But all attuned to melody,
Vesuvio's flame reflected clear
In glassy seas of Napoli.
And on that sea we seem to float
In amber light, and catch from far,
'Mid ocean's boundless Voice, the note
Of girl who hymns the evening-star.
The sweetest word, the melting tone,
The pictured wisdom bright as day,
And Faust's remorse, and Tasso's groan,
And Dorothea's morning lay,
Glad Egmont, light of Clara's eyes,
Free Goetz, the warmth of manhood's noon,
And Mignon, all a tune of sighs,
And lorn Ottilia crush'd so soon.
Ah! tale that tells the life of all
To lovelier truth by fancy wrought,
And songs that e'en to us recall
The bliss a poet's vision caught!
All these are ours, yes, all--but he.
And who that lives can find a strain
Of worth like his the soul to free
From bonds of sublunary pain?
A strain like his we vainly seek
To sound above the singer's grave,
A voice empower'd like his to speak
The word our aching bosoms crave.
That word is not--Oh! not, farewell!
To thee whom all thy lays restore;
But deeply longs the heart to tell
A love thy smile accepts no more.
J.S.
* * * * *
HYMN OF A HERMIT.
Long the day, the task is longer;
Earth the strong by heaven the stronger.
Still is call'd to rise and brighten,
But, alas! how weak the soul;
While its inbred phantoms frighten,
While the past obscures the whole.
Shadows of the wise departed,
Be the brave, the loving-hearted;
Deathless dead, resounding, rushing,
From the morning-land of hope
Come, with viewless footsteps, crushing
Dreams that make the wing'd ones grope.
Socrates, the keen, the truthful,
In thy hoary wisdom youthful;
Smiling, fear-defying spirit,
From beside thy Grecian waves,
Teach us Norsemen to inherit
Thoughts whose dawn is life to graves.
Rome's Aurelius, thou the holy
King of earth, in goodness lowly,
From thy ruins by the Tiber,
Look with tearless aspect mild,
Till each agonizing fibre
Like thine own is reconciled.
Augustinus, bright and torrid,
Isles of green in deserts horrid
Once thy home, thy likeness ever!
We with sword no less divine
Would the good and evil sever,
In a larger world than thine.
Soft Petrarca, sweet and subtle,
Weaving still, with silver shuttle,
Moony veils for human feeling--
Thine the radiance from above,
Half-transfiguring, half-concealing,
Wounds and tears of earthly love.
Saxon rude, of thundering stammer,
Iron heart, by sin's dread hammer
Ground to better dust than golden,
May thy prophecy be true.
Melt the stern, the weak embolden;
Teach what Luther never knew.
Pale Spinosa, nursed in fable,
Painted hopes and portent sable,
Then an opener wisdom finding,
Let thy round and wintry sun
Chase the lurid vapour, blinding
Souls that seek the Holy One.
Thou from green Helvetia roaming,
Meteor pale in misty gloaming,
With a breast too fiercely burning;
Generous, tuneful, frail Rousseau!
Would that all to truth returning,
Gave, like thee, a tear to woe!
Eye of clear and diamond sparkle,
Where the Baltic waters darkle,
Lonely German seer of Reason,
Great and calm as Atlas old;
Through our formless foggy season,
Short thine adamantine cold.
Shelley, born of faith and passion,
Nobler far than gain and fashion;
Daring eaglet arm'd with lightning,
Firing soon thy native nest,
Still the eternal blaze is brightening
Ocean where thy pinions rest.
Heroes, prophets, bards, and sages,
Gods and men of climes and ages,
Conquerors of lifelong sorrow,
Torment that ye made your throne,
Help, Oh! help in us the morrow,
Full of triumph like your own.
J.S.
* * * * *
THE LUCKLESS LOVER
"If aught on earth assault may bide
Of ceaseless time and shifting tide,
Beloved! I swear to thee
It is the truth of hearts that love,
United in a world above
The moment's misty sea.
"Oh! sweeter than the light of dawn,
Than music in the woods withdrawn
From clamours of the crowd,
A new creation all our own,
Unvisited by scoff or groan,
Is faith in silence vow'd.
"Two hearts by reason nobly sad,
Nor rashly blind, nor lightly glad,
Possess they not a bliss
In their communion, felt and full,
Beyond all custom's deadly rule?
For life is only this.
"In sighs we met, in sighs and sobs,
Such grief as from the wretched robs
The hope to heaven allied:
Great calm was ours, a strength severe,
Though wet with many a scalding tear,
When soul to soul replied.
"Of thy dark eyes and gentle speech,
The memory has a power to teach
What know not many wise.
New stars may rise, the ancient fade,
But not for us, my own pale maid,
Be lost that pure surprise--
"The pure delight, the awful change,
Chief miracle in wonder's range,
That binds the twain in one;
While fear, foes, friends, and angry Fate,
And all that wreck our mortal state
Shall pass, like motes i' the sun.
"In his fine frame the throstle feels
The music that his note reveals;
And spite of shafts and nets,
How better is the dying bird
Than some dumb stone that ne'er was heard,
That arrow never threats?
"Disdaining man, the mountains rise;
Is love less kindred with the skies,
Or less their Maker's will?
The strains, without a human cause,
Flow on, unheeding lies and laws--
Will hearts for words be still?
"What cliffs oppose, what oceans roll,
What frowns o'ershade the weeping soul,
Alas! were long to tell.
But something is there more than these,
Than frowns and coldness, rocks and seas:
Until its hour--farewell!"
So sang the vassal bard by night,
Beneath his high-born lady's light
That from her turret shone.
Next morning in the forest glade
His corpse was found. Her brother's blade
Had cut his bosom's bone.
What reap'd Lord Wilfrid by the stroke?
Before another morning broke,
She, too, was with the blest:
And 'twas her last and only prayer,
That her sweet limbs might slumber where
The minstrel had his rest.
J.S.
* * * * *
FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION
THE CORN LAWS.
It is remarkable that, while we hear so much of the advantages of free
trade, the reciprocity of them is always in _prospect_ only. By throwing
open our harbours to foreign nations, indeed, we give _them_ an immediate
and obvious advantage over ourselves; but as to any corresponding
advantages we are to gain in our intercourse with them, we are still
waiting, in patient expectation of the anticipated benefit. Our patience
is truly exemplary; it might furnish a model to Job himself. We resent
nothing. No sooner do we receive a blow on one cheek, than we turn up the
other to some new smiter. No sooner are we excluded, in return for our
concessions, from the harbours of one state, than we begin making
concessions to another. We are constantly in expectation of seeing the
stream of human envy and jealousy run out:--
"Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis: at ille
Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum."
We are imitating the man who made the experiment of constantly reducing
the food on which his horse is to live. Let us take care that, just as he
is learning to live on nothing, we do not find him dead in his stall.
This, however, is no joking matter. The total failure of the free trade
system to procure any, _even the smallest return_, coupled with the very
serious injury it has inflicted on many of the staple branches of our
industry, has now been completely demonstrated by experience, and is
matter of universal notoriety. If any proof on the subject were required,
it would be furnished by _Porter's Parliamentary Tables_, to which we
earnestly request the attention of our readers. The first exhibits the
effect of the reciprocity system, introduced by Mr Huskisson in Feb. 1823,
in destroying our shipping with the Baltic powers, and quadrupling theirs
with us. The second shows the trifling amount of our exports to these
countries during the five last years, and thereby demonstrates the entire
failure of the attempt to, extend our traffic with them by this gratuitous
destruction of our shipping. The third shows the progress of our whole
exports to Europe during the six years from 1814 to 1820, before the free
trade began, and from 1833 to 1839, after it had been fifteen years in
operation, and proves that it had _declined_ in the latter period as
compared with the former, despite all our gratuitous sacrifices by free
trade to augment our commerce.[12]
[12] See No. CCCXL, _Blackwood's Magazine_, p. 261.
