[416] And not only in England. 'Even in 1859, a pamphlet, ascribed to
Diergardt of Viersen, a factory owner, was disseminated all over
Germany, urging that country to make sure of the East-Asiatic markets in
good time. It advocated the display of military force as the only means
for getting commercial advantages from the Japanese and the Eastern
Asiatic nations in general. A German fleet, built with the people's
small savings, had been a youthful dream, long since brought under the
hammer by Hannibal Fischer. Though Prussia had a few ships, her naval
power was not impressive. But in order to enter into commercial
negotiations with Eastern Asia, it was decided to equip a ship. Graf zu
Eulenburg, one of the ablest and most prudent Prussian statesmen, was
appointed chief of this mission which also had scientific objects. Under
most difficult conditions he carried out his commission with great
skill, and though the plan for simultaneous negotiations with the
Hawaiian islands had to be given up, the mission was otherwise
successful. Though the Berlin press of that time knew better, declaring
whenever a new difficulty was reported, that it was only to be expected,
and denouncing all expenditure on naval demonstrations as a waste of the
taxpayers' money, the ministry of the new era remained steadfast, and
the harvest of success was reaped by the ministry that followed' (W.
Lotz, _Die Ideen der deutschen Handelspolitik_, p. 80).
[417] Following on the preliminary discussion between Michel Chevalier
and Richard Cobden on behalf of the French and English governments,
'official negotiations were shortly entered upon and were conducted with
the greatest secrecy. On January 1, 1860, Napoleon III announced his
intentions in a memorandum addressed to M. Fould, the Minister of State.
This declaration came like a bolt from the blue. After the events of the
past year, the general belief was that no attempt would be made to
modify the tariff system before 1861. Feelings ran high, but all the
same the treaty was signed on January 23' (Auguste Devers, _La politique
commerciale de la France depuis 1860. Schriften des Vereins für
Sozialpolitik_, vol. 51, p. 136).
[418] Between 1857 and 1868, the revision along liberal lines of the
Russian tariffs and the ultimate writing-off of the insane system of
_kantrin_ with regard to protective tariffs were a manifestation and
corollary of the progressive reforms which the disastrous Crimean wars
had made inevitable. But the reduction of customs duties reflected the
concern of the landowning gentry who, both as consumers of foreign goods
and as producers of grain for export, were interested in unrestricted
commerce between Russia and Western Europe. The champion of agrarian
interests, the 'Free Economic Association' stated: 'During the last
sixty years, between 1822 and 1882, agriculture, Russia's largest
producer, was brought to a precarious position owing to four great
setbacks. These could in every case be directly attributed to excessive
tariffs. On the other hand, the thirty-two years between 1845 and 1877
when tariffs were moderate went by without any such emergency, in spite
of three foreign wars and one civil war [meaning the Polish insurrection
of 1863--_R. L._], every one of which proved a greater or less strain on
the financial resources of the state' (_Memorandum of the Imperial Free
Economic Association on Revising Russian Tariffs_ (St. Petersburg,
1890), p. 148). As late as the nineties, then, the scientific spokesman
of the Free Trade Movement, the said 'Free Economic Association', had to
agitate against protective tariffs as a 'contrivance to transplant'
capitalist industry to Russia. In a reactionary 'populist' spirit, it
denounced capitalism as a breeding ground for the modern proletariat,
'those masses of shiftless people without home or property who have
nothing to lose and have long been in ill repute' (p. 191). This is
proof enough that until most recent times the Russian champions of Free
Trade, or at least of moderate tariffs, did not to any appreciable
extent represent the interests of industrial capital. Cf. also K.
Lodyshenski: _The History of the Russian Tariffs_ (St. Petersburg,
1886), pp. 239-58.
[419] This is also the opinion of F. Engels. In one of his letters to
Nikolayon, on June 18, 1892, he writes: 'English authors, blinded by
their patriotic interests, completely fail to grasp why the whole world
so stubbornly rejects England's example of free trade and adopts in its
place the principle of protective tariffs. Of course, they simply dare
not admit even to themselves that the system of protective tariffs, by
now almost universal, is merely a defensive measure against English free
trade which was instrumental in perfecting England's industrial
monopoly. Such a defence policy may be more or less reasonable--in some
cases it is downright stupid, as for instance in Germany who under the
system of free trade had become a great industrial power and now imposes
protective tariffs on agricultural products and raw materials, thus
increasing the cost of her industrial production. In my view this
universal reversion to protective tariffs is not a mere accident but the
reaction against England's intolerable industrial monopoly. The form
which this reaction takes, as I said before, may be wrong, inadequate
and even worse, but its historical necessity seems to me quite clear and
obvious' (_Letters_ of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels to Nikolayon (St.
Petersburg, 1908), p. 71).
_CHAPTER XXXII_