=Source.=—_Hansard_, Third Series, vol. lxxxiii., col. 276,
June 27, 1846.
Sir R. PEEL: ... I fairly avow to you that in making
this great reduction upon the import of articles, the produce and
manufacture of foreign countries, I have no guarantee to give you that
other countries will immediately follow our example. I give you that
advantage in the argument. Wearied with our long and unavailing efforts
to enter into satisfactory commercial treaties with other nations, we
have resolved at length to consult our own interests, and not to punish
those other countries for the wrong they do us in continuing their
high duties upon the importation of our products and manufactures, by
continuing high duties ourselves, encouraging unlawful trade. We have
had no communication with any Foreign Government upon the subject of
these reductions. We cannot promise that France will immediately make
a corresponding reduction in her tariff. I cannot promise that Russia
will prove her gratitude to us for our reduction of duty upon her
tallow, by any diminution of her duties. You may, therefore, say, in
opposition to the present plan, What is this superfluous liberality,
that you are going to do away with all these duties, and yet you expect
nothing in return? I may, perhaps, be told that many foreign countries,
since the former relaxation of duties on our part—and that would
be perfectly consistent with the fact—foreign countries which have
benefited by our relaxations, have not followed our example; nay, have
not only not followed our example, but have actually applied to the
importation of British goods higher rates of duties than formerly. I
quite admit it. I give you all the benefit of that argument. I rely
upon that fact, as conclusive proof of the policy we are pursuing. It
is a fact, that other countries have not followed our example, and
have levied higher duties in some cases upon our goods. But what has
been the result upon the amount of your exports? You have defied the
regulations of these countries. Your export trade is greatly increased.
Now why is that so? Partly because of your acting without wishing to
avail yourselves of their assistance; partly because of the smuggler,
not engaged by you, in so many continental countries, whom the strict
regulations and the triple duties, which are to prevent any ingress of
foreign goods, have raised up; and partly, perhaps, because these very
precautions against the ingress of your commodities are a burden, and
the taxation increasing the cost of production disqualify the foreigner
from competing with you. But your exports, whatever be the tariffs of
other countries, or however apparent the ingratitude with which they
have treated you—your export trade has been constantly increasing.
By the remission of your duties upon raw materials—by inciting your
skill and industry—by competition with foreign goods, you have defied
your competitors in foreign markets, and you have even been enabled to
exclude them. Notwithstanding their hostile tariffs, the declared value
of British exports has increased above £10,000,000 during the period
which has elapsed since the relaxation of the duties on your part. I
say, therefore, to you that these hostile tariffs, so far from being
an objection to continuing your policy, are an argument in its favour.
But, depend upon it, your example will ultimately prevail.... I do
hope that the friends and lovers of peace between nations will derive
material strength from the example which I have advised, by remitting
the impediments to commercial intercourse. But observe, if that be the
effect, I think in all probability that the continuance of permanent
peace will expose us to more extensive and more formidable competition
with foreign countries with respect to manufactures. During war we
commanded the supply of nations. Peace has introduced not only new
consumers, but also formidable manufacturing interests. In order that
we may retain our pre-eminence it is of the greatest importance that
we neglect no opportunity of securing to ourselves those advantages by
which that pre-eminence can be alone secured. Sir, I firmly believe
that abundance and cheapness of provisions is one of the constituents
by which the continuance of manufacturing and commercial pre-eminence
may be maintained. You may say the object of these observations is
to flatter the love of gain, and administer merely to the desire of
accumulating money. I advise this measure on no such ground. I believe
that the accumulation of wealth, that is, the increase of capital, is a
main element, or at least one of the chief means by which we can retain
the eminence we have so long possessed. But I have attempted to show
that abundance of provisions, and security (which is the main thing)
for continued abundance, not only contributes to the accumulation
of wealth, but that it is directly conducive to the alleviation of
public burdens, by increasing the revenue; to the alleviation of local
burdens, by diminishing crimes; but, above all, that it is conducive
to the spread of morality, by diminishing those temptations to crime
which arise from distress and poverty.... I cannot appeal to any
ungenerous feeling—I cannot appeal to fear, or to anything which will
be calculated to exercise an undue sway over the reason of those to
whom these proposals are made. There may be agitation, but it is not
one which has reached the great mass of the labouring classes, there
being among them a total absence of all excitement. But this I do
say—there has been a great change in the opinions of the great mass
of the community with respect to the Corn Laws. There is between the
master manufacturers and the operative classes a common conviction that
did not prevail at 1842 or at a former period—that it will be for the
public advantage that these laws should be repealed; and while there is
that union of sentiment between them, there appears at the same time to
be a general contentment and loyalty, and a confidence in your justice
and impartiality.
