regarded by the states of Continental Europe? Let the Zollverein league, at the head of which Prussia has placed herself, and which has imposed duties to an amount, in practical operation, of fifty per cent on our manufactures, give the answer. The exports which we send to the states of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Prussia, are still, after a quarter of a century's experience of the immense impulse it has given to their maritime interests, and corresponding depression to ours, a perfect trifle.* Our exports to America are less than they were fifteen years ago, despite the boasted conciliatory effect of twenty years' reciprocity.+ What can be more injudicious, therefore, than to persist in, and even extend, a system which, without diminishing in the slightest degree the jealousy of Continental nations at our manufacturing superiority, has inflicted a serious and gratuitous wound on the naval resources by which alone that superiority can be maintained? We have recently made a very great stride in free-trade principles, by the sacrifice of our agricultural protection, and the throwing open the English markets to cultivators of all nations. In the three last months of 1846 and even of 1847, in consequence of the import duties being removed, above £30,000,000 sterling was sent out of the country to purchase foreign grain; and the moderate duty of 8s. a quarter has since been re-imposed on wheat,—yet it terminates in February next, and corn from all quarters will then be admitted at the nominal duty of 1s. a quarter. We have abandoned the protection of our colonies to conciliate the slave-growing states, and augment the market for Manchester goods in Cuba and Brazil. With what disastrous effects upon the best interests of the empire these changes have been attended, need be told to none who are familiar with the total ruin which has in consequence overtaken our West India colonies, and the * Exports from Great Britain-to 1844 Sweden, Denmark, Prussia, -PORTER'S Progress of the Nation, p. 366, 2d edition. + Exports to United States of America :- 1836, 1844, -PORTER, ibid. £108,475 152,824 286,679 505,384 £12,425,605 7,938,079 unprecedented distress which prevails in all the great seats of our manufacturing industry. The loss of half the realised wealth of Liverpool, Manchester, and Glasgow, and the throwing nearly 100,000 persons, including dependants, into a state of pauperism, in each of those once rich and prosperous cities, is the price which, in a year and a half, we have paid for the adoption by Sir R. Peel of Mr Cobden's principles of free trade, and Mr Jones Loyd's principles of a fettered currency. Have we, in consequence, reaped any countervailing advantage-or does the increase of our export and import trade show any benefit derived to the nation, to compensate such dreadful wounds inflicted on its internal prosperity, in the attempt to disarm the jealousy of foreign manufacturers? So far from it, our exports and imports have steadily declined since free-trade principles were introduced. All the main sources of our strength have diminished since Sir R. Peel abandoned protection in July 1846. Nothing has increased except our imports, and they have enlarged immensely. In adopting these principles we have gratuitously inflicted a grievous wound on our own people, without having obtained for them even the shadow of a benefit to compensate the evil. * Such have been the effects of free-trade principles on the comparative prosperity of British and foreign shipping, on the showing of the Free-traders themselves, and according to the figures which their great statistician, Mr Porter, has prepared and published at the Board of Trade. We were unwilling to mix up a great national question, such as the repeal of the Navigation Laws, with any subordinate examination as to the accuracy or inaccuracy of the view of our maritime affairs which these figures exhibit. Such is the strength of the case, that it will admit of almost any -PORTER'S Parl. Tables; and Parl. Paper, 3d April 1848. £52,009,324 54,473,762 52,082,757 concession; and the opponents of their repeal have no occasion to go farther than to the statistics of their adversaries for the most decisive refutation of their principles. But there are two observations on the tables published by the Board of Trade, so important that they cannot be passed over in silence. The first is, that in 1834, when Mr Poulett Thomson was president of the Board of Trade, a regulation was made by the Board as to the measurement of vessels, which had the effect of adding a fifth to the apparent tonnage of all British vessels, subsequent to that date. This change was clearly proved by the witnesses examined before the Commons'committee; but though Mr Porter, in his last edition of the Progress of the Nation, mentions the change, (p. 368,) he makes no allusion to it in comparing the amount of British and foreign tonnage since 1834. Of course a fifth must be deducted from British tonnage, as compared with foreign, since that time; and what overwhelming force does this give to the facts, already strong, in regard to the effect of the reciprocity system on our maritime interests! The second is, that the tonnage with countries near Great Britain, such as France, Belgium, and Holland, includes steam vessels carrying passengers, and their repeated voyages. In this way a boat measuring 148 tons, and carrying passengers chiefly, comes to figure in the returns for 24,000 tons! It is evident that this important circumstance deprives the returns of such near states of all value in the estimate of the