The free traders fully admit, and deeply deplore, as we have shown on a
former occasion, these unfavourable results; but they say that it is to be
hoped they will not continue: that foreign nations must, in the end, come
to see that they are as much interested as we are in enlightened system of
free trade; and that, meantime, it is for our interest to continue the
system; or even though it totally fails in producing any augmentation in
our exports, it is obviously for our advantage to continue it, as it
brings in the immediate benefit of purchasing articles imported at a
cheaper rate. Supposing, say they, we obtain no corresponding advantage
from other states, there is an immense benefit accrues to ourselves from
admitting foreign goods at a nominal duty, from the low price at which
they may be purchased by the British consumer. To that point we shall
advert in the sequel; in the mean time, it may be considered as
demonstrated, that the free trade system has entirely failed in procuring
for us the slightest extension of our foreign exports, or abating in the
slightest degree the jealousy of foreign nations at our maritime and
manufacturing superiority. Nor is there any difficulty in discovering to
what this failure has been owing. It arises from laws inherent in the
nature of things, and which will remain unabated as long as we continue a
great and prosperous nation.
It is related of the Lacedemonians, that while all the other citizens of
Greece were careful to surround their towns with walls, they alone left a
part open on all sides. Thus, superiority in the field rendered them
indifferent to the adventitious protection of ramparts. It is for a
similar reason that England is now willing to throw down the barriers of
tariffs, and the impediments of custom-houses; and that all other nations
are fain to raise them up. It is a secret sense of superiority on the one
side, and of inferiority on the other, which is the cause of the
difference. We advocate freedom of trade, because we are conscious that,
in a fair unrestricted competition, we should succeed in beating them out
of their own market. They resist it, and loudly clamour for protection,
because they are aware that such a result would speedily take place, and
that the superiority of the old commercial state is such, that on an open
trial of strength, it must at once prove fatal to its younger rivals. As
this effect is thus the result of permanent causes affecting both sides,
it may fairly be presumed that it will be lasting; and that the more
anxiously the old manufacturing state advocates or acts upon freedom of
commercial intercourse, the more strenuously will the younger and rising
ones advocate protection. Reciprocity, therefore, is out of the question
between them: for it never could exist without the destruction of the
manufactures of the younger state; and if that state has begun to enter on
the path of manufacturing industry, it never will be permitted by its
government.
But this is not all. If free trade must of necessity prove fatal to the
manufactures of the younger state, it as certainly leads to the
destruction _of the agriculture of the older;_ and it is this double
effect this RECIPROCITY OF EVIL, which renders it so disastrous and
impracticable an experiment for both the older and the younger community.
The reason of this has not hitherto been generally attended to; but when
once it is stated, its force becomes obvious, and it furnishes the true
answer on principle to the delusive doctrines of free trade.
Nature has established, and, as it will immediately be shown, for very
wise and important purposes, a permanent and indelible distinction between
the effect of civilization and opulence on the production of food, and on
the preparation of manufactures. In the latter, the discoveries of science,
the exertions of skill, the application of capital, the introduction of
machinery, are all-powerful, and give the older and more advanced state an
immediate and decisive advantage over the younger and the ruder. In the
former, the very reverse takes place: the additions made to productive
power are comparatively inconsiderable, even by the most important
discoveries; and as this capital and industry have in the end a powerful
effect, and always enable the power of raising food for the human race to
keep far a-head of the wants of mankind; yet this effect takes place very
slowly, and the annual addition that can be made to the produce of the
earth by such means is by no means considerable. The introduction of
thorough draining will probably increase the productive power of the soil
in Great Britain a third: scientific discovery may perhaps add another
third; but at least ten years must elapse in the most favourable view
before these effects generally take place--ere the judicious and
well-directed labours of our husbandmen have formed rivulets for the
superfluous wet of our fields, or overspread the soil with the now wasted
animal remains of our cities. But our manufactures can in a few years
quadruple their produce. So vast is the power which the steam-engine has
made to the powers of production in commercial industry, that it is
susceptible to almost indefinite and immediate extension; and the great
difficulty always felt is, not to get hands to keep pace with the demand
of the consumers, but to get a demand to keep pace with the hands employed
in the production. Manchester and Glasgow could, in a few years, furnish
muslin and cotton goods for the whole world.
Nor is the difference less important and conspicuous in the _price_ at
which manufacturing and agricultural produce can be raised in the old and
the young state. This is the decisive circumstance which renders
reciprocity between them impossible. The rich old state is as superior to
the young one in the production of manufactures, as the poor young state
is to the rich old one in that of subsistence. The steam-engine, capital,
and machinery, have so enormously increased the power of manufacturing
production, that they have rendered the old commercial state omnipotent in
the foreign market in the supply of its articles. Nothing but fiscal
regulations and heavy duties can protect the young state from ruin in
those branches of industry. Heavy taxes, high wages, costly rents, dear
rude produce, all are at once compensated, and more than compensated, by
the gigantic powers of the steam-engine. Cotton goods are raised now in
Great Britain at a fifth of the price which they were during the war. A
gown, which formerly was cheap at £2, 10s., is now sold for ten shillings.
Silks, muslins, and all other articles of female apparel, have been
reduced in price in the same proportion. Colossal fortunes have been made
by the master manufacturers, unbounded wealth diffused through the
operative workmen in Lancashire and Lanarkshire, even at these extremely
reduced prices. This is the real reason of the universal effort made by
all nations which have the least pretensions to commercial industry, of
late years to exclude, by fixed duties, our staple manufactures; of which
the President of the Board of Trade so feelingly complains, and which the
advocates of free trade consider as so inexplicable. A very clear
principle has led to it, and will lead to it. It is the instinct of
SELF-PRESERVATION.
But there is no steam-engine in agriculture. The old state has no
superiority over the young one in the price of producing food; on the
contrary, it is decidedly its inferior. There, as in love, the apprentice
is the master. The proof of this is decisive. Poland can raise wheat with
ease at fifteen or twenty shillings a quarter, while England requires
fifty. The serf of the Ukraine would make a fortune on the price at which
the farmer of Kent or East Lothian would be rendered bankrupt. The Polish
cultivators have no objection whatever to a free competition with the
British; but the British anticipate, and with reason, total destruction
from the free admission of Polish grain. These facts are so notorious,
that they require no illustration; but nevertheless the conclusion to
which they point is of the highest importance, and bears, with
overwhelming force, on the theory of free trade as between an old and a
young community. They demonstrate that that theory is not only practically
pernicious, but on principle erroneous. It involves an oblivion of the
fundamental law of nature as to the difference between the effect of
wealth and civilization on the production of food and the raising of
manufactures. It proceeds on insensibility to the difference in the age
and advancement of nations, and the impossibility of a reciprocity being
established between them without the ruin of an important branch of
industry in each. It supposes nations to be of the same genus and age,
like the trees in the larch plantation, not of all varieties and ages, as
in the natural forest. If established in complete operation, it would only
lead to the ruin of the manufactures of the younger state, and of the
agriculture of the old one. The only reciprocity which it can ever
introduce between such states is the reciprocity of evil.