Sir HOWARD DOUGLAS (member for Liverpool): ... This establishes, I
think, the truth of what I had the honour of saying in this House on a
former occasion: that there is a great difference between that plenty
and low price which are produced by abundance of home production, and
that which is produced by unlimited foreign importation; that the one
quickens, the other deadens the home market; that England is England’s
best customer; and that the contemporaneous exportation from England
in return for foreign corn would be chiefly in British gold. Perfect
free trade consists in the absence of restrictions on both sides.... We
cannot combat rival tariffs, directly or indirectly, without subjecting
British industry to severe depressions in relation to foreign industry
and foreign labour.... To lay suitable duties upon the production
of the foreigner, who lays burthens upon yours, does not give the
monopoly of the home market to the home producer, nor turn towards any
particular employment more capital and labour than would naturally
go there. It only hinders that amount of those actually engaged from
being turned away into a less natural direction. There cannot be two
prices for the same article in the same market. The foreign consumer
will not pay more for a British than for a domestic article of equal
quality. The exporter cannot pay the rival duty, for, if so, he would
sell at a loss or be undersold by the foreign rival: and therefore
to compete with foreign protected markets British articles must be
produced so much cheaper as to enter into this competition. The cost
of production must therefore be reduced. This is most immediately
and readily done by reducing the wages of labour, and it is most
important to remark that it is precisely in times of pressure, when
profits are most bare and labour most in want of employment, that
this takes place and that mechanical labour is most extended. This
not only displaces manual labour in times of pressure, but by so much
precludes it from participating in future prosperity. It is difficult
to trace the various uses of the money produced by the bills drawn on
Great Britain by the exporters of foreign productions, for which they
will not take British produce in return.... Whatever be the end of
the circuitous transactions, the money payments made by us must first
afford profitable investments to the rival interests of foreign nations
and employment of foreign labour.... The noble lord, the member for the
West Riding, observed forcibly, the increase of population requires
additional means and sources of subsistence. But can we not find, do we
not possess in our Colonies unbounded sources, rich fields of virgin
fertility, from which we may derive unlimited supplies of British
food? ... I have imagined that it might really be possible to treat
the Colonies like counties of the country, not only in direct trade
with the United Kingdom, but in commercial intercourse with each other,
by free trade among ourselves, under a reasonable, moderate degree of
protection from without, and so resolve the United Kingdom and all her
Colonies and possessions into a commercial union such as might defy all
rivalry and defeat all combinations. But free trade—the extinction of
the protective principle, the repeal of the differential duties—would
at once convert all our Colonies, in a commercial sense, into as many
independent states. I defy any hon. member opposite to say that this
would not be a virtual dissolution of the Colonial system. The British
flag might still fly for a time, where sound British policy had raised
it, in every part of the world. The colonists would regard it still
with the veneration to which it is entitled. Our navies might still
guard their coasts and waters and our troops hold military possession
of their lands; but then would come the question of the economists, in
debates on the Navy, Army, and Ordnance Estimates, What is the use of
colonies? They consume not, as of old, the productions of the United
Kingdom in any greater degree than if they were foreign States; we no
longer consider and treat the colonies as domestic sources essential
for the supply of the materials of our manufacturing industry and the
elements of our maritime power; and it will be difficult to answer
that economical argument, when, moreover, we shall have discarded our
Colonies, for considerations of a wretched pecuniary economy, and
sacrificed national objects and high destinies to the minor, and the
comparatively mean, calculations of speculative wealth.