comparative amount of tonnage engaged in the trade with different countries. That with France will appear greatest in spring 1848, in consequence of the number of large vessels then employed in bringing back English residents expelled by, or terrified at, the Revolution-though that circumstance was putting a stop to nearly all the commercial intercourse between the two countries. As steam navigation has so immensely increased since 1834, when the changes in the measurement was introduced, and Great Britain, from its store of coal and iron, enjoys more of that traffic than all Europe put together, this is another circumstance which militates against the returns as exhibiting a fair view of our trade, compared with that of foreign nations, especially with near countries; and fully justifies Mr Porter's admission, when examined before the Lords' committee, that "considerable fallacy is to be found in the returns." Unfortunately for the Freetraders, however, who had the preparation of them in their hands, these fallacies all point one way-viz. to augment the apparent advantages of free trade in shipping. Such as free-trade principles are, they are evidently not likely to remain, if these islands are excepted, long in the ascendant either in the Old or the New World. The American tariff shows us how little we have to expect from Transatlantic favour to our manufactures: the savage expulsion of English labourers from France, how far the principles of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," are likely to be acted upon by our enthusiastic and democratic neighbours on the Continent of Europe. It is clear from the Communist and Socialist principles now in the ascendant, both at Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, that the interests of labour will above all things be considered by their governments in future times, and that the most rigorous measures, in the form of fiscal regulations, if not absolute prohibition, may shortly be expected in France, Italy, and Germany, against manufactures of any sort which interfere, or seem to interfere, with the interests of the dominant multitude of operatives. Why does our Government adhere so strongly, in the face of the clearest evidence of their ruinous tendency, to the present system of free trade and a fettered currency? Because it works well for the great capitalists, who desire to have money dear, and the great manufacturers, who wish to have labour cheap, and because a majority of the House of Commons has been placed by the Reform Bill under their influence. Give the operatives the majority, and the opposite interest will instantly prevail. A successful Chartist revolt would at once send the whole free-trade and fettered-currency measures by the board in three months. In truth, it is the disasters they have produced which has revived Chartism, and rendered it so menacing in the land. We should like to see how long a legislature, elected by universal suffrage, would allow Spitalfields and Macclesfield to be pauperised by Lyons silks, and Manchester to be invaded by Rouen cottons, and the shipwrights of Hull and Sunderland to be ruined by Baltic shipbuilders. As the operative classes have obtained the ascendency in the principal Continental states, a similar VOL. I. 21 jealousy of foreign interference with industry may with certainty be looked for in Continental Europe. Can anything be more insane, therefore, than to persist in a policy fraught, as everything around us demonstrates, with such ruinous social injury to ourselves, and which the progress of political change on the Continent renders incapable of producing the ultimate benefits, in exchange for those evils which their authors hold out as the inducing causes of the measures which have produced them? While the political changes which have recently occurred on the Continent of Europe have rendered any reciprocity of advantages utterly hopeless from the most violent adoption of free-trade principles, they have augmented in a proportional degree the dangers to this country of foreign aggression, and the risk to be apprehended from any diminution of our naval resources. The days have gone by when the dream of a free-trade millennium, in which a reciprocity of advantages is to extinguish all feelings of hostility, and war is to be looked back to as a relic of the pre-Adamite world, can with safety be indulged. It is rather too late to think of the termination of the angry passions of men, when Europe, in its length and breadth, is devastated alike by civil dissension and foreign warfare; when barricades have so recently been erected in all its chief capitals; when bloodshed is hourly expected in Paris and Berlin ; when the Emperor of Austria has fled to Innspruck; when every station in London was, only a few days ago, occupied by armed battalions; and when a furious war, rousing the passions of whole races of men, is raging on the Mincio and the Elbe. Threatened by a raging fire in all the countries by which we are surrounded, uncertain whether we are not slumbering on the embers of a conflagration in our own, is this the time to relax in our warlike preparations, and, by crippling the nursery of our seamen, to expose ourselves, without the means of resistance, to the assaults of hostile nations, envious of our fame, jealous of our manufactures, covetous of our wealth, desirous of our ruin? While Western Europe is torn by revolutionary passions, and the seeds of a dreadful, because a popular and general war, are rapidly springing to maturity from the Seine to the Vistula, Russia is silently but unceasingly gathering up |