Illustrations from everyday life occur on all sides to elucidate the utter
absurdity, and, in fact, total impracticapability of the system of free
trade, as applied to nations who are, or are becoming, rivals of each
other in manufacturing industry. Those who have the advantage, will always
advocate free competition; those who are labouring under impediments, will
always exclaim against them. In some cases the young have the advantage,
in others the old; but in all the free system is applauded by those in the
sunshine, and execrated by those in the shade. The fair _debutante_ of
eighteen, basking in the bright light of youth, beauty, birth, and
connections, has no sort of objection to the freedom of choice in the
ball-room. If the mature spinster of forty would divulge her real opinion,
what would it be on the same scene of competition? Experience proves that
she is glad to retire, in the general case, from the unequal struggle, and
finds the system of established precedence and fixed rank at dinner
parties, much more rational. The leaders on the North Circuit--Sir James
Scarlett or Lord Brongham--have no objections to the free choice, by
solicitors and attorneys, for professional talent; but their younger
brethren of the gown are fain to take shelter from such formidable rivals
in the exclusive employment of the Crown, the East India Company, the Bank
of England, or some of the numerous chartered companies in the country.
England is the old lawyer on the Cirucuit in manufactures--but Poland is
the young beauty of the ball-room in agriculture. We should like to see
what sort of reciprocity could be established between them. Possibly the
young belle may exchange her beauty for the old lawyer's guineas, but it
will prove a bad reciprocity for both.
It is usual for both philosophers and practical men to ascribe the
superior cheapness with which subsistence can be raised in the young state
to the old one, to the weight of taxes and of debt, public and private,
with which the latter is burdened, from which the former is, in general,
relieved. But, without disputing that these circumstances enter with
considerable weight into the general result, it may safely be affirmed
that the main cause of it is to be found in two laws of nature, of
universal and permanent application. These are the low value of money in
the rich state, in consequence of its plenty, compared with its high value
in the poor one, in consequence of its poverty, and the experienced
inapplicability of machinery or the division of labour to agricultural
operations.
Labour is cheap in the poor state, such as Poland, Prussia, and the
Ukraine, becuase guineas are few.--"It is not," as Johnson said of the
Highlands, "that eggs are many, but that pence are few." Commercial
transactions being scanty, and the want of a circulating medium
inconsiderable, it exists to a very limited extent in the country. People
do not need a large circulating medium, therefore they do not buy it; they
are poor, therefore they cannot. In the opulent and highly advanced
community, on the other hand, the reverse of all this takes place.
Transactions are so frequent, the necessities of commerce so extensive,
that a large circulating medium is soon felt to be indispensable. In
addition to a considerable amount of specie, the aid of bank-notes, public
and private, of Government securities and exchequer bills, and of private
bills to an immense ammount, bcomes necessary. McCulloch calculates the
circulating medium of Great Britain, including paper and gold, at
L.72,000,000. The bills in circulation are probably in amount nearly as
much more. A hundred and forty, or a hundred and fifty millions, between
specie, bank-notes, exchequer bills, Government securities, on which
advances are made, and private bills, constitute the ordinary circulating
medium of twenty-seven millions in the British empire. The total
circulation of Russia, with sixty millions of inhabitants, is not forty
millions sterling. The effect of this difference is prodigions. It is no
wonder, whten it is taken into account, that wages are 5-1/2d. or 6d.
a-day in Poland or the Ukraine, and 2s. or 2s. 6d. a-day in England.
The clearest proof that this is the great cause of the superior cost of
raising subsistence in the old than the young state, is afforded by the
different value which money bears in different parts of the _same_
community. Ask any housekeeper what is the difference between the expense
of living in London, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen, and he will answer, that
L.1500 a-year in Edingburgh, or L.750 in Aberdeen. Yet these different
places are all situated in the same community, and their inhabitants pay
the same public taxes, and very nearly the same of local ones. It is the
vast results arising from the concentration of wealth and expediture in
one place, compared with its abstraction from others, which occasions the
difference. But if this effect is conspicuous, and matter of daily
observation, in different parts of the same compact and moderately sized
country, how much more must it obtain in regard to different countries,
situated in different latitudes and politcal circumstances, and in
different stages of wealth, civilization, and commercial opulence? Between
England for example, and Poland or the Ukraine? The difference is there
important and durable. Wheat can be raised with as good a profit to the
cultivator for sixteen shillings per quarter in Poland, as for forty-eight
shillings in England or Scotland.
This superior weight of wages, rent and all the elements of cost, in the
old, when compared with the young community, affects the manufacturer as
well as the farmer; and in some branches of manufactures it does so with
an overwhelming effect. But, generally speaking, the advantages of capital,
machinery, and the division of labour, render the old state altogether
predominant over the young one in these particulars. It would seem to be a
fixed law of nature, that the progress of society adds almost nothing to
the application of machinery to agriculture, but indefinitely to its
importance in manufactures. Observe an old man digging his garden with a
spade--that is the most productive species of cultivation; it is the last
stage of agricultural progress to return to it. No steam engines or steam
ploughs will ever rival it. But what is the old weaver toiling with his
hands, to the large steam-power mill, turning at once ten thousand
spindles? As dust in the balance. Man, by a beneficent law of his Maker,
is permanently secured in his first and best pursuit. It is in those which
demoralize and degrade, that machinery progressively encroaches on the
labour of his hands. England can undersell India in muslins and printed
goods, manufactured in Lancashire or Lanarkshire, out of cotton which grew
on the banks of the Ganges; for England though younger in years compared
to India, is old in civilization, wealth, and power. We should like to see
what profit would be made by exporting wheat from England, raised on land
paying thirty shillings an acre of rent, by labourers paid at two
shillings a-day, to Hindostan, where rice is raised twice a-year, on land
paying five shillings an acre rent, by labourers receiving twopence a-day
each.
It is the constant operation of this law of nature which ensures the
equalization of empires, the happiness of society, and the dispersion of
mankind. To be convinced of this, we have only to reflect on the results
which would ensue if this were not the case; if no unvarying law gave man
in remote situations an advantage in raising subsistence over what they
enjoy in the centres of opulence; and agriculture, in the aged and wealthy
community, was able to acquire the same decisive superiority over distant
and comparatively poor ones, which we see daily examplified in the
production of manufactures. Suppose, for example, that in consequence of
the application of the steam-engine, capital, and machinery to the raising
of subsistence, Great Britian could undersell the cultivatiors of Poland
and the Ukraine as effectually as she does their manufacturers in the
production of cotton goods; that she could sell in the Polish market wheat
at five shillings a quarter, when they require fifteen shillings to
remunerate the cost of production. Would not the result be, that commerce
between them would be entirely destroyed; that subsistence would be
exclusively raised in the old opulent community; that mankind would
congregate in fearful multitudes round the great commercial emporium of
the world; and that the industry and progress of the more distant nations
would be irrevocably blighted? Whereas, by the operation of the present
law of nature, that the rich state can always undersell the poor one in
maufactures, and the poor one always undersell the rich one in subsistence,
those dangers are removed, a check is provided to the undue multiplication
of the species in particular situations, and the dispersion of mankind
over the globe--a vital object in the system of nature--is secured, from
the very necessities and difficulties in which, in the progress of society,
the old and wealthy community becomes involved.
