Weighs the natives' labour down,
Or their energies are palsied
By a tyrant master's frown.
To my heart the blood is gushing--
Righteous tears bedew my cheek--
Parliament shall know their burdens,
Ere I'm older by a week!
XXII.
"Ha! those fine devoted fellows!
'Twere a black and burning shame,
If we let the Yankees swamp them
In their mean exclusive game.
I have always held the doctrine,
Since my public life begun,
That it was our bounden duty
To take care of Number One.
XXIII.
"What!--allow the faithful Indian
To be crushed in cotton-growing?
O forbid it, truthful Wilson!
O refuse it, saintly Owen!
Have their claims been disregarded?
There is life within a mussel;
And I've got a kind of bridle
On the neck of Johnny Russell.
XXIV.
"I shall move a special motion,
Touching this o'erlooked affair:
El-Dorado would be nothing
To the wealth that waits us there.
Let us get a fair protection
For our native Indian niggers,
And, I think, the Rochdale mill-book
Would display some startling figures!
XXV.
"Ha! I've got another notion!
Things are rather dull at home,
And I feel no fixed objection,
In my country's cause to roam.
It is needful that some cautious
Hand should undertake the task,
Hum--there _must_ be a commission--
Well--I've only got to ask.
XXVI.
"They'll be rather glad to spare me,
In their present precious fix:
Charley Wood is somewhat shakey
With his recent dodge on bricks.
Palmerston's in hottest water,
What with France, and what with Greece;
As for little Juggling Johnny
He'll pay anything for peace.
XXVII.
"Faith, I'll do it! were it only
As a most conclusive trick,
And a hint unto our fellows
That I'm quite as good as Dick.
Hang him! since he's made orations,
In a sort of mongrel French,
One would think he's almost equal
To Lord Campbell on the bench.
XXVIII.
"Time it is our course were severed;
I'm for broad distinctions now.
Since my mills are fairly stoppaged,
At another shrine I bow.
Send me only out to India
On this patriotic scheme,
And I'll show them how protection
Is a fact, and not a dream."
THE GREAT PROTECTION MEETING IN LONDON.
We have considered it our duty to record in a permanent form the
proceedings of the most important meeting which has been held in
Britain, since Sir Robert Peel deliberately renounced that policy
of which he was once the plighted champion. Not many months have
elapsed since the Free-traders were wont to aver, with undaunted
effrontery, that all idea of a return to the principles of Protection
to native industry was eradicated from the minds of the British
public; that, saving some elderly peers and a few bigoted enthusiasts
like ourselves, no sane man would attempt to overturn a system which
placed the untaxed foreigner on a level with the home-producer;
and that cheapness, superinduced by exorbitant competition, was
in reality the greatest blessing which could be vouchsafed to
an industrious people. The great measure of the age, originally
propounded as an experiment, was eagerly assumed as a fact; and we
were told, for the first time in British history, that legislation,
however faulty it might prove, was to be regarded as a thing
irrevocable.
It was, however, rather remarkable that, whilst making these broad
assertions, the Free-traders manifested a distinct uneasiness as to
the working of their favourite scheme. If the measures which they
advocated and carried were indeed final, there was surely no need
for the bluster which was repeated, week after week, and day after
day, from platform and from hustings, in Parliament and out of it,
in pamphlet, broad-sheet, and review. If no considerable party cared
about Protection, and still less meditated a vigorous effort for
its revival, why should Mr Cobden and his brother demagogues have
uselessly committed themselves by threatening, in so many words,
to shake society to its centre, and overturn the constitution of
the realm? Men never resort to threats, when they deem themselves
positively secure. Such language was, to say the least of it,
injudicious; since it was calculated to create an impression,
especially among the waverers, that the temple of Free Trade, (which,
by the way, is to be roofed in next year,) might after all have its
foundation on a quicksand, instead of being firmly established on the
solid stratum of the rock.
