Chapter XI: Part 11

We choose to be satirical, and call it vanity; but put both anecdotes into tolerably good grave Latin, and name them Portia and Lucretia, and we should have as fine a sentiment as the boasted one of the hero endeavouring to fall decently. There may be but little difference, and that only just what we, in our humours, choose to make it. I am sure you, Eusebius, will stand up for the old village crone, and the fine lady, too. But the fraternity of the brush, if they do now and then promote vanity, much more commonly gratify affection. Private portraits seem to me to be things so sacred, that they ought not to survive the immediate family or friends for whose gratification they are painted. I much like the idea of burying them at last. I will show you how estimable these things sometimes are. You remember a portrait I have--a gentleman in a dress of blue and gold--in crayon. Did I ever tell you the anecdote respecting him? If not, you shall have it, as I had from my father. If you recollect the picture, you must recollect that it is of a very handsome man. His horses took fright, the carriage was overturned, and he was killed upon the spot. The property came to my father. One day an unknown lady, in a handsome equipage, stopped at his door, and, in an interview with him, requested a portrait of this very person, not the one you have seen, but another in oil-colour, and of that the head only. My father cut it out, and gave it to her. Many, many years afterwards it was returned to him by an unknown hand, with an account of the accident that caused the death, pasted on the back; and it is now in my possession. The lady was never known. No, Eusebius, we must not deny portrait-painters, nor portrait painting. It is the line in which we excel--and that we have above all others patronized, and had great men too arise from our encouragement--Who are so rich in Vandyks as we are? And some we have had better than the world allowed them to be--Sir Peter Lely was occasionally an admirable painter--though Sir Joshua did say, "We must go beyond him now." There was Sir Joshua himself, and Gainsborough--would that either were alive to take you, Eusebius, though I were to pay for the sitting. I think too, that I should have given the preference to Gainsborough--it would have been so true. Did you ever see his portrait of Foote?--so unaffected--it must be like. I won't be invidious by naming any, where we have so many able portrait-painters--but if you have not fixed upon your man, come to me, and I will tell half-a-dozen, and we will go to them, and you shall judge for yourself--and if you like miniature, there are those who will make what is small great. What wonderful power Cooper had in this way. I recently had in my hands a wondrous and marvellous portrait of Andrew Marvell by him. The sturdy honest Andrew. This man Cooper, had such wonderful largeness of style, of execution too, even in his highest finished small oil pictures--such as in this of Andrew Marvell. We had an age, certainly, of very bad taste, and it was not extinct in the days of Sir Joshua and Gainsborough; nay, sometimes under both of these, I am sorry to say, it was even made worse. The age of shepherds and shepherdesses--in the case of Gainsborough, brought down to downright rustics. This, of making the sitters affect to be what they were not, was bad enough--and it was any thing but poetical. But it was infinitely worse in the itinerants of the day--and is very well ridiculed by Goldsmith, who lived much among painters, in his Vicar of Wakefield and family sitting for the family picture. We have happily quite got out of that folly. But we are getting into one of most unpoetical pageantry--portrait likenesses. We have not seen yet a good portrait of Wellington, and the Queen, or the Prince; and if they must send their portraits to foreign courts, let them be advised to learn, if they know not yet how, and we are told they do, to paint them themselves. Montaigne tells us, that he was present one day at Bar-le-duc, when King Francis the Second, for a memorial of Réné, King of Sicily, was presented with a picture the king had drawn of himself. Some how or other, kings and queens are apt to have too many trappings about them; and the man is often chosen to paint, who paints velvets and satins best, and faces the worst. That is the reason we have them so ill done; and even if the faces are well painted, they are overpowered by the ostentation of the dress. Now, the Venetian portrait-painters contrived to keep down the glare of all this ornament, to make it even more rich, but not obtruding. I remember seeing a portrait of our queen, where, in a large bonnet, her face looked like a small pip in the midst of an orange. It would be a good thing, too, if you could contrive to spend a week or so in company with your painter before you sit, that he may know you. Many a characteristic may he lose, for want of knowing that it is a characteristic; and may give you that in expression which does not belong to you, while he may miss "your sweet expression about your eyes." He may purse up your large and generous mouth, because you may screw it for a moment to keep some ill-timed conceit from bolting out, and, besides missing that noble feature, may give you an expression of a caution that is not yours. A painter the other day, as I am assured, in a country town, made a great mistake in a characteristic, and it was discovered by a country farmer. It was the portrait of a lawyer--an attorney, who, from humble pretensions, had made a good deal of money, and enlarged thereby his pretensions, but somehow or other not very much enlarged his respectability. To his pretensions was added that of having his portrait put up in the parlour, as large as life. There it is, very flashy and very true--one hand in his breast, the other in his small-clothes' pocket. It is market-day--the country clients are called in--opinions are passed--the family present, and all complimentary--such as, "Never saw such a likeness in the course of all my born days. As like 'un as he can stare." "Well, sure enough, there he is." But at last--there is one dissentient! "'Tain't like--not very--no, 'tain't," said a heavy middle-aged farmer, with rather a dry look, too, about his mouth, and a moist one at the corner of his eye, and who knew the attorney well. All were upon him. "Not like!--How not like? Say where is it not like?" "Why, don't you see," said the man, "he's got his hand in his breeches' pocket. It would be as like again if he had his hand in any other body's pocket." The family portrait was removed, especially as, after this, many came on purpose to see it; and so the attorney was lowered a peg, and the farmer obtained the reputation of a connoisseur.