These considerations point out an important limitation to which, on
principle, the doctrines of free trade must be subjected. Perfectly just
in reference to a single community, or a compact empire of reasonable
extent, they wholly fail when applied to separate nations in different
degrees of civilization, or even to different provinces of the same empire,
when it is of such an extent as to bring such different nations, in
various degrees of progress, under one common dominion. They were
suggested, in the first instance, to philosophers, by the absurd
restrictions on the commerce of grain which existed in France under the
old monarchy, and which Turgot and the Economists laboured so assiduously
to abolish. There can be no doubt that they were perfectly right in doing
so; for France is a compact, homogeneous country, in which the cost of
producing subsistence is not materially different in one part from another,
and the interests of the whole community are closely identified. The same
holds with the interchange of grain between the different provinces of
Spain, or for the various parts of the British islands. But the case is
widely different with an empire so extensive as, like the British in
modern or the Roman in ancient times, to embrace separate kingdoms, in
wholly different circumstances of climate, progress, and social condition.
Free trade, in such circumstances, must lead to a destruction of important
interests, and a total subversion of the balance of society in both the
kingdoms subjected to it. To be conviced of this, we have only to look at
the present condition of the British, or the past fate of the Roman empire.
It is the boast of our manufacturers--and such a marvel may well afford a
subject for exultation--that with cotton which grew on the banks of the
Ganges, they can, by the aid of British capital, machinery, and enterprise,
undersell, in the production of muslin and cotton goods, the native Indian
manufacturers, who work up their fabrics in the close vicinity of the
original cotton-fields. The constant and increasing export of Britsh goods
to India, two-thirds of which are cotton, demonstrates that this
superiority really exists; and that the muslin manufacturers in Hindostan,
who work for 3d. a-day on their own cotton, cannot stand the competition
of the British operatives, who receive 3s. 6d. a-day, aided as they are by
the almost miraculous powers of the steam-engine. Free trade, therefore,
is ruinous to the manufacturing interests of India; and accordingly the
Parliamentary proceedings are filled with evidence of the extreme misery
which has been brought on the native manufacturers of Hindostan by that
free importation of British goods, in which our political economists so
much and so fully exult.
The great distance of India from the British islands, the vast expense of
transporting bulky articles eight thousand miles accross the ocean, have
prevented the counterpart of this effect taking place; and the British
farmers feeling the depressing influence of the Indian plough, in like
manner as the Indian manufacturers have the ruinous competition of the
British steam-engine. But it is clear that, if India had been nearer, the
former effect would have taken place as well as the latter. If the shores
of Hindostan were within a few days sail of London and Liverpool, and the
Indian cultivators, labouring at 2d. or 3d. a-day, had been brought into
direct competition with the British farmers, employing labourers who
received two or three shillings, can there be a doubt that the British
farmers would have been totally destroyed in the struggle? The English
farmers would have been prostrated by the same cause which has ruined the
Indian muslin manufacturers. Cheap grain, the fruit of free trade, would
have demolished British agriculture as completely as cheap cotton goods,
the fruits of unlimited importation, has ruined Indian manufacturing
industry.
Is, then, commercial intercourse impossible, on terms of mutual benefit,
between states in widely different circumstatnces of commercial or
agricultural advancement; and is the only reciprocity which can exist
between them and reciprocity of evil? It is by no means necessary to rest
in so unsatisfatory a conclusion. A most advantageous commercial
intercourse to both parties may be carried on, but it must not be on the
footing of free trade. The foundation of such an intercourse should be,
that each should take, on the most favourable terms, the articles which
_it wants and does not produce_, and impose restrictions on those which
_it wants and does produce_. On this priciple, trade would be conducted so
as to benefit both countries, and injure neither. Thus England may take
from India to the utmost extent, and with perfect safety, sugar, indigo,
cotton, tea, spices, cinnamon, and the more costly species of shawls;
while India might take from England some species of cotton manufacture in
which they have no fabrics of their own, cutlery, hardware, and all of the
various luxuries of European manufacture. But a paternal and just
government, equally alive to the interests of all its provinces, how far
removed soever from the seat of power, would impose restrictions to
prevent India being deluged with British cottons, to the ruin of its
native manufactures, and to prevent Britian--if the distance did not
operate, which it certainly would, as a sufficient protection--from being
flooded with Indian grain. The varieties of climate, productions, and
wants, in different countries, are such, that commerce, regulated on these
principles, might be carried to the greatest extent consistent with the
paramount duty of providing in each state for the preservation of its
staple articles of industry.
The Roman empire in ancient times afforded the clearest demonstration of
the truth of these principles; and the fate of their vast dominion shows,
in the most decisive manner, what is the inevitable consequence to which
the free trade principles, now so strongly contended for by a party in
this country, must lead. Alison is the first modern author with whom we
are acquainted, who has traced the decline of the Roman empire in great
part to this source. In the tenth volume of his "History of Europe,"
p. 752, we find the following passage:--
"No nation can pretend to independence which rests for any sensible
protion of its subsistence in ordinary seasons on foreign, who may
become hostile, nations. And if we would see a memorable example of
the manner in which the greatest and most powerful nation may, in the
course of ages, come to be paralysed by this cause, we have only to
cast our eyes on imperial Rome, when the vast extent of the empire
had practically established a free trade in grain with the whole
civilized world; and the result was, that cultivation disappeared
from the Italian plains, that the race of Roman agriculturists, the
strength of the empire, became extinct, that the fields were laboured
only by slaves and cattle. The legions could no longer be recruited
but from foreign bands, vast tracts of pasturage overspread even the
fields of Lombardy and the Compagna of Naples, and it was the
plaintive confession of the Roman annalist, that the mistress of the
world had come to depend for her subsistence on the floods of the
Nile."
This observation has excited, as well it might, the vehement indignation
of the free trade journals. The example of the greates and most powerful
nation that ever existed being weakened, and at length ruined by a free
trade in corn, afforded too cogent an argument, and was too striking a
warning, not to excite the wrath of those who would precipitate Great
Britain into a similar course of policy. They have attacked the author,
accordingly, with unwonted asperity; and, while they admint the ruin of
Italian agriculture in the later stages of the Roman empire, endeavour to
ascribe it to the gratuitous distribution of grain to the Roman populace,
not the effect of a free importation of grain from its Egyptian and
African provinces. The vast importance of the subject has induced us to
look into the original authorities to whom Alison refers in support of his
observation, and from among them we select three--Tacitus, Gibbon, and
Michelet. Tacitus says,
"At Hercule _olim ex Itaila_ legionibus longinquas in provincias
commeatus portabantur, _nec nunc infecunditate laboratur_; sed Africam
_potius et Egyptum exercemus_, navibusque et casibus vita populi
Romani permissa est."--TACITUS, _Annal_. xii. 43.
Antiquity does not contain a more pregnant and important passage, or one
more directly bearing on the present policy of the Britsh emprire, than
this. It demonstrates: 1, That in former times Italy had been an exporting
country: "_olim_ ex Italia commeatus in longinquas provincias portabantur."
2, That at the time when Tacitus wrote, in the days of the Emperor Trajan,
it had ceased to be so, and had come to import largely from Africa and
Lybia, "sed _nunc_ Africam potius et Egyptum exercemus." 3, That this was
not the result of any supervening sterility or unfruitfulness, "nec nunc
infecunditate laboratur," but was from causes which made it more
profitable to purchase grain in the Egyptian or Lybian markets, "sed
Africam POTIUS et Egyptum exercemus."
