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these years had nothing to do; and that the disasters from 1847 to 1849 were not in any sensible degree owing to external or separate calamities, but were the direct and inevitable effect of the establishment of a system of free trade, at the very time when the industry of the nation was manacled by absurd and destructive monetary laws. Let us now examine our present condition, and see whether or not we are in an enviable position at home or abroad; whether the industry of the country can possibly survive, or its revenue be maintained, under the present system; and whether the seeds of another catastrophe, as terrible as that of 1847, are not already spread in the land.

In one particular the Free-traders are unquestionably right. Beyond all doubt, the external circumstances of the nation, at present, are in the highest degree favourable to its manufacturing and trading interests. We are at peace with all the world, and, thank God, there is no immediate appearance of its being broken. The markets of continental Europe have, for six months past, been entirely laid open to our merchants, by the settlement of France under the quasi empire of Louis Napoleon, and the extinction of the war in Italy and Germany. Revolution is everywhere put down, and that to the industrious poor is an incalculable blessing. Rome is taken; Hungary is subdued; Baden is pacified; the war in Schleswig is at an end; the Danish blockade is raised; California has given an extraordinary impulse to activity and enterprise in the West; the victory of Goojerat has extinguished, it is to be hoped for a long period, all appearance of disturbance in the East. The harvest, just reaped, has been uncommonly fine in grain, both in Great Britain and Ireland; that of the potatoes above an average in the latter island. The Chartists of England and Scotland, astounded at the failure of all their predictions, and the defeat of all their hopes, are silent; the revolutionists of Ireland, in utter despair, are leaving the Emerald Isle. Amidst the general pacification and cessation of alarms, old wants and necessities begin to be felt. Men have discovered that revolting will not mend their clothes or fill their stomachs. New garments are required, from the old being worn out; the women are clamorous for bonnets and gowns; the men are sighing for coats and waist

coats. Provisions are cheap to a degree unexampled for fourteen years; wheat is at 41s. the quarter, meat at 5d. a pound. Capital in London can be borrowed at 2 per cent, in the provinces at 3. That great Liberal panacea for all evils, a huge importation of foreign produce, is in full operation. This year it will probably reach in value at least £100,000,000 sterling. Let us then, in these eminently favourable circumstances, examine the effects of the freetrade system.

First, with regard to the revenue, that never-failing index of the national fortunes. The revenue for the year ending 5th January 1850, being the last quarter that has been made up, was £80,000 less than that ending 5th January 1849.* That is to say, during a year when free trade was acting under the most favourable possible circumstances, and when the pacification of the world was reopening markets long closed to our manufactures, the revenue was actually less than it had been in the year wasted by the triple curse of a monetary crisis, European revolutions, Chartist disturbances, and Irish rebellion. Why is this? Evidently because the effect of free trade and a restricted. currency acting together, and the dread of a fresh monetary crisis hanging over our heads from the unprecedented magnitude of our importations in every branch of commerce, have depressed industry at home to such a degree, that even the reopening of all the closed markets of the world, and the rush to fill up the void created during fifteen months

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of stoppage of intercourse, has been able to produce no sensible addition to the public revenue.

Next, as to the exports. The reopening of the Continental markets, the pacification of India by the victory of Goojerat, and the impulse given to American speculation by the gold of California, have occasioned a considerable increase in our exports, on which the Free-traders are pluming themselves in an extraordinary degree. We should be glad to know in what way free trade pacified India, extinguished revolution in Europe, and vivified America by the Californian diggings. And yet, had these distant and adventitious occurrences not taken place, would we have had to congratulate the manufacturers on a rise of two millions in September, and a rise of seven or eight millions on the whole year? And what, after all, is a rise of our exports from £53,000,000 to £60,000,000, or even £63,000,000, in a year, to the total manufacturing industry of the country, which produces at least £200,000,000 annually? It is scarcely the addition of a thirtieth part to the annual manufactured production. The Free-traders are hard pushed, indeed, when they are constrained to exult in an addition to the national industry so trifling, and wholly brought about by fortunate external events entirely foreign to their policy.

In the immense and increasing amount of our IMPORTS, however, the Free-traders may indeed see, as in a mirror, the real and inevitable result of their measures. Their amount for this year is of course not yet known; although, from the returns already procured, it is certain that they will greatly exceed the amount of last year, which reached £94,000,000. In all probability they will considerably exceed £100,000,000. Indeed, in the single article of grain, the excess of 1849 over 1848, since the one-shilling duty began in February, has been so great as much to exceed in value the augmentation which has taken place in our exports. The importation of grain in the first eight months of 1849 has been more than double what it was in the corresponding period of 1848, and that in the face of a fine harvest, and prices throughout the whole period varying from 45s. to 41s. a quarter of wheat. The importation at these low prices has settled down to a regular average

of about 1,000,000 quarters of all sorts of grain a-month, or above 12,000,000 of all sorts of grain in a year. This is just a fifth of the annual subsistence, estimated in all sorts of grain at 60,000,000 of quarters. This immense proportion free trade has already caused to be derived from foreign supplies, though it has only been three years in operation, and the nominal duties only came into operation in February last.*

So vast an increase of importation is perhaps unprecedented in so short a period; for, before the change was made, the importation was so trifling that, on an average of five years ending in 1835, it had sunk to 398,000 quarters.+ Indeed, the importation before the five bad harvests,

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+ Quarters of wheat and wheat-flour imported into Britain from 1807 to 1836, both inclusive:

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-PORTER'S Progress of the Nation, 137, 138, second edition.

from 1836 to 1840, had been so trifling, that it had become merely nominal, and the nation had gained the inestimable advantage of being self-supporting. With truth did that decided Free-trader, Mr Porter, say, in the last edition of his valuable work, entitled the Progress of the Nation:"The foregoing calculations show in how small a degree this country has hitherto been dependent upon foreigners, in ordinary seasons, for a due supply of our staple article of food. These calculations are brought forward to show how exceedingly great the increase of agricultural production must have been, to have thus effectively kept in a state of independence a population which has advanced with so great a degree of rapidity. To show the fact, the one article of wheat has been selected, because it is that which is the most generally consumed in England; but the position advanced would be found to hold good, were we to go through the whole list of the consumable products of the earth. The supply of meat, during the whole years comprised in this inquiry, has certainly kept pace with the growth of the population; and, as regards this portion of human food, our home agriculturists have, during almost the whole period, enjoyed a strict monopoly."*

Things, however, are now changed. Protection to domestic industry, at least in agriculture, is at an end; prices are down to 40s. the quarter for wheat, and half that sum for oats and barley; the prices of sheep and cattle have fallen enormously to the home-grower, though that of meat is far from having declined in the same proportion; and, as all this has taken place during a season of prices low beyond example, it is evident that it may be expected to be still greater, when we again experience the usual vicissitudes of bad harvests in our variable climate. The returns prove that, ever since the duties on foreign grain became nominal, in the beginning of February last, the importation of corn and flour into Great Britain and Ireland has gone on steadily at the rate of above 1,000,000 quarters a-month; and that now seven-eighths of the supply of the metropolis, and of all our other great towns, comes from foreign

* PORTER'S Progress of the Nation, 139, second edition.

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