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 effects of civilisation 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 ruder. As regards the former, the very reverse takes place the additions made to productive power are comparatively inconsiderable even by the most important discoveries and though 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 ahead 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 may possibly 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 of 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 prin ciple 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 cost of producing food; on the contrary, it is decidedly its inferior. There 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 civilisation on the production of food and on 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 impracticability 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 connexions, 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 Brougham have no objections to the free choice, by solicitors and attorneys, of 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 Circuit 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 as compared with 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, because 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 only 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 circu lating 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 amount, becomes necessary. M'Culloch calculates the circulating medium of Great Britain, including paper and gold, at £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 twentyseven millions of people in Great Britain. The total circulation of Russia, with sixty millions of inhabitants, is not forty millions sterling. The effect of this difference is prodigious. It is no wonder, when it is taken into account, that wages are 5d. 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 higher cost of raising subsistence in the old than in 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 £1500 a-year in London will not go further than £1000 a-year in Edinburgh, or £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 amount of local ones. It is the vast results arising from the concentration of wealth and expenditure 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 political circumstances, and in different stages of wealth, civilisation, 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 greater pressure of wages, rent, and all the elements |