Of the extent to which this decay of agriculture in the central
provinces of the Roman empire went, in the latter stages of its history,
we have the following striking account in the authentic pages of
Gibbon:--
"Since the age of Tiberius _the decay of agriculture had been felt in
Italy_; and it was a just subject of complaint that the life of the
Roman people depended on the accidents of the winds and the waves. In
the division and decline of the empire, _the tributary harvests of
Egypt and Africa_ were withdrawn; the numbers of the inhabitants
continually diminished with the means of subsistence; and the country
was exhausted by the irretrievable losses of war, pestilence, and
famine. Pope Gelasius was a subject of Odoacer, and he affirms, with
strong exaggeration, that, in Emilia, Tuscany, and the adjacent
provinces, the human species was almost extirpated."--GIBBON, vol. vi.
c. xxxvi. p. 235.
Of the progress and extent of this decay, Gibbon gives the following
account in another part of his great work:--
"The agriculture of the Roman provinces _was insensibly ruined_; and
in the progress of despotism, which tends to disappoint its own
purpose, the emperors were obliged to derive some merit from the
forgiveness of debts, or the remission of tributes, which their
subjects were utterly incapable of paying. According to the new
division of Italy, the fertile and happy province of Campania, the
scene of the early victories and of the delicious retirements of the
citizens of Rome, extended between the sea and the Apennines, from
the Tiber to the Silarius. Within sixty years after the death of
Constantine, and on the evidence of an actual survey, an exemption
was granted in favour of 330,000 English acres _of desert and
uncultivated land, which amounted to one-eighth of the whole surface
of the province_. As the footsteps of the barbarians had not yet been
seen in Italy, the cause of this amazing desolation, which is
recorded in the laws, (Cod. Theod. lxi. t. 38, l. 2,) can be ascribed
only to the administration of the Roman emperors."--GIBBON, vol. iii.
c. xviii. p. 87. Edition in 12 volumes.
Michelet observes, in his late profound and able History of France--
"The Christian emperors could not remedy the growing depopulation of
the country any more than their heathen predecessors. All their
efforts only showed the impotence of government to arrest that
dreadful evil. Sometimes, alarmed at the depopulation, they tried to
mitigate the lot of the farmer, to shield him against the landlord;
upon this the proprietor exclaimed he could no longer pay the taxes.
At other times they abandoned the farmer, surrendered him to the
landlord, and strove to chain him to the soil; but the unhappy
cultivators perished or fled, _and the land became deserted_. Even in
the time of Augustus, efforts were made to arrest the depopulation at
the expense of morals, by encouraging concubinage. Pertinax granted
an immunity from taxes to those who could occupy the desert lands of
Italy, _to the cultivators of the distant provinces, and the allied
kings_. Aurelian did the same. Probus was obliged to transport from
Germany men and oxen to cultivate Gaul.[13] Maximian and Constantius
transported the Franks and Germans from Picardy and Hainault into
Italy: but the depopulation in the towns and the country alike
continued. The people surrendered themselves in the fields to despair,
as a beast of burden lies down beneath his load and refuses to rise.
In vain the emperor strove, by offers of immunities and exemptions,
to recall the cultivator to his deserted fields. Nothing could do so.
The desert extended daily. At the commencement of the fifth century
there was, in the _happy_ Campania, the most fertile province of the
empire, 520,000 _jugera_ in a state of nature."--MICHELET, _Histoire
de France_, i. 104-108.
[13] "Arantur Gallicana rura _barbaris bobus_, et juga Germanica
captiva praebent colla nostris cultoribus."--_Probi Epist. ad
Senatum in Vopesio_.
Pursued to its very grave by the same deep-rooted cause of evil, the
strength of Italy, even in the last stages of its decay, was still
prostrated by the importation of grain from Egypt and Lybia. "The Campagna
of Rome," says Gibbon, "about the close of the sixth century, was reduced
to the state of _a dreary wilderness_, in which the land was barren, the
waters impure, and the air infectious. Yet the number of citizens _still
exceeded the measure of subsistence; their precarious food was supplied
from the harvests of Egypt and Lybia_; and the frequent repetitions of
famine betray the inattention of the emperors to a distant
provice."--GIBBON, vil. viii. c. xlv. 162.
Nor was this desolating scourge of foreign importation confined to Italy;
it obtained also in Greece equally with the Ausonian fields, the abode of
early riches, opulence, and prosperity. "In the later stages of the
empire," says Michelet, "Greece was almost entirely _supported by corn
raised in the fields of Podolia_," (Poland.)--MICHELET, i. 277.
Now let it be recollected that this continual and astonishing decline of
agriculture, and disappearance of the rural cultivators in the latter
stages of the Roman empire, took place in an empire which contained, as
Gibbon tells us, 120,000,000 of inhabitants, and 1600 great cities, was
3000 miles long and 2000 miles broad, contained 1,600,000 square miles,
chiefly fertile and well cultivated land, which embraced the fairest and
most fertile portions of the earth, and which had been governed for eighty
yers under the successive sway of Nerva, Adrian, Trajan, and the two
Antonines, with consummate wisdon and the most paternal spirit.[14] The
scourge of foreign war, the devastation of foreign armies, were alike
unknown; profound tranquillity pervaded every part of the empire; and a
vast inland lake, spreading its ample waters through the heart of the
dominion, afforded to all its provinces the most perfect facility of
intercourse with the metropolis and the central parts of the empire. Yet
this period--the period which Mr Hume has told us the philosophers would
select as the happiest the human race had ever known--was precisely that
during which agriculture so rapidly declined in the Italian and Grecian
fields, during which the sturdy race of free cultivators disappeared, and
the plains of Italy were entirely absorbed by pasturage, and maintained
only vast herds of cattle tended by slaves.
[14] "Quingena viginti octo millia quadringinta duo jugera, quae
Campania provincia, juxta inspectorum relationem, in desertis et
squalidis locis habero dignoscitur, iisdem provincialibus
concessum."--_Cod. Theod_. lxi. i. 2382.
What was it, then, which in an empire containing so immense a population,
and such boundless resources, drawn forth and developed under so wise and
beneficent a race of emperors, occasioned this constant and uninterrupted
decay of agriculture, and at length the total destruction of the rural
population in the heart of the empire? How did it happen that Italian
cultivation receded, as Tacitus and Gibbon tell us it did, _from the time
of Tiberius_; and equally under the wisdom of the Antonines, as the
tyranny of Nero, or the civil wars of Vitellius? Some general and durable
cause must have been in operation during all this period, which at firest
depressed, and at length totally destroyed, the numerous body of free
Italian cultivators who so long had constituted the strength of the
legions, and had borne the Roman eagles, conquering and to conquer, to the
very extremities of the habitable earth. The cause is apparent. It was the
free importation of Egyptian and Lybian grain, consequent on the extension
of the Roman dominion over their fertile fields, which effected the result.