No charge can be made against the country party, that they have
precipitately commenced their movement. On the contrary, we believe
it would be impossible to find an instance of a vast body of men
betrayed by their appointed leader; aggrieved by a course of
legislation which they could not prevent, since a direct appeal to
the suffrages of the nation was denied; injured in their property;
and taunted for their apathy even by their opponents--yet submitting
so long and so patiently to the operation of a cruel law which day
by day was forcing them onwards to the brink of ruin. The practical
working of the withdrawal of agricultural protection dates from
February 1849, when that event was inaugurated by a Manchester
ovation. In April the price of wheat had fallen to about 44s.--in
December it was below 40s.; and then, and not till then, was the
spirit of the people fairly and thoroughly aroused. We need not
here advert to the foolish and deplorable trash put forward by the
political economists in defence of a system of cheapness, caused by
an unnatural depreciation of the value of British produce. That such
a depreciation could take place, without lowering in a corresponding
degree the rates of labour all over the country, and curtailing the
demand for employment in proportion to the diminished means of the
consumers, was obviously impossible. Nor could the wit of man devise
any answer to the proposition at once so clear and so momentous, that
the burden of taxation, already felt to be severe, was enormously
aggravated and increased by the measures which virtually established
a new standard of value for produce, and which violently acted upon
the incomes of almost every ratepayer in the kingdom. But it is well
worth noting that the leading advocates of Free Trade, previous
to the conversion of Sir Robert Peel, cautiously abstained from
arguing their case on the ground of permanent cheapness. We have
on this point the valuable testimony of Mr Cobden, who repeatedly
declared his conviction that the farmers, and even the landowners,
would derive a large and direct advantage from the repeal of the corn
laws. We have the treatises of Mr Wilson, Secretary of the Board of
Control, pathetically pointing out the positive detriment to the
country which must ensue from a long continuance of low prices of
grain. And finally, we have Sir Robert Peel's distinct admission that
56s. per quarter is the average price for which wheat can be raised
with a profit in Great Britain. It was not until all rational hope
of a rise was extinguished--until the amount of importations poured
into this country demonstrated the fallacy of all the calculations
which had been made as to the amount of surplus supply available from
the Continent and from America--that any section of the Free-traders
ventured to proclaim the doctrine that cheapness, ranging below the
level of the cost of home production, was a positive advantage to the
nation. It is true that this monstrous fallacy is now maintained by
only a few of the more unscrupulous and desperate of the party; and
that the Ministry have as yet abstained from committing themselves
to so fatal a dogma. They would have us rather cling to the hope
that present prices are only temporary, though they cannot assign a
single plausible reason to account for the continued depression. They
talk, in vague general terms,--the surest symptoms of their actual
incapacity and helplessness--of "transition states of suffering," of
"partial derangement inseparable from the formation of a new system
of commercial policy," and much more such pompous and unmeaning
jargon; whilst, at the same time, they refuse to commit themselves
to any decided line of action, if it should actually be found that
they were wrong in their calculations, and that prices so low as
to be absolutely ruinous are _not_ temporary in their operation,
but must hereafter prevail as the rule. How often have we heard, on
the part of their organs, even within the last two months, joyous
assertions that the markets were again rising, and foreign supplies
diminishing! Within this last fortnight, the _Times_, emboldened by
the continuance of cold easterly winds, and the backward state of
the vegetation, prophesied, with more than its usual confidence, a
rapid rise and a consequent diminution of cheapness. On the 13th of
May, our prospects were thus described:--"Happily just now corn is
rising, and we are quite as likely to see wheat at 60s. as 30s. in
the course of the year." On the 14th, the journalist again returned
to the charge--"Just now the market is rising all over the world, and
it seems likely enough that the farmer will soon have, in the natural
course of things, what Mr G. Berkeley wants to obtain by a return to
Protection.... The same agreeable tidings pour in from all parts of
the kingdom, and indeed from all parts of the world." Alas for human
prescience! On the 21st, the note was changed, and the bulletin from
Corn-Exchange announced that "the trade was dull, and the prices
gave way 1s. to 2s. per quarter before any progress could be made
in sales." The aggregate average of wheat for the six weeks ending
May 11th, was 37s. 1d.--a rate at which no one, not even the most
sanguine dabbler in agricultural improvement, has ventured to aver
that corn can be raised, under present burdens, without occasioning
an enormous loss to the grower.
We do not complain of these calculations or prophecies, however
fallacious they may be; but we do complain, very seriously, that
Ministers, their organs and their underlings, are halting between
two opinions. If cheapness is their watchword and principle, then
they have no right to plume themselves upon any rise in the value of
produce. We can understand the thorough-paced Free-trader who tells
us broadly, that the cheaper food can be bought, no matter whence
it comes, so much the better for the community. That is, at all
events, plain sailing. But we say deliberately, that a more pitiable
spectacle of mental imbecility cannot be imagined than that which is
now presented by the Cabinet, who, with cheapness in their mouths,
are eagerly catching at the faintest shadow of a rise in prices; and
who, did such a rise take place, would be the first to congratulate
the country on the improved condition of its prospects! Mr Wilson,
who usually communicates to the Premier, in the House of Commons,
the invaluable results of his experience, has been blundering on for
months in the preposterous hope of getting rid of facts by trumpery
and fallacious statistics; and has at last landed himself in such a
quagmire of contradictions, that his best friends are compelled to
despair of his ultimate extrication. Yet this gentleman is one of
those authorities whom we are told to regard with reverence; and whom
we do regard with just as much reverence as we would bestow upon a
broker's clerk who had set up for himself in business as a dealer in
the scrip of exploded and abandoned lines.