But it is high time, Eusebius, that I should dismiss you and portrait-painting, or you will think your thus sitting to me worse than sitting for your picture; which picture, if it be of my Eusebius as I know him and love him, will ever be a living speaking likeness, but if it be one but of outward feature and resemblance, it will soon pass off to make up the accumulation of dead lumber--while do you, Eusebius, as you are, _vive valeque_.

* * * * *

MY FRIEND.

Wouldst thou be friend of mine?--
Thou must be quick and bold
When the right is to be done,
And the truth is to be told;

Wearing no friend-like smile
When thine heart is hot within,
Making no truce with fraud or guile,
No compromise with sin.

Open of eye and speech,
Open of heart and hand,
Holding thine own but as in trust
For thy great brother-band.

Patient and stout to bear,
Yet bearing not for ever;
Gentle to rule, and slow to bind,
Like lightning to deliver!

True to thy fatherland,
True to thine own true love;
True to thine altar and thy creed,
And thy good God above.

But with no bigot scorn
For faith sincere as thine,
Though less of form attend the prayer,
Or more of pomp the shrine;

Remembering Him who spake
The word that cannot lie,
"Where two or three in my name meet
There in the midst am I!"

I bar thee not from faults--
God wot, it were in vain!
Inalienable heritage
Since that primeval slain!

The wisest have been fools--
The surest stumbled sore:
_Strive_ thou to stand--or fall'n arise,
I ask thee not for more!

This do, and thou shalt knit
Closely my heart to thine;
Next the dear love of God above,
Such Friend on earth, be mine!

O.O.

LONDON, _January_ 1844.

* * * * *

THE LAND OF SLAVES.

"Le printemps--le printemps!"--_Berenger_.

'Twas a sunny holiday,
Scene, Killarney--time, last May;
In the fields the rustic throng,
Every linnet in full song,
Not a cloud to threaten rain,
As I walk'd with lovely Jane.

While we wander'd round the bay,
Came the gayest of the gay,
Pouring from a painted barge,
Anchor'd by the flowery marge;
Sporting round its cliffs and caves:--
Ireland is the land of slaves!

Next we met an infant group,
Never was a happier troop;
Dancing o'er the primrose plain.
"Joyous infancy!" said Jane;
"Free from care as winds and waves."
--"No, my darling, _these_ are slaves!"

On we walk'd--a garden shade
Show'd us matron, man, and maid,
Laughing, talking, _all_ coquetting,
"Here," said Jane, "I see no fretting:
Mammon makes but fools or knaves."
--"No, my darling, _these_ are slaves!"

On we walk'd--we saw a dome,
Fill'd with furious dupes of Rome,
Ranting of the sword and chain.
"Let us run away," said Jane:
"How that horrid rebel raves!"
--"No, my darling, _these_ are slaves!"

As we ran, a monster-crowd
Stopp'd us, uttering vengeance loud;
Giving nobles to the halter,
Cursing England's throne and altar,
Brandishing their pikes and staves.
"Love," said Jane, "are all _these_ slaves?"

[Greek: Aion]

* * * * *

THE PRIEST'S BURIAL.

He is dead!--he died of a broken heart,
Of a frighten'd soul, and a frenzied brain:
He died--of playing a desperate part
For folly; which others play'd for gain.
Yet o'er his turf the rebels rave!
Be silent, wretches!--spare the grave!

He is dead!--bewilder'd, betray'd, beguiled;
Swept on by faction's fiery blast.
In its blood-stain'd track, a fool, a child!
His doom is fix'd--his lot is cast.
Yet scowls by his bier earth's blackest knave.
Be silent, wretches!--spare the grave!

They dress'd the cold clay in mimic state,
And the peasants came crowding round;
And many a vow of revenge and hate
In that hour on their souls was bound--
Oh! ruthless creed, that never forgave!
Be silent, wretches!--spare the grave!

They bore him along by the village road,
And they yell'd at the village spire!
And they laid him at rest in his long abode,
In a storm of revenge and ire;
And round him their furious banners wave.
Be silent, wretches!--spare the grave!

Then o'er him the bigot chant was sung,
And was said the bigot prayer,
And wild hearts with many a thought were stung,
That left its venom there,
To madden in many a midnight cave.
Be silent, wretches!--spare the grave!

All is done; he is buried--the crowd depart,
He is laid in his kindred clay,
There, freed from the torture that ate his heart,
He rests, till the last great day.
O THOU! who alone canst defend and save,
Wake Ireland wise from this lowly grave.

[Greek: Aion.]

* * * * *

PRUDENCE.

"Bide your time."--_Rebel Song_.

Bide your time--bide your time!
Patience is the true sublime.
Heroes, bottle up your tears;
Wait for ten, or ten score, years.
Shrink from blows, but rage in rhyme:
Bide your time--bide your time!

Bide your time--bide your time!
Snakes are safest in their slime.
Sages look before they leap;
Heroes, to your hovels creep.
Christmas loves pantomime:
Bide your time--bide your time!