Were England to extend its conquering arms over Poland and the Ukraine,
and, as a necessary consequence, expose the British farmer to the
unrestrained competition of Polish and Russian wheat, precisely the same
result would ensue. If the shores of Hindostan were within three or four
days' sail of the Tiber, this result would long ago have taken place. Let
Polish and Russian grain be admitted without a protecting duty into the
British harbours, as Lybian and Egyptian were into those of Italy, and we
shall soon see the race of cultivators disappear from the fields of
England as they did from those of old Rome, and the words of Tacitus will,
by a mere change of proper names, become a picture of our condition; three
hundred thousand acres will soon be reduced to a state of nature in Kent
and Norfolk, as they were in the Campania Felix. "Nec nunc infecunditate
laboramur, _Podoliam_ potius et _Scythiam_ exercemus, navibusque et
casibus vita populi _Anglici_ permissa est."
The free traders allege that the decay of agriculture in the central
provinces of the Roman empire, to which, by the concurring testimony of
all historians, the ruin of the dominion of the Caesars was chiefly owing,
is to be ascribed, not to the free importation of grain from Egypt,
Podolia, and Lybia, but to the tyranny of the emperors, the gratuitous
distribution of grain to the Roman populace, and the dreadful evils of
domestic slavery. A very slight consideration, however, must be sufficient
to show that these causes, how powerful soever in producing _general_
evils over the empire, could not have been instrumental in occasioning
those _peculiar_ and separate causes of depression, which so early began
to check, and at length totally destroyed, the agriculture of its central
provinces.
The tyranny of the Caesars, the oppression of the Proconsuls, the avarice
of the Patricians, were general evils, affecting alike every part of the
empire; or rather they were felt with more severity in the remote
provinces than the districts nearer home, in consequence of the superior
opportunities of escape which distance from the central government
afforded to iniquity, and the lesser chance of success which the
insurrection of a remote province held forth to the "wild revenge" of
rebellion. Muscovite oppression, accordingly, is more severely felt at
Odessa or Taganrog than St Petersburg; and British rule is far from being
restrained by the same considerations of justice on the banks of the
Ganges or the Indus, as on those of the Thames. The gratuitous
distribution of grain by the emperors to the populace of Rome, could never
have occasioned the ruin of the Italian _cultivators_. Supposing that the
two or three hundred thousand lazy and turbulent plebeians, who were
nourished by the bounty or fed by the terrors of the Caesars, were the
most useless, worthless, and dangerous set of men that ever existed,
(which they probably were,) that circumstance could never have uprooted
the race of cultivators from the plains of Lombardy, Umbria, or the
Campania Felix. The greatest possible good to a nation, according to the
free trader, is cheap grain, and never more so than when it is purchased
or imported from foreign growers. If this be true, the importation of the
harvests of Egypt and Africa into the Italian harbours, either by the
voluntary purchase of the Roman emperors, or the forced tribute in grain
which they exacted from those provinces, must have been the greatest
possible benefit to the Italian people. How then, if there be no mischief
in such foreign importations, is it possible to ascribe the ruin of
Italian cultivation, and with it of the Roman empire, to these forced
contributions? If the free traders have recourse to such an argument, they
concede the very point in dispute, and admit that the introduction of
foreign grain is injurious, and may in the end prove fatal, to the
agriculture and existence of a state.
Slavery, though a great evil, will as little explain the peculiar and
extraordinary decline of Italian and Grecian cultivation in the later
stages of the Roman empire. The greater part of the labour of the ancient
world, as every one knows, was conducted by means of slaves. They were
slaves who held the plough, and tilled the land, and tended the flocks,
equally in Lybia, in Campania, in Egypt, as in Umbria. Nay, the number of
freemen, at least in the days of the Roman Republic, and the earlier
periods of the empire, was incomparably _greater_ in Italy and Greece, the
abode of celebrated, powerful, and immortal republics, than in Lybia and
Egypt, which from the earliest times had been subject to the despotic sway
of satraps, kings, and tyrants. So numerous were the free citizens of Rome
in the early days of the empire, that, by the census of Claudius, we are
told by Gibbon they amounted to 6,945,000 men,[15] the greater proportion
of whom, of course, were residents in Italy, the seat of government, and
the centre of wealth, power, and enjoyment. While so great was the
multitude of free citizens which the Republic bequeathed to the empire,
resident and exercising unfettered industry in Italy, the cultivators of
Africa and Egypt were all serfs and slaves, toiling, like the West Indian
negroes, beneath the lash of a master. How, then, did it happen that the
labour of the Italian freeman was disused, and at length extinguished,
while that of the African and Egyptian slaves continued to furnish grain
for Italy down to the very latest period of the empire? We are told that
the labour of freemen is cheaper than that of slaves; and the free traders
will probably not dispute that proposition. It could not, therefore, have
been the slavery of antiquity which ruined Italian agriculture, carried on,
in part at least, by freemen; since African agriculture, the fruits
entirely of slavery, continued to flourish down to the very last days of
the Roman world.
[15] GIBBON, chap. i. 68.
The severe taxation of the emperors is justly stated by Gibbon and
Sismondi, as well as Michelet, as a principal cause of the decline of
Italian agriculture: but very little consideration is required to show,
that this cause is inadequate to explain this ruin of cultivation in the
Italian plains, when it continued to flourish and maintain the chief
cities of the empire with food, in Egypt and Lybia. Heavy as it was, and
oppressive as it ultimately became, _it was equal_; it was the same every
where; it might, therefore, satisfactorily explain the _general_ decline
of rural industry through the empire, and doubtless had a large share in
contributing to its downfall; but it cannot explain the _particular_ ruin
of it, in the central provinces of this vast dominion, while it continued,
down to the very last moment, to flourish in its remote dependencies.
But the taxation of the empire, _when coupled with the free importation of
grain_ from these distant dependencies, does afford a most satisfactory,
and, in truth, the true explanation of the ruin of Italian and Grecian
cultivation. It was a fixed principle of Roman taxation, that the duties
allotted on a particular district should remain fixed, how much lower the
inhabitants or industry of the province might decline. When, therefore, by
the constant importation of Egyptian and African grain, raised at half the
cost at which they could produce it, the Italian cultivators were deprived
of a remunerating return, and the taxes exacted from each district
underwent no diminution, it is not surprising that the small farmers and
proprietors were ruined; that they took refuge in the industry and crowds
of cities, and that the race of freemen disappeared from the country. A
similar process is now going on in the Turkish provinces. But without
undervaluing--on the contrary, attaching full weight to this
circumstance--nothing can be clearer than that it was the ruinous
competition of foreign grain, raised cheaper than they could produce it,
which rendered the same taxation crushing on the Italian farmers, which
was borne with comparative facility in the remoter provinces, where land
was more fertile, and labour less expensive. An example, _à fortiori_,
applied to the British empire, where the free traders wish us to admit a
free importation of grain from Poland and the Ukraine, where not only is
labour cheap but taxation trifling, into the British islands, where not
only is labour dear but taxation is five times more burdensome.