It was not until sinking markets, and continued foreign importations,
showed as clearly as facts could do that the depression of value was
permanent, and not temporary--until the farmers of England found
that they were absolute losers in their trade, and that their stock
had become unprofitable--until wages were beginning to fall in many
important districts, and the means of employment for thousands
were gradually taken away--not until all this was seen, and felt,
and known, that the suffering interests awoke from their presumed
lethargy, and commenced that system of active agitation which, in
an incredibly short period of time, has become universal over the
face of the country. We shall not particularise the language which
was used by men of the opposite party during the first period of
the movement. All that insolence, bluster, and menace could do, was
attempted by the former leaders of the League, to intimidate those
who knew that they were performing their duty to their country and
themselves, by making head against the most monstrous system of
tyranny which ever yet was devised for the oppression of a free and
prosperous people. Mr Cobden had the consummate folly--we need not
call it wickedness--to threaten that, if one iota of the free-trade
policy were reversed, he would raise up such a storm as would shake
England to its centre and thoroughly revolutionise society. And,
to the eternal disgrace of the Government be it spoken--the name
of the demagogue who had dared to hold such language was allowed
by the first Minister of the Crown to stand on a list of public
commissioners! Then the landowners were emphatically warned to
beware of originating a struggle, from which they might chance
to emerge with something worse than a mere depreciation of their
property. The warning, though doubtless well meant, was almost
wholly unnecessary. The marked and characteristic feature of the new
agitation is, that the landlords, as a body, have kept themselves
so far aloof from it that their apathy has more than once been made
a topic for the severest censure. It was among the tenant-farmers
and yeomen of England--we say it to their praise and glory--that
this mighty movement began. They saw how they had been deceived
and betrayed by those to whom they had intrusted their cause; and
the gallant Saxon spirit, never so greatly shown as when roused by
a sense of oppression, was exerted to vindicate and champion the
rights of their insulted order. The men of almost every county of
England spoke out manfully in their turn. By a wise and timely system
of organisation, skilfully planned and energetically carried into
effect, their isolated efforts were directed into one grand channel
of action. The National Association for the Protection of Industry
and Capital, under the presidency of that high-minded and patriotic
nobleman, the Duke of Richmond, and the energetic direction of Mr
George Frederick Young, whose services to the cause can never be
adequately acknowledged, afforded a centre and rallying point to the
operations of the English Protectionists; and county after county,
division after division, town after town, came forward to give new
impulse and confidence to the movement. It might have been expected
that a feeling so general, so undeniably powerful in itself, might
have been treated with fair respect by the experimental party and
their organs. The fact was otherwise. The farmers were branded with
falsehood, with fraud, with getting up fictitious cases of distress,
with ignorance in not understanding their own peculiar business.
Last year they had been invited to join the enemy, and to embark
in a crusade the object of which was not explicitly set forth;
but enough was disclosed to indicate that it boded no good to the
maintenance either of the constitution or the public credit, or the
interests of society as these have hitherto been acknowledged. They
were told to let the landlords fight their own battle, and they,
the farmers, would be cared for. Those who held such language had
forgotten that, of all known sins, hypocrisy is the one most odious
to the English mind. True, if familiarity with hypocrisy could have
blunted that finer moral sense, it might have been assumed that the
many public examples to be gathered from the history of the last
few years, might have overcome that extreme repugnance to deceit
which is part of the national character. If so, the Free-traders
little understood the temper of the men with whom they had to deal.
The proposal of an amalgamation with those who had never scrupled
to use the most tortuous and questionable means for the attainment
of their own object, was rejected with consummate scorn; and the
disappointed agitators revenged themselves by discharging against the
agriculturists whole volleys of unmeaning invective.
As if to add to real injury as much insult as the most perverted
ingenuity could devise, the yeomen and farmers were publicly and
repeatedly told, that the suffering of which they complained was
their own deliberate choice. There was plenty of excellent land for
tillage elsewhere than in Britain--acres might be had at a cheap
rate either in America or in Poland--why not emigrate to those
countries, and assist in augmenting that stream of importation which
would only swamp them at home? Such was the advice tendered, and
tendered seriously, in more than one of the leading journals of the
day; and we hardly know whether to reprobate it most on account of
its folly or its wickedness. If it was meant as a jest, all we shall
say is, that a sorrier or more indecent one was never hatched in a
shallow brain. We have not yet, thank God! arrived at such a pass
that love of country and of kindred, and those ties which ought to be
dearest to the human heart, are regarded by Englishmen as no better
than idle and unmeaning terms--we are not yet prepared to abandon
our nationality, and receive the fraternal hug from the arms of
cosmopolitan democracy. That such insults as these have been felt
bitterly, we know; and it is small wonder. Those who coined them
knew little of the workings of human nature, if they hoped by such
wretched means to deter any one from the path of duty. They have
simply succeeded in arousing a feeling which had far better have
been allowed to slumber--a conviction on the part of those whom they
deride, that the injury which the Free-trading party has inflicted on
the community at large arose less from an error in judgment than from
a wilful obduracy of heart.
