Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

Powerful as these causes of evil undoubtedly were, they were not beyond the reach of remedy by human means--nay, circumstances simultaneously existed which, if duly taken advantage of, might have converted them into a source of blessings. They had enormously augmented the powers of productive industry in the British Empire; and in the wealth, dominion, and influence thereby acquired, the means had been opened up of giving full employment to the multitudes displaced by its boundless machinery and extended manufacturing skill. Great Britain and Ireland enjoyed one immense advantage--their territory was not merely capable of yielding food for the whole present inhabitants, numerous and rapidly increasing as they were, but for double or triple the number. The proof of this is decisive. Although the two islands had added above a half to their numbers between 1790 and 1835, the importation of foreign grain had been continually diminishing; and in the five years ending with 1835, they had come to be on an average only 398,000 quarters of grain and flour in a year--being not _a hundredth_ part of the whole subsistence of the people. Further, agriculture in Great Britain, from the great attention paid to it, and the extended capital and skill employed in its prosecution, had come to be more and more worked by manual labour, and was rapidly approaching--at least, in the richer districts of the country--_the horticultural system_, in which at once the greatest produce is obtained from the soil, and the greatest amount of human labour is employed in