
_that_ change produced. What, then, may be anticipated from the far
greater change which is contemplated as likely to arise from a
free-trade in grain?
“But, serious as these evils are, they are nothing in comparison with
the dreadful consequences which would result to _public credit_ from
the change, and the widespread desolation which must follow a serious
blow to the national faith.
“It is well known with what difficulty the payment of the annual
charge of the National Debt is provided for, even under the present
scale of prices; and how much those difficulties were increased by the
change of prices, and the general diminution of incomes, consequent on
the resumption of cash-payments. Indeed, such was the effect of that
change that, had it not been counterbalanced by a very great increase,
both of our agricultural and manufacturing produce at the same time,
it would have rendered the maintenance of faith with the public
creditor impossible. Now, if such be the present state of the public
debt, even under the unexampled general prosperity which has pervaded
the empire since the peace, and with all the security to the public
faith which arises from the stable, consistent, and uniform rule of
the British aristocracy, how is the charge of the debt to be provided
for under the diminished national income arising from the much
hoped-for change of prices consequent on the Reform Bill and repeal of
the Corn Laws, and the increased national impatience, arising from the
consciousness of the power to cast off the burden for ever?—Great and
reasonable fear may be felt, whether, under any circumstances, the
maintenance of the national faith inviolate is practicable for any
considerable length of time: no doubt can be entertained that, under a
Reform Parliament, and a free trade in grain, it will be impossible.”