And for a decisive proof that it was the superior advantages which Egypt
and Lybia enjoyed in the production of grain, and not any other causes,
which occasioned the ruin of Italian agriculture, and with it the fall of
the Roman empire, we have only to look to the condition of the Italian
fields in the last stages of the government of the Caesars. Already, in
the time of the elder Pliny, it had become a subject of complaint that the
_great properties_ were ruining Italy[16]--a sure proof, when the great
division of estates in the days of the Republic--when, literally speaking,
"every rood had its man"--that some general and irresistible cause,
affecting the remuneration of their industry, was exterminating the small
proprietors. Erelong, cultivators ceased entirely in the country, and
the huge estates of the nobles were cultivated exclusively in pasturage,
and by means of slaves. "La classe," says Michelet, "_des petits
cultivateurs peu à pee a disparu_; les grands proprietaires qui leur
succedèrent y suppleèrent par des esclaves."[17] It is recorded by Ammianus
Marcellinus, that when Rome was taken by the Goths, it contained 1,200,000
inhabitants, and was mainly supported by 1780 great families, who
cultivated their ample estates in Italy in pasturage, by means of
slaves.[18] For centuries before, the threat of blockading the Tiber had
been found to be the most effectual way of coercing the Roman populace;
and whenever it took place, famine ensued, not only in Rome, but the
Italian provinces. The diminution of its agricultural produce had, long
before, been stated by Columella at _nine-tenths_, and by Varro at
_three-fourths_, of what at one period had been raised. Yet such was the
wealth of the Roman nobles, derived from pasturage, that some of them had
L.160, 000 a-year.[19] Agriculture, therefore, was destroyed; grain was no
longer raised in Italy; Rome was wholly dependent on foreign supplies--but
pasturage was undecayed; and colossal fortunes were enjoyed by a wealthy
race of great proprietors, who managed their vast estates by means of
slaves, and had bought up and absorbed the properties of the whole free
cultivators in the country. Such was the effect--such was the result--of a
free trade in grain in ancient times.
[16] "Verumque confitentibus _latifundia perdidere Italiam_."--PLINY,
_Hist. Nat_.xviii. 7.
[17] MICHELET, i. 96.
[18] AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS, c. xvi.--See also GIBBON, vi. 264.
[19] GIBBON, vi. 262.
The free traders seem not insensible to these inevitable results of their
favourite principles; but they meet them by describing such consequences
as rather advantageous than injurious. If England, say they, can raise
iron and cotton goods cheaper than Poland, and Poland and Russia grain
cheaper than England, then the interest of each require that they should
follow out these branches of industry, and it is impolitic to strive
against it. Let, then, England admit foreign grain on a nominal duty, and
this will in the end induce Russia and Prussia to admit English
manufactured goods on equally favourable terms; and thus the real
interests of both countries will in the end be promoted.
There are two objections to this system. In the first place, it is
impracticable if it were expedient. In the second, it is inexpedient if it
were practicable.
It is impracticable if it were expedient. Theoretical writers may coolly
discuss in their closets the total destruction of various important
branches of industry, the "absorption" of the persons engaged in them in
other pursuits, and the transference of national capital and industry from
agriculture to manufactures, and _vice versà_; but it is impossible to
effect such changes by the voluntary act of government, even in the most
despotic country. We say by the voluntary act of government; because there
is no doubt that it may be effected, though at an enormous sacrifice of
life, wealth, and happiness, by the silent and unobserved operation of the
laws of nature, which are irresistible; as was the case with the
transference of industry from agriculture to pasturage, under the effect
of free trade in grain in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, in
the later stages of the Roman empire; or from manufactures to agriculture,
from the consequences of the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope in the
Italian republics in modern times. But no government, not even that of the
Czar Peter or Sultaun Mahmoud, could succeed in destroying or nipping in
the bud brances of national industry, by simple acts of the legislature or
sovereign authority, not imposed by external and irresistible authority.
The Emperor Paul tried it, and got a sash twisted about his neck,
according to the established fashion of that country, for his pains. The
Whigs tried it, and were turned out of office in consequence. All the
governments of Europe, despotic, constitutional, and democratic, meet our
concessions, in favour of free trade, by increased protection to their
manufacturers. They dare not destroy their rising commercial wealth any
more than we dare destroy our old colossal agricultural investments. The
republicans of America even exceed them in the race of tariffs and
protection. Sixty-two per cent has lately been laid on our British iron
goods in return for Sir Robert Peel's tariff; a similar duty on iron and
cotton goods, it is well known, is contemplated in the Prussian leagues in
Germany. The British government has at length, through its prime minister,
spoken out firmly in support of the existing corn-laws. The feeling of the
agricultural counties, as evinced at the late meetings, left them no
alternative. All nations, under all varieties of government, situation,
race, and political circumstances, concur in rising up to resist the
doctrines of free trade. Necessity has enlightened, experience has taught
them: a very clear motive urges them on, which is not likely to decline in
strength with the progress of time--it is the instinct of
self-preservation.
Such a system as the free traders advocate, if practicable, would be to
the last degree inexpedient.
What would be the result? Why, that one country would become wholly, or in
great part, agricultural, and the other wholly, or in great part,
manufacturing. Is this a result desirable to either? Admitting that a city
or small state, which has no territory which can furnish any considerable
proportion of the subsistence which it requires, like Holland, may do well
to attend exclusively to manufactures and commerce; or a country which, by
the rigour of nature, or the remoteness of its situation, cannot attain to
commercial or manufacturing greatness, would do well to attend exclusively
to the cultivation or productions of the earth; the question which here
occurs--Is such a system advisable or expedient for a nation which has
received from the bounty of nature the means of rising to greatness in
_both_--such as Great Britain, Russia, or Prussia? The free traders would
have England sacrifice its agriculture to its manufactures, and Russia
sacrifice its manufactures to its agriculture. Would such a system benefit
either? Would England be happier or richer, more stable or more moral, if
the already colossal amount of its manufactures were trebled; or Russia,
if its rising iron and woolen fabrics were destroyed, and its industry
confined exclusively to the slow return of agricultural labour? Is it
desirable that the zone of tall chimneys, sickly faces, brick houses, and
crowded jails, which at present spans across the whole of England and part
of Scotland, should be doubled and trebled in breadth; and the fertile
fields of Kent, Norfolk, and East Lothian, be reduced to vast unenclosed
pastures, such as overspread Italy in the later stages of the Roman
empire? Or is it desirable to Russia and Prussia that they should be for
ever chained to the labour of boors, serfs, and shepherds, and all the
vivifying and unimportant effects of commercial wealth be denied to their
exertions? Nature has designed, experience recommends, a very different
system. History tells us in all parts of the world, that it is in the
_intermixture_ of commerce and agriculture that the best security is to be
found for social happiness and advancement, and the most effectual
antidote provided to the evils with which either, when existing alone, is
so prone. Mr McCulloch has told us, that the commerce and manufactures of
Great Britain have now risen to such a prodigious height, that any further
extension of them is undesirable, and that no real patriot would have
desired them to have become so extensive as they already are. Is it
desirable, in such a state of matters, to go on increasing the same
splendid but perilous system, and to do so at the expense of the great
pillar of national wealth, security, and independence--the land of the
state?
Further, the proposed system is pernicious even with reference to the
national wealth and interests of the manufacturers themselves, as tending
to undermine the main branches of our national resources, and substitute
encouragement to an inferior, to upholding of the superior market for our
manufacturing industry.
Although in the meetings where they address the agricultural
constituencies, the free traders hold out that their measures would
benefit the manufacturers, and _not injure the agriculturists_; yet
nothing can be clearer than that this is a mere shallow pretext, put forth
to conceal their real objects and the effect of their measures, and that
the result they _really_ anticipate is as different from that as the poles
are asunder. What is the benefit they hold out to the community as an
inducement to go into their measures? Cheap grain. What is the motive
which stimulates all their efforts, and which, among themselves and in
private conversation with all men of sense, they at once admit is their
ruling object? _Reduced wages_; the hope of extending our export in
foreign countries by taking an additional quantity of their rude produce;
and diminishing the cost of production to our manufacturers by lowering
the price of food, and with it the wages of labour. The whole strength of
their case rests in these propositions. Their influence over the urban
multitudes arises solely from the continual reiteration of these alluring
hopes. If these effects are not to follow free trade and the efforts of
the League, in the name of Heaven, what good are they to do, and why do
they agitate the country and subscribe to the League fund? Sensible men do
not throw away £100,000 for nothing, for no benefit to themselves or
others. But these prospects are as fallacious as they are alluring, and so
a very few observations will demonstrate.