We have spoken thus strongly, because we would fain see less
bitterness connected with a contest which is clearly inevitable,
and which ought to be one of principle. Men who are in the deepest
earnest, and thoroughly impressed with the truth and magnitude
of their cause, are not apt to make allowance for the play of
ill-regulated sarcasm, or the efforts of a clumsy humour. Still less
will they brook such insolent defiance as lately emanated from Mr
Cobden at Leeds. To the latter individual we presume to offer no
advice. He stands chargeable with having done his utmost to excite
a war of classes, and if he fails in doing so, it will not be for
want of determination of purpose. But we do say to others, and we say
it most seriously, that it is not safe, in the present posture of
affairs, to heap insult upon a body of men, comprehending in their
numbers the very flower of England's population--a body at all times
averse to combination, and to those agitating arts which of late
years have been so successfully practised in the towns--a body which
never is roused except on occasion of the utmost moment; but which,
when, once roused, will never rest till it has triumphantly achieved
its purpose.
The movement, which has been so rapid in the south, has also extended
to Scotland. A Central Protective Association has been instituted in
Edinburgh, comprising amongst its members many of the highest rank
and greatest intelligence in the country. Local societies have been
formed in East Lothian, Morayshire, Banffshire, Ross-shire, Aberdeen,
Roxburghshire, and elsewhere; and, from the communications received
from every quarter, we have no doubt that, in a very short while,
similar Protection Associations will be organised in every county
of Scotland from Berwick to Caithness. From the present Parliament
it is now quite plain that nothing can be expected. We never were
so unreasonable as to expect that, however strong might be the
convictions of individual members--however public opinion and the
lessons of experience might shake the faith of many in the wisdom
of our late commercial policy--this Parliament would undo the work
which was sanctioned by its predecessor. Had the Free-trade question
been before the public at the last general election, we might have
entertained an opposite opinion. But it was not so. Sir Robert
Peel had no intention that the country should have a voice in the
matter. He seized the moment when, by an extraordinary combination of
circumstances, a majority was at his command, to play into the hands
of the enemy, and to complete, by the surrender of the Corn Laws,
the furtive scheme of which his tariffs were the mere commencement.
That once carried, the nation was unwilling to disturb, by premature
opposition or attempt at a reversal, an experiment in behalf of which
such weighty testimony had been given. No impediment was thrown in
the way--no unnecessary obstacle interposed. The Whig Ministry,
who, in their new character of Free-traders, had undertaken the
superintendence of affairs, were allowed by the constituencies of
the Empire to have more than a working majority; so that, at all
events, whatever might be the issue of the scheme, they could not
pretend that a fair trial was denied to it. The question now arises,
whether the trial has been of sufficiently long endurance. On that
point there is no doubt in the minds of the agriculturists, of those
connected with the Colonies, of the shipowners, of a large proportion
of the merchants, and of a considerable body of the tradesmen. The
effect of the experiment has been felt; and that, too, more severely
and intensely than perhaps the most determined opponent of the
Free-trade policy had anticipated. The movement has been begun, as is
most natural, among those who are first in the order of suffering;
and who now see, very clearly, that longer endurance and quiescence
is tantamount to absolute ruin. Each day swells their ranks by a
fresh accession of adherents, whilst the opposite party, defeated
in argument, and unable to adduce a single proof of the advantages
which they formerly prophesied, are compelled to have recourse to
the Janus-like attitude which we have already attempted to sketch,
and, when hard pressed, to repeat their sullen refusal of originating
a change--for no better reason than that they are ashamed to
acknowledge the extent of their error.
From the present Parliament, then, we expect little. Whatever
impression may be made upon it by the present unmistakeable ferment
abroad, we cannot indulge in a rational hope that it will depart
from its original character. Our business is to prepare for a change
by that pacific but most necessary agitation, which, if properly
conducted, must compel the most obstinate Minister, for his own sake,
and in fulfilment of his sworn duty to his Sovereign, to advise that
opportunity of an appeal to the sense of the country which is now so
generally demanded, and which can scarce be constitutionally refused.