Bide your time--bide your time!
"Shoulder arms"--but never prime.
Keep your skins from Saxon lead;
Plunder paupers for your bread.
Popish begging is no crime:
Bide your time--bide your time!

[Greek: Aion.]

* * * * *

FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION

Whoever has travelled in the highlands of Scotland, or the mountains of Wales, must have observed the remarkable difference which exists between artificial plantations, and the natural woods of the country. Planted _all at once_, the former grow up of uniform height, and all their trees present nearly the same form and symmetry. Sown at different periods, with centuries between their growth, the latter exhibit every variety of age and form, from the decaying patriarchs of the forest, which have survived the blasts of some hundred years, to the infant sapling, which is only beginning to shoot under the shelter of a projecting rock or stem. Nor is the difference less remarkable in the room which is severally afforded for growth, in the artificial plantations and in the wilds of nature. The larches or firs, in the stiff and angular enclosure, are always crowded together; and if not thinned by the care of the woodsman, will inevitably choke each other, or shoot up thin and unhealthy, in consequence of their close proximity to each other, and the dense mass of foliage which overshadows the upper part of the wood. But no such danger need be apprehended In the natural forest. No woodman is called to thin its denizens. No forester's eye is required to tell which should be left, and which cut away, in the vast array. In the ceaseless warfare of the weaker with the stronger, the feeble plants are entirely destroyed. In vain the infant sapling attempts to contend with the old oak, the branches of which overshadow its growth--it is speedily crushed in the struggle. Nor are the means of removing the useless remains less effectual. The hand of nature insensibly clears the waste of its incumbrances; the weakness of time brings them to the ground when their allotted period is expired; and youth, as in the generations of men, springs beside the decay of age, and finds ample room for its expansion over the fallen remains of its paternal stems.

The difference between the artificial plantation and the natural wood, illustrates the distinction between the imaginary communities which the political economist expects to see grow up, in conformity with his theories, and acting in obedience to his dictates, and the nations of flesh and blood which exist around us, of which we form a part, and which are immediately affected by ill-judged or inapplicable measures of commercial regulation. Nations were planted by the hand of nature; they were not sown, nor their place allotted by human foresight. They exist often close to each other, and under apparently the same physical circumstances, under every possible variety of character, age, and period of growth. The difference even between those ruled by the same government, and inhabited apparently by the same race, is prodigious. Who could suppose that the Dutchman, methodical, calculating, persevering, was next neighbour to the fiery, war-like, and impetuous Frenchman? Or that the southern and western Irish, vehement, impassioned, and volatile, came from the same stock which pervades the whole west of Britain? England, for centuries the abode of industry, effort, and opulence, is subject to the same government, and situated in the same latitude as Ireland, where indolence is almost universal, wealth rare, and manufactures in general unknown. Russia, ignorant, united, and ever victorious, adjoins Poland, weak, distracted, and ever vanquished; and Prussia has risen with unheard-of rapidity in national strength, and every branch of industry, at the very time when Spain was fast relapsing into slavery and barbarism.

Familiar as these truths are to all they seem to have been, in an unaccountable manner, forgotten by our modern political economists; and the oblivion of them is the principal cause of the remarkable failure which has attended the application to practice of all their theories. They invariably forget the different age of nations; they overlook the essential difference between communities with different national character, or in different stages of manufacturing or commercial advancement, and fall into the fatal error of supposing that one general system is to be readily embraced by, and found applicable to, a cluster of nations existing under every possible variety of physical, social, and political circumstances. Fixing their eyes upon their own country, or rather upon the peculiar interest to which they belong in their own country, they reason as if all mankind were placed in the same circumstances, and would be benefited by the arrangements which they find advantageous. They forget that all nations were not planted at the same time, nor in the same soil; that the difference in their age, the inequality in their growth, the variety in their texture, is as great as in the trees of the forest, the seeds of which have been scattered by the hand of nature; that the incessant warfare of the weaker with the stronger, exists not less in the social than the physical world; and that all systems founded on the oblivion of that continued contest, must ever be traversed by the strongest of all moral laws--the instinct of SELF-PRESERVATION.

We have said that the modern theories when applied to practice, have, in a remarkable manner, failed. In saying so, we have chiefly in view the acknowledged failure of the strenuous efforts made by England, during the last twenty years, to effect an interchange in the advantages of free trade, and the entire disappointment which has attended the long establishment, on a great scale, of the reciprocity system. To the first we shall advert in the present paper; the second will furnish ample room for reflection in another.