* * * * *
Mr. POULETT SCROPE: ... Sir, the plea of the weight of national
taxation for a Corn Law appears to me not only a false, but a dishonest
one. By no possible contrivance or juggle of protection can you fix
the debt on the foreigner; it must still be paid by British subjects
of some kind; and if you relieve yourselves from your share of it by
any trickery of this kind, you can only do it by shifting the burden
upon the rest of the community. You have chosen to place it on the most
helpless of all the masses—the eaters of bread—who by your law must buy
at your shop, at your artificial prices, and so pay the debt for you or
starve. Is this right or is it wrong? No, sir, I repeat: if the Corn
Laws do not raise the price of corn, they at least diminish its supply
to a half-fed people. If they do, they can only benefit one class
at the expense of every other. I take the speech of the hon. member
for Northamptonshire, who may be considered to represent the pure
protectionists. I appeal to the recollection of the House, if the main
point of that speech was not an attack on what the hon. member called a
stern dogma of a cold and hard political economy—viz., “that we should
buy as cheap and sell as dear as we can”—a maxim which I would venture
to call, not a dogma of political economy, but the very first principle
of all commerce, the ABC of trade. But perhaps the hon. member despises
trade and its shopkeeping maxims. But I am much mistaken if his friends
and clients, the tenant farmers, act on any other than this vulgar
and cruel mercantile principle themselves. They would not like to be
compelled to act on the opposite principle of buying dear and selling
cheap. No; what they really mean, and the hon. member too, in railing
against the principle of buying cheap and selling dear is that the
manufacturers should sell cheap to them, the farmers, while they sell
dear to the manufacturers; and this is, in fact, the object aimed at
by the Corn Laws. But the hon. member illustrated the cruelty of this
flagitious dogma of a cold political economy by pathetic pictures,
which were not without their effect on the feelings of the House. The
first was that of a crowd of paper-stainers and silk-weavers thrown
out of employment by the unpatriotic and anti-national preference
of French silks and paper-hangings to those of British manufacture.
Every picture has its reverse, and to the hon. member’s picture of an
ideal scene resulting from the operation of our mercantile principle,
I will oppose a picture of the result of his protective principle,
not drawn from the imagination, but one of the real scenes which did
occur, in hundreds of instances, but a few years ago, in Paisley, in
Stockport, in Manchester, and other places. Let the hon. member imagine
a manufacturer at that time, his warehouses choked with goods which
he could not dispose of; imagine that, after putting his workpeople
first on low wages, next on half-work, he finally finds himself
obliged to discharge them altogether, and to shut up his mill. They
crowd in hundreds round him—a melancholy spectacle—men, women, and
children imploring him for work and food. What is his answer? “All
my capital lies locked up in yonder warehouses, and I have exhausted
my credit likewise. The foreigner can buy no more of the goods you
make because our laws prohibit his paying for them in the only thing
he has to sell—his corn, the very food you want....” The hon. member
does not seem to be aware of the fact that to buy anything from the
foreigner we must sell to him something of equal value—that for every
quarter of foreign corn or every piece of foreign silk imported we
must expect to pay for it an equal value of goods the produce of our
own manufacturers, and that British or native industry is as much
employed in the one case as in the other, the only difference being
(and a great difference it is) that by the free exchange we get more
of what we want, or of a better quality, in return for our industry,
than if we attempted to produce it at home. And this is just the
benefit which commerce confers. The hon. member does not seem to be
aware that the principle he declaims against as a cold dogma of a stern
political economy is the one sole vivifying principle of all commerce,
the stimulus to all improvement, the mainspring of civilisation—the
principle, namely, of obtaining the largest and best result at the
least cost; in other words, to get the most you can of what you want
for your money or your labour. But I can hardly wonder at the opinions
held by the hon. member, when I see him sitting on the same bench with
the hon. member for Knaresborough, who abhors machinery as the root of
all evil. It is a fitting alliance; in fact, it is the same fallacy
in a different form. The notion that it is better to buy dear than to
buy cheap is the same as that it is better to spend much labour than
little to produce the same result. The idea is that the more of labour
and capital anything costs to obtain it the better. So stated, it seems
incredible that any man should entertain the idea. And yet this is
the notion which lies at the bottom of all the declamations against
machinery for economising labour and against the mercantile principle
of economising capital. In both cases an increase of produce is
obtained at a less cost, the very circumstance which alone raised the
condition of civilised man above that of the savage.