Considered in a _national_ point of view, if the matter is brought to this
issue, the great question is--Whether agriculture or manufactures are the
superior interests in the production of national wealth. Admitting that
the true policy for government is to protect _all_ the branches of
national industry, and stoutly contending, as we do, and ever shall do,
that the real and ultimate interests of all is the same, and cannot be
separated--the question comes to be, if one fiercely demands the sacrifice
of the other, and insists that its interests are so weighty and momentous
that all others must be sacrificed to them, which of the two thus placed
in jeopardy is the most momentous? which brings in most to the national
treasury? Now, on this point the facts are as adverse to the arguments of
the League, as on all other branches of their case.
Take the sum total of manufactures in Great Britain and Ireland,
accompanied with the sum total of agricultural production, in order to
discover which of the two is the more valuable interest--in order that it
may be discovered, if matters are brought to that issue that one or other
must be abandoned, which is to be sacrificed. The choice of a wise
government could not be doubtful, if it were necessary to make the
selection. The agricultural productions of the British islands amount to
L.300,000,000 a-year, while the sum total of manufactures of every
description is only L.180,000,000. Nor can it be said, with any degree of
truth, that the agriculture of the country is dependent for its existence
on its manufactures, and would decline if they were materially injured;
for the example of modern Italy and Flanders proves, that three centuries
_after_ a country has ceased to be the chief in manufacturing or
commercial industry, it may advance with undiminished vigour and success
in the production of agricultural riches.
But this is not all. The statistical documents which have now been
prepared with so much care by Parliament, and published by the accurate
and indefatigable Mr Porter, himself a decided free trader, demonstrate
that, of the manufacturing productions, nearly three-fourths are taken off
by the home market, and _four-fifths_ by the home and colonial market
taken together, leaving only ONE-FIFTH for _the whole foreign markets of
the world put together_--
"The total amount of British manufactures annually produced is about
£180,000,000 worth, of which only £47,000,000 is taken off by the
whole external trade of the world put together, while no less than
£133,000, 000 is consumed in the home market; and of the foreign
consumption, fully a third is absorbed by the British Colonies, in
different parts of the world. So that the home and colonial trade is
to the whole foreign put together as 5 to 1. And, whle the total
produce of manufactures is £180,000,000 annually, and of mines and
minerals £13,776,000, the amount of agricultural produce annually
extracted from the soil is not less than £300,000,000; or a half more
than the whole manufactures and mines put together."
Further, if we compare the proportion purchased of our manufactures, which
is taken off by foreign nations, for the export to whom we are required to
make the sacrifice of our domestic agriculture, with what is consumed by
our own native population, whether in the British islands or in our
colonies of British descent, the difference is prodigious, and such as
might well, even for their own sake, make the Anti-corn-law League pause
in their career of violence. From the tables compiled from Porter's
_Parliamentary Tables_, and the population of the different states to whom
we export, taken from Malte Brun and Balbi, it appears, that while the
British population, whether at home or abroad, consume from £3 to £5
a-head worth of our manufactures, the foreign nations to whom we are
willing to sacrifice the British agriculturists, take off per head ONLY AS
MANY PENCE. In preferring the one to the other, therefore, we are,
literally speaking, penny wise and pound foolish.
We have shown how agriculture was ruined in the Roman empire in Italy, by
the free importation of grain from the Lybian and Egyptian provinces of
the empire. As a contrast to that woful progress, the main cause of the
destruction of the empire of the Caesars, we request the attention of our
readers to the progress of British exports in official value, which
indicates their amount from 1790 to 1840, premising that the _whole_ of
that period was one of protection to the British agriculturist; during the
first twenty years of the period, by the effects of the war--during the
last twenty-five, by the operation of the corn law and sliding scale,
introduced in 1814. We recommend the advocates of free trade to search the
annals of the world for a similar instance of progress and prosperity
flowing from, or co-existent with, the practical adoption of their
principles.
These facts, which, in truth, are altogether decisive of the present
question, point to the great source from which the errors of the free
trade party are derived, and which appears, in an especial manner, their
favourite position, that cheap prices is an unmitigated blessing, and that
the great thing to attend to is to increase our imports. Cheap prices of
grain are like the Amreeta cap in Kehama; the greatest of all blessings is
the greatest of all curses, _according as they arise from magnitude of
domestic production, or magnitude of foreign importation_. Of the first we
had an example during the five fine years in succession, from 1830 to 1835,
during which the foreign importation was practically abolished by the
abundant harvests, and consequent high duty on grain under the sliding
scale. This was a period, as all the world knows, of universal and
unexampled commercial prosperity. Of the second we had a memorable example
during the five bad years in succession, which elapsed fiom 1836 to 1840,
in the course of which the corn laws, from the effect of the same sliding
scale, and the continued low prices, were practically abolished; and
importations, at the close of the period, amounted to 2,500,000 quarters,
and, on an average of the whole, was little short of 2,000,000 of quarters.
And what was the result? The exportation of 6,000,000 of sovereigns in a
single year to buy grain; an unexampled pressure on the money market;
commercial embarrassments, long-continued, and severe beyond all former
precedent; the contraction of ten millions of additional debt in four
years, and the creation of a deficit which at length rose to the
formidable amount, in 1842, of L.4,000,000 sterling! And what first
dispelled this distress, and arrested this downward and disastrous
progress? The fine harvests of 1842--the blessed sun of its long summer,
followed by the more checkered, but also fine summer of 1843, which again
gave us plenty, derived from domestic production, and consequent general
and increasing manufacturing as well as rural prosperity.
It is in vain, therefore, to say, cheap prices are a blessing in
themselves, and the consumers at least are ever benefited by a fall in the
cost of grain. Cheap prices are a real blessing if that effect consists
with prosperity to the producer, as by improved methods of cultivation or
manufacture, or the benignity of nature in giving fine seasons. But cheap
prices are the greatest of all evils, and to none more shall the consumers,
if they are the result, not of the magnitude of domestic production, but
of the magnitude of foreign importation. It was that sort of cheap prices
which ruined the Roman empire, from the destruction of the agriculture of
Italy; it is that sort of cheap prices which has ruined the Indian weavers,
from the disastrous competition of the British steam-engine; it is that
sort of low prices which has so grievously depressed British shipping,
from the disastrous competition of the Baltic vessels under the
reciprocity system. It is in vain for the consumers to say, we will
separate our case from that of the producers, and care not, so as we get
low prices, what comes of them. Where will the consumers be, and that
erelong, if the producers are destroyed? What will be the condition of the
landlords if their farmers are ruined? or of bondholders if their debtors
are bankrupt? or of railway proprietors if traffic ceases? or of owners of
bank stock if bills are no longer presented for discount? or of the 3 per
cents if Government, by the failure of the productive industry of the
country, is rendered bankrupt? The consumers all rest on the producers,
and must sink or swim with them.
* * * * *
_Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work._