The abstract principles on which the doctrines of free trade are founded, are these; and we put it to the warmest advocates of those principles, whether they are not fairly stated. All nations were not intended by nature, nor are they fitted by their physical circumstances, to excel in the same branches of industry; and it is the variety in the production which they severally can bring to maturity, which at once imposes the necessity for, and occasions the profit of, commercial intercourse. Nothing, therefore, can be so unwise as to attempt, either by arbitrary regulations, to create a branch of industry in a country for which it is not intended by nature, or to retain it in that branch where it is created by forced prohibitions. Banish all restrictions, therefore, from commerce; let every nation apply itself to that particular branch of industry for which it is adapted by nature, and receive in exchange the produce of other countries, raised, in like manner, in conformity with their natural capabilities. Then will the industry of each people be turned into the channel most advantageous and lucrative to itself; each will enjoy the immense advantage of purchasing the commodities it requires at the cheapest possible rate; hopeless or absurd hot-bed attempts to force extraneous industry will cease; and, in the mutual interchange of the surplus produce of each, the foundation will be laid of an advantageous and durable commercial intercourse. England, on this principle, should not attempt to raise wine, nor France iron or cotton goods; but the calicoes and hardware of Great Britain should be exchanged for the wines and fruits of France: both nations will thus be enriched, and a vast commercial traffic grow up, which, being founded on mutual interest and attended with mutual advantage, may be expected to be durable, and to extinguish, in the end, the rivalry of their respective people, or the jealousy of their several governments.

Such is the theory of free trade; and it may be admitted it wears at first sight a seducing and agreeable aspect. Let us now enquire how far experience, the great test of truth, has verified its doctrines, or demonstrated its practicability. To illustrate this matter, we shall have recourse to no mean or doubtful authority; we shall have recourse to the statement of an enlightened but candid contemporary, whose advocating of a moderate system of free trade has excited no small anxiety in the British empire; and which report, from the information and ability it displays, has assigned to the present accomplished head of the Board of Trade.

The efforts made in Great Britain to introduce a general system of free trade, especially within the last three years, are thus enumerated in the _Foreign and Colonial Review_.

"England, without gaining or asking a single boon from any foreign country, has--

"1. Reduced by about one-half the duties upon foreign corn.

"2. By nearly the same amount, the duties on foreign timber.

"3. Has removed her prohibitions against the importation of cattle and other animals for food, and has fixed upon them duties, ranging on the average at about ten per cent _ad valorem_.

"4. Has made flesh meat admissible.

"5. Has reduced the duty on salt provisions for home consumption by one-third, and one-half; and has placed them on a footing of entire equality with the British article for the supply of the whole marine frequenting her ports.

"6. Has lowered her duties on vegetables and seeds in general to one-half, one-sixth, and even one-twelfth (in the case of that most important esculent the potatoe) of what they formerly were.

"7. Has made all _great_ articles of manufacture, except silk, which is reserved for future negotiations, admissible at duties of ten, twelve and a half, and fifteen per cent, and only in some few instances so much as twenty per cent.

"8. Upon some minor articles of manufacture, where our people lie under heavy disadvantages in obtaining the raw material, and where their habits have been formed in their particular occupation, wholly under the shelter, and therefore upon the responsibility of the law, she has retained duties in some cases as high as thirty per cent _ad valorem_, but yet has reduced them to rates insignificant in comparison with those formerly charged.

"9. In her colonies, she has fixed the ordinary rules of differential duties upon foreign productions at four and seven per cent, with exceptions altogether trifling in amount, on which a higher charge has been laid for special reasons.

"10. She has withdrawn the prohibition to export machinery, except so far as regards the linen manufacture, and the spinning of the yarns employed in it.

"11. With regard to many other articles, such as butter and cheese, indeed, with regard to all articles to which the simple and essential interests of the revenue will allow the same rules to be applied--it has been declared that they are only temporarily exempted from the operations of those rules, and it is well understood, that no time will be allowed to pass, except such as is necessary, before the work is completed; and lastly,

"12. She has not even excluded from the benefit of these reductions the very countries under whose simultaneous enactments, of a hostile character, she is at this moment suffering: these advantages will be enjoyed by the tar and cordage of Russia; by the corn and timber, the woollens, linens, and hosiery of northern Germany; by the gloves, the boots and shoes, the light writing-papers, the perfumery, the corks, the straw-hats, the cottons and cambrics, the dressed skins, the thrown silk, and even (from an incidental charge with respect to the charge of duty on the bottles) the wines of France; by the salt provisions, the ashes, the turpentine, the rice, the furs and skins, the sperm oil of America; and she in particular may expect to derive advantage from the alteration in our colonial import duties upon the great articles of flour, salt, provisions, fish and lumber."[15]

[15] _Foreign and Colonial Review_, Vol. i. p. 235.

Such have been the sacrifices which Great Britain has recently made in order to secure a system of free commercial enterprise throughout the world. Let us now enquire what return she has met with for these concessions; and the recent occurrences in this respect are detailed in the same unexceptionable authority.

