XIX. 1823. It is the same with Russia, Prussia, France, and all the CHAP. principal agricultural states in the world. They are all striving to become commercial, and to effect this by adopting the prohibitory system, by which we have risen to greatness. Turkey is the only exception; it has long adopted the Free-trade policy in its full extent, because the Mussulmans who rule the State are all the denizens of towns, and have no interest in the productions of the country; and the ruin of the Ottoman empire has been the consequence. 45. The inevitable effect of adopting the Free-trade principle, for any length of time, by an old State, always has Concluded. been, and always must be, that the agriculture of that State is destroyed, its independence endangered, and at length its existence terminated. This it was which occasioned the fall of Rome; this it is which will occasion the destruction, in the end, of the British empire. The reason is to be found in a cause of universal application and irresistible force; but so simple and familiar, that, like an apple falling to the ground, men were long of seeing the explanation of the mighty phenomenon, which lies in a matter of daily occurrence. It is this, that everything which is plentiful, and money among the rest, becomes cheap. The necessary effect of this cheapening of money is, that everything else becomes dear in the rich State; and thence, under the Free-trade system, the ruin of its agricultural industry. Riches are only to be found in such quantities, in a realised and accumulated form, in an old State, where they have been the growth of centuries of industry; in the young and rising one, the accumulation has not yet taken place, and money is comparatively scarce. A permanent and unalterable law of nature renders it as impossible for the rich nation to compete with the poor one in the production of the fruits of the soil, as for the poor one to compete with the rich in the production of the finer manufactures. Steam, almost omnipotent in the latter, is powerless in the former; England can undersell all nations in cotton manufactures, XIX. 1823. CHAP. wrought up out of a vegetable growing on the banks of the Mississippi or Ganges; but it is undersold by the serfs of Poland, the fellahs of Egypt, and the cultivators of America, in the production of food for the use of man. Thence the inevitable result of Free Trade, if established on both sides, to ruin the agriculture of the rich and the manufactures of the poor one; and this is what has invariably happened when an approach even to such a system has taken place. It may be quite true that the weight of towns, in the later stages of society, often becomes such that the change is unavoidable, and it is forced even upon the most reluctant Government; but it is not on that account the less fatal, and the passion for it is the mortal disease which conducts the nation by slow degrees to the tomb. 47. the system of Free Trade, as experience. Such is a brief and imperfect abstract of the debate on Results of this great question, as it was at last evolved on both sides; for the importance and ultimate bearings of the question, proved by and its inevitable results, were not in the first instance perceived by the disputants on either. The future volumes of this History will contain ample materials for forming a judgment which of the set of arguments is the better founded; but, in the mean time, it may be remarked, that the result proves that there was much truth in the prognostications on both sides. For, from the returns of the exports, imports, and importations of grain, during the seven years preceding and the seven years following the entire adoption of Free Trade by the Act of 1846, it appears that the exports, measured by official value, which indicates the quantity, have increased above 100 per cent, the imports about 90 per cent, while the imports of grain of all sorts from abroad have more than quadrupled, having now reached an average of nearly ten millions of quarters a-year, being a full third of the consumption of our people; while the falling off in domestic production, * Including animals, the annual consumption is about 49,000,000 quarters. -M'CULLOCH in Encyclopædia Britannica. XIX. 1823. during the same period, may be guessed at, from the de- CHAP. cline of importation of grain from Ireland into Great Britain, which has sunk above a half, pending the vast increase from other quarters; and the exportation of human beings, chiefly agricultural labourers, has reached the enormous amount of 350,000 a-year from the two islands.* 48. silk trade. These immense results of the new system, however, did not develop themselves fully for a quarter of a State of the century after this period; and the measures tending to Free Trade which Mr Huskisson at first introduced, in relation to our manufactures, were such as were obviously wise, and must command the assent of every reasonable mind. The silk manufacture was the branch of manufacturing industry to which the new system was earliest applied. This manufacture, which had owed its origin in England to the barbarous revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV., which drove many thousands of the best French operatives into exile, had prospered to a very great * EXPORTS, IMPORTS, IMPORTS OF GRAIN FROM ALL THE WORLD, AND FROM IRELAND, INTO GREAT BRITAIN, AND EMIGRATION FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM, IN EVERY YEAR FROM 1838 TO 1853, BOTH INCLU -PORTER, 128, 140, 345, 354. Edinburgh Review, April 1854, 583. XIX. 1823. CHAP. degree, especially at Spitalfields, near London, and Macclesfield, in Staffordshire; and it had come, in 1823, to consume 1,200,000 lb. of the raw material, and gave employment to 40,000 persons. The English silks, however, were dearer than the French, chiefly in consequence of the heavy duties on the importation of foreign silk, which was intended to encourage the growth of silk in Hindostan; and it was generally said-at least by the ladies-that they were inferior in quality; though the inferiority could not have been very great, since, when they were exported to France, as they often were, and reimported into this country as French goods, they excited unbounded admiration as the production of Lyons or Rouen. The extreme distress which pervaded the country, however, from 1819 to the end of 1822, in consequence of the contraction of the currency, had so affected this branch of manufacture that the wages of the operatives had sunk from (Second), 30s. a-week to 11s.; and even at these miserably low Porter, 218; prices the importation, by means of smuggling, had become so considerable that the home market was in a manner lost to our manufacturers.1 1 Lords' Report 391, 1823; Martineau, i. 345. 49. In this disastrous state of affairs, the silk-manufacturers, First intro- in 1823, soon after Mr Huskisson came into office, preFree Trade sented a petition to Government, praying for a removal duction of in reference to it. of the duties on the importation of the raw material-a circumstance which enabled him to make the well-founded boast, that "the trade had been the first to suggest the removal of these restrictions; and he was confident they would be nearly the first to rejoice in the adoption of their proposal." The bill to lower the duties on foreign silk was introduced first in 1823; but after passing the Commons, it was thrown out in the Lords, chiefly from the influence of Lord Eldon, who was averse to this as to every other innovation. In the following year the bill, however, was again introduced, supported by a petition from the principal silk-manufacturers in and around London. On the other hand, the owners of silk-mills peti The XIX. 1823. tioned against any change; and Mr Buxton presented a CHAP. petition, signed by 23,000 operative silk-weavers of the metropolis, who prayed that "the prohibition of the importation of foreign-wrought silks might not be removed." Pressed in this manner on both sides, it was no easy matter for Government to know what to do. At length, however, as often occurs in such cases, a compromise was agreed to, by which the duty on imported raw silk was reduced from 5s. 74d. a lb. to 3d. on all raw silk which did come from Bengal, and 4s. on all that did not. duty on thrown silk was lowered from 14s. 8d. to 7s. 6d. per lb.; and the prohibition against the importation of foreign-wrought silks was continued till July 1826, after which they were to be admitted at an ad valorem duty of 30 per cent. There can be no doubt of the wisdom of these changes. Raw silk is not a natural production of this country, and, from the climate, never can be; and therefore the levying of a heavy duty on foreign raw silk was nothing but a gratuitous burden on the springs of manufacturing industry.* Improvement in domestic fabrics is not to be expected, unless the taste is chastened and ingenuity called forth by foreign competition; and the protecting duty of 30 per cent seems amply sufficient |