"Within the last year, France has passed an ordinance, doubling the duty on linen yarns--a measure hostile enough, had it been uniform in its application to all countries; but, lest there should be any ambiguity about its meaning, she has actually left open her Belgian frontier to that article at the former duty, on the condition that Belgium should levy the high French duty in her custom-houses, so as to prevent the transit of the British yarns through that country. To this disreputable and humiliating proposal, Belgium has consented. Again, amidst the loudest professions from the Prussian government, of an anxiety to advance the relaxation of commercial restrictions, that government has, nevertheless, adopted a proceeding not less hostile or mischievous than the measure of France with regard to linen yarns. The Congress of the Deputies of the Zollverein, at Stuttgard, have in a new tariff, which was to take effect on the 1st of January, besides some minor alterations of an unfavourable kind, decreed, upon the proposal of Prussia, that goods mixed of cotton and wool, if of more than one colour, shall pay fifty thalers the centner, instead of thirty; that is, instead of a very high, shall be liable to an exorbitant, and, as it may prove, a prohibitory duty. Next, America, as all our readers must be aware, has, after a struggle, passed a tariff, subverting altogether the arrangement established by the Compromise Act of 1833, and imposing upon the various descriptions of manufactured goods rates of duty varying from thirty to forty and fifty per cent and upwards, which have had the effect of stopping a great portion of the shipments of cotton goods to that country from Great Britain during the past autumn, and, without doubt, have added greatly to the distresses of our manufacturing population. Besides these greater instances, Russia, according to her wont in such matters, and Spain, have published, within the test fifteen months, new tariffs, of which it is difficult to say whether they are still worse than, or only as execrably bad, as those which they succeeded, but, in the close rivalry between the old and the new, the latter seem, upon the whole, entitled to the palm of prohibitive rigour. And Portugal, likewise, has augmented the duties payable upon certain classes of her imports, by a measure of the recent date of March 1841, and by another of last year. In the mean time, Spain has concluded a treaty with Belgium for the admission of her linens. And the king of Prussia has effected an arrangement with the czar, which, in certain particulars, secures, upon his own frontier, a relaxation of the iron strictness of the Russian system. England has concluded no commercial treaty with any of these powers; and the negotiation with France, which the measures of Lord Palmerston interrupted in 1840, at the very period of its ripeness, appears still to slumber--owing, we believe, in part, to the prevalence of an anti-Anglican feeling in that country, which, for the credit of common sense and of human nature, we trust will be temporary; but much more to the high protective notions, and the political activity and influence of the French manufacturers, which overawe an administration far less strong, we regret to say, than it deserves."

Our recent attempts, therefore, to introduce a general system of free trade among nations have proved a signal failure, on the admission of the most enlightened advocates for that species of policy. Nor have our earlier efforts been more successful. Mr Huskisson, as it is well known, introduced, full twenty years ago, the system of free trade, and repealed the navigation laws, in the hope of making the Northern Powers of Europe more favourable to the admission of British manufactures, and materially reduced the duties on French silks, watches, wines, and jewellery, in the hope that the Government of that country would see the expedience of making a corresponding reduction in the duties levied on our staple manufactures in the French harbours. But after twenty years' experience of these concessions on our part, the French Government are so far from evincing a disposition to meet us with a similar conciliatory policy, that they have done just the reverse. Scarce a year has elapsed without some additional duty being imposed on our fabrics in their harbours; and the great reductions contained in Sir R. Peel's tariff were immediately met, as already noticed, by the imposition of an additional and very heavy duty on British linens. Nay, so far has the free trade system been from enlarging the market for our manufactures in Europe, that after twenty years' experience of its effects, and an increase over Europe generally of fully a third in numbers, and at least a half in wealth, it is an ascertained fact, that our exports to the European-States _are less than they were forty years ago_.[16] "That part of our commerce," says Mr Porter, himself a decided free trader, "which, being carried on with the rich and civilized inhabitants of European nations, should present the greatest field for extension, will be seen to have fallen off in a remarkable degree. The annual average exports to the whole of Europe were _less in value by nearly twenty per cent_, on an average of five years, from 1832 to 1836, _than they were during the five years that followed the close of the war;_ and it affords strong evidence of the unsatisfactory footing on which our trading regulations with Europe are established, that our exports to the United States of America, which, with their population of 12,000,000, (in 1837,) are situated 3000 miles from us across the Atlantic, have amounted to more than half the sum of our shipments to the whole of Europe, with a population fifteen times as great as that of the United States of America, and with an abundance of productions suited to our wants, which they are naturally desirous of exchanging for the produce of our mines and looms."[17]

[16] _Foreign and Colonial Review_, Vol. i. p. 233.

[17] Porter's _Progress of the Nation_, Vol. i. p. 101.

This was written by Mr Porter in 1837; but while subsequent times have evinced an increased anxiety on the part of this country to extend the principles of free trade, they have been met by such increased determination on the part of the European governments to _resist the system,_ and adhere more rigorously to their protecting policy, that the disproportion is now universal, and is every day becoming more remarkable. The following table will show that our exports to Europe, notwithstanding our twelve reciprocity treaties with its maritime powers, and unceasing efforts to give a practical exemplification of the principles of free trade, are stationary or declining.[18]

[18] Table showing the date and value of Exports of British Iron
Manufacturers to Europe in the afore-mentioned years.

Northern Europe. Southern Europe. Total.
1814 £14,113,773 £12,753,816 £26,867,589
1815 11,791,692 8,764,552 20,556,544
1816 11,369,086 7,284,467 18,653,555
1817 11,408,083 9,685,491 19,093,574
1818 11,809,243 7,639,139 19,448,382
1819 9,805,397 6,896,287 16,601,684
1820 11,289,891 7,139,042 18,428,433

1833 9,313,549 5,686,949 15,000,498
1834 9,505,892 8,501,141 18,007,033
1835 10,303,316 8,161,117 18,464,433
1836 9,999,861 9,011,205 19,000,066
1837 11,097,436 7,789,126 18,187,662
1838 11,258,473 9,481,372 20,739,845
1839 11,991,236 9,376,241 21,367,477

In one particular instance, the entire failure of the free trade system to procure any corresponding return from the very continental states whose harbours it was chiefly intended to open, has been singularly conspicuous. In February 1821 the reciprocity system, in regard to shipping, was introduced by Mr Huskisson, and acted upon by the legislature; and the following reason was assigned by that eminent man for deviating from the old navigation laws of Cromwell, which had so long constituted the strength of the British navy. Mr Huskisson maintained--"That the period had now arrived, when it had become indispensable to introduce a more liberal system in regard to the admission of foreign shipping into our harbours, if we would avoid the total exclusion of our manufacturers into their harbours. The exclusive system did admirably well, as long as we alone acted upon it; when foreign nations were content to take our goods, though we excluded their shipping. But they had now become sensible of the impolicy of such a system, and, right or wrong, were resolved to resist it. Prussia, in particular, had resisted all the anxious endeavours of this country, to effect the introduction of goods of our manufacture, on favourable terms, into her harbours; and the reason assigned was, that the navigation laws excluded her shipping from ours. The reciprocity system has been rendered indispensable by the prohibitory system, which the other European powers have adopted. The only means of meeting the heavy duties they have imposed on our goods and shipping, is to place our duties upon a system of perfect reciprocity with theirs. Foreign nations have no advantage over us in the carrying trade: from the London report, it clearly appeared, that the ships of Norway, Sweden, Russia, Prussia, France, and Holland, cannot compete with British, either in long or short voyages. But at any rate, the repeal of our discriminating duties has become matter of necessity, if we would propose any trade with these countries."[19]

[19] Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, February 13, 1823; and Annual
Register, 1823, p. 104.

Table showing the British and Foreign tonnage, with Sweden, Norway,
Denmark, and Prussia, since 1823, when the reciprocity system began,
in each of the following years:--

SWEDEN. NORWAY. DENMARK. PRUSSIA. Years British Foreign British Foreign British Foreign British Foreign Tons. Tons Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. 1821 23,005 8,508 13,855 61,342 5,312 3,969 79,590 37,720 1822 20,799 13,692 13,377 87,974 7,096 3,910 102,847 58,270 1823 20,986 22,529 13,122 117,015 4,413 4,795 81,202 86,013 1824 17,074 40,092 11,419 135,272 6,738 23,689 94,664 151,621 1825 15,906 53,141 14,825 157,910 15,158 50,943 189,214 182,752 1826 11,829 16,939 15,603 90,726 22,000 56,544 119,060 120,589 1827 11,719 21,822 13,945 96,420 10,825 52,456 150,718 109,184 1828 14,877 24,700 10,826 85,771 17,464 49,293 133,753 99,195 1829 16,536 25,046 9,985 86,205 24,576 53,390 125,918 127,861 1830 12,116 23,158 6,459 84,585 12,210 51,420 102,758 139,646 1831 11,450 39,689 4,518 114,865 6,552 62,190 83,908 140,532 1832 8,335 25,755 3,798 82,155 7,268 35,772 62,079 89,187 1833 10,009 29,454 5,901 98,931 6,840 38,620 41,735 108,753 1834 15,353 35,910 6,403 98,303 5,691 53,282 32,021 118,111 1835 12,036 35,061 2,592 95,049 6,007 49,008 25,514 124,144 1836 10,865 42,439 1,573 12,875 2,152 51,907 42,567 174,439 1837 7,608 42,602 1,035 88,004 5,357 55,961 67,566 145,742 1838 10,425 38,991 1,364 110,817 3,466 57,554 86,734 175,643 1839 8,359 42,270 2,582 109,228 5,535 106,960 111,470 229,208 1840 11,933 53,337 3,166 114,241 6,327 103,067 112,709 237,984

--PORTER'S Part. Tables.

Such were Mr Huskisson's reasons. They were grounded on alleged necessity. He said in substance:--"The navigation laws are very good things; and if we could only persuade other nations to take our goods, while we virtually shut out their shipping, it would, doubtless, be very advisable to continue the present system. But you can no longer do this. Foreign nations see the undue advantage which has been so long obtained of them. They insist upon an exchange of interests. We, as the richer and the more powerful, are called on to make the first advances. We must relinquish our navigation laws in favor of their staple manufacture, shipping, if we would induce them to admit, on favourable terms, our staple article, cotton goods." These were Mr Huskisson's principles; and it may be admitted that, in the abstract, they were well-founded, for all commercial intercourse, to be beneficial and lasting, must be founded on a mutual exchange of advantages. But, in carrying into execution this principle, he committed a fatal mistake, which has already endangered, without the slightest advantage, and, if persevered in, may ultimately destroy the commercial superiority of Great Britain. He virtually repealed, by the 4 Geo. IV. c. 77 and the 5 Geo. IV. c. 1, the navigation laws, by authorizing the King, by an order in council, to permit the exportation and importation of goods in foreign vessels, on payment of the same duties as where chargeable on British vessels, in favour of those countries which did not levy discriminating duties on British vessels bringing goods into their harbours, and to levy on the vessels of such countries the same tonnage duties as they charged on British vessels. This was, in effect, to say--We will admit your vessels on the same terms on which you admit ours; and nothing, at first sight, could seem more equitable.

But, nevertheless, this system involved a fatal mistake, the pernicious effects of which have now been amply demonstrated by experience, and which lies at the bottom of the whole modern doctrines of free trade. _It stipulates for no advantages corresponding to the concession made_, and thus the reciprocity was on one side only. Mr Huskisson repealed, in favour of the Baltic powers, the British navigation laws; that is, he threw open to Baltic competition, without any protection, the British shipping interest: but _he forgot to exact from them any corresponding favour for British iron or cotton goods in the Baltic harbours_. He said--"We will admit your shipping on the same terms on which you admit ours." What he should have said is--"We will admit your shipping into our harbors on the same term you admit _our cotton goods_ into your harbours." This would have been real reciprocity, because each side would have given free ingress to that staple commodity in which its neighbor had the advantage; and thus the most important branch of industry of each would have been secured an inlet into the other's territories. The British tonnage might have been driven out of the Baltic trade by the shipowners of Denmark and Norway, but the Prussian cotton manufacturers would have been crushed by the British. It might then have come to be a question of whether the upholding of our shipping interest or the extension of our cotton manufactures was the most advisable policy. But no such question need be considered now. We have gained nothing by exposing our shipping interest to the ruinous competition of the Baltic vessels. The Danish, Norwegian and Prussian ships have come into our harbours, but the British cotton and iron goods have not entered theirs. The reciprocity system has been all on one side. After having been twenty years in operation, it has failed in producing _the smallest concession_ in favour of British manufactures, or producing in those states with whom the reciprocity treaties were concluded, the _smallest extension of British exports_. Since we so kindly permitted it, they have taken every thing and given nothing. They have done worse. They have taken good and returned evil. The vast concession contained in the repeal of our navigation laws, has been answered by the enhanced duties contained in the Prussian Zollverein. Twenty-six millions of Germans have been arrayed under a commercial league, which, by levying duties, practically varying from thirty to fifty, though nominally only ten _per cent_, effectually excludes British manufactures; and, after twenty years' experience, our exports are only a few hundred thousands a year, and our exports of cotton manufactures _only a few hundreds a year_, to the whole States of Northern Europe, in favour of whom the navigation laws were swept away, and an irreparable wound inflicted on British maritime interests, and in whose wants Mr Huskisson anticipated a vast market for our manufacturing industry, and an ample compensation for the diminution of our shipping interest.

Nature has established this great and all-important distinction between the effects of wealth and national age on the productions of agriculture and of manufactures. The reason is this:--If capital, machinery, and knowledge, conferred the same immediate and decisive advantage on agricultural that they do on manufacturing industry, old and densely-peopled states would possess an undue superiority over the ruder and more thinly-inhabited ones; the multiplication of the human race would become excessive in the seats in which it had first taken root, and the desert parts of the world would never, but under the pressure of absolute necessity, be explored. The first command of God to man, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it," would be frustrated. The apprehensions of the Malthusians as to an excessive increase of mankind, with its attendant dangers, would be realized in particular places, while nineteen-twentieths of the earth lay neglected in a state of nature. The desert would be left alone in its glory. The world would be covered with huge and densely-peopled excrescences--with Babylons, Romes, and Londons--in which wealth, power, and corruption were securely and permanently intrenched, and from which the human race would ne'er diverge but under the pressure of absolute impossibility to wrench a subsistence from their over-peopled vicinities.

These dangers, threatening alike to the moral character and material welfare of nations, are completely prevented by the simple law, the operations of which we every day see around us--viz. that wealth, civilization, and knowledge, add rapidly and indefinitely to the powers of manufacturing and commercial, but comparatively slowly to those of agricultural industry. This simple circumstance effectually provides for the dispersion of the human race, and the check of an undue growth in particular communities. The old state can always undersell the young one in manufactures, but it is everlastingly undersold by them in agriculture. Thus the equalization of industry is introduced, the dispersion of the human race secured, and a limit put to the perilous multiplication of its members in particular communities. The old state can never rival the young ones around it in raising subsistence; the young ones can never rival the old one in manufactured articles. Either a free trade takes place between them, or restrictions are established. If the commercial intercourse between them is unrestricted, agriculture is destroyed, and with it national strength is undermined in the old state, and manufactures are nipped in the bud in the young ones. If restrictions prevail, and a war of tariffs is introduced, the agriculture of the old state, and with it its national strength, is preserved, but its export of manufactures to the adjoining states is checked, and they establish growing fabrics for themselves. Whichever effect takes place, the object of nature in the equalization of industry, the limitation of aged communities, and the dispersion of mankind, is gained, in the first, by the ruin of the old empire from the decay of its agricultural resources; in the second, by the check given to its manufacturing prowess, and the transference of mercantile industry to its younger rivals.

Generally the interests and necessities of the young states introduce a prohibitory system to exclude the manufactures of the old one; and it is this necessity which England is now experiencing, and vainly endeavours to obviate, by introducing a system of free trade. But in one memorable instance, and one only, the preponderance of a particular power rendered this impossible, and illustrated on a great scale, and over the whole civilized world, for a course of centuries, the effects of a perfect freedom of trade. The Roman empire, spreading as it did round the shores of the Mediterranean, afforded the utmost facilities for a great internal traffic; while the equal policy of the emperors, and indeed the necessity of their situation, introduced a perfect freedom in the interchange of commodities between every part of their vast dominions. And what was the result? Why, that the agriculture of Italy was destroyed--that 300,000 acres in the champaign of Naples alone reverted to a state of nature, and were tenanted only by wild-boars and buffaloes, before a single barbarian had crossed the Alps--that the Grecian cities were entirely maintained by grain from the plains of Podolia--and the mistress of the world, according to the plaintive expression of the Roman annalist, depended for her subsistence on the floods of the Nile.[20] Not the corruption of manners, not the tyranny of the Caesars, occasioned the ruin of the empire, for they affected only a limited class of the people; but the practical working of free trade, joined to domestic slavery, which destroyed the agricultural population of the heart of the empire, and left only effeminate urban multitudes to contend with the hardy barbarians of the north.

[20] Tacitus, Vol. xiv. p. 21; Michelet's _Hist. de France,_
Vol. i. p. 217.

The advocates of free trade are not insensible to the superior advantages of the rising over the old state in agriculture, and of the latter over the former in manufactures. On the contrary, it is a secret but clear sense of the reality of this distinction, which causes them so strenuously to contend for the removal of all restrictions. They hope, by so doing, to effect a great extension of their sales in foreign countries, without, as they pretend, creating any diminution in their own. But the views which have now been given show that this is a vain conceit, and demonstrate how it has happened, that the more strenuously England contends for the principles of free trade, and the more energetically that she carries them into practice, the more decided is the resistance which she meets on foreign states in the attempt, and the more rigorously do they act on the principles of protection. It is because they are striving to become manufacturing and commercial communities that they do this--it is a clear sense of the ruin which awaits them, if deluged with British goods, which makes them so strenuous in their system of exclusion. The more that we open our trade, the more will they close theirs. They think, and not without reason, that we advocate unrestricted commercial intercourse only because it would be profitable to us, and deprecate our old system of exclusion only because it has now been turned against ourselves. "Now, then," say they, "is the time, when England is suffering under the system of exclusion, which we have at length had sense enough to borrow from her, to draw closer the bonds of that system, and complete the glorious work of our own elevation on her ruins. Our policy is clearly chalked out by hers; we have only to do what she deprecates, and we are sure to be right." It is evident that these views will be permanently entertained by them, because they are founded on the strongest of all instincts that of self-preservation. When we cease to be a great manufacturing nation, when we are no longer formidable rivals, they will open their harbours; but not till then. In striving to introduce a system of free trade, therefore, we gratuitously inflict a severe wound on our domestic industry, without any chance even of a compensation in that which is destined for the foreign markets. We let in their goods into our harbours, but we do not obtain admission, nor will we ever obtain admission, for ours into theirs. The reciprocity is, and ever must be, all on one side.

It is by mistaking the dominant influence among the continental states, that so large a portion of the community are deceived on this subject. They say, if we take their grain and cattle, they will take our cotton goods; that their system of exclusion is entirely a consequence of, and retaliation for, ours. Can they produce a single instance in which our concessions in favour of their rude produce have led to a corresponding return in favour of ours? How can it be so, when, in all old states, the monied is the prevailing interest which sways the determinations of government? The landholders, separated from each other, without capital, almost all burdened with debt, are no match in the domestic struggle for the manufacturing and commercial interests. Their superiority is founded on a very clear footing--the same which has rendered the British House of Commons omnipotent. _They hold the purse._ It is their loans which support the credit of Government; it is by the customs which their imports pay that the public revenue is to be chiefly raised. The more popular that governments become, the more strongly will their influences appear in the war of tariffs. If pure democracies were established in all the neighbouring states, we would be met in then all by a duty of sixty per cent. Witness the American tariff of 1842, and the progressive increases of duties against us since the popular revolutions we have fostered and encouraged in France, Belgium, and Portugal.

Is, then, a free and unrestrained system of commercial intercourse impossible between nations, and must it ever end in a war of tariffs and the pacific infliction of mutual injury? We consider it is impossible between two nations, both manufacturing, or aspiring to be so, and in the same, or nearly the same, age and social circumstances. It is mere folly to attempt it; because interests which must clash, are continually arising on both parts, and reciprocity, if attempted, is on one side only. With such nations, the only wisdom is, to conclude treaties, not of reciprocity, but of _commerce_; that is, treaties in which, in consideration of certain branches of our manufactures being admitted on favourable terms, we agree to admit certain articles of their produce on equally advantageous conditions. Thus, a treaty, by which we agreed to admit, for a moderate duty, the wines of France, which we can never rival, in return for their admitting our iron and cotton goods on similar terns, would be a measure of equal benefit to both countries. It would be as wise a measure as Mr Huskisson's reduction of the duties on French silks, gloves, and clocks, was a gratuitous and unwarranted injury to staple branches of our own industry. The only countries to which the reciprocity system is really applicable, are distant states in an early state of civilization, whose natural products are essentially different from our own, and whose stage of advancement is not such as to have made them enter on the career of manufacture, of jealousy, and of tariffs. Colonies unite all these advantages; and it is in them that the real sources of our strength, and the only secure markets for our produce, are to be found; but that subject, so vast, so interesting, so vital to our individual and national advancement, must be reserved for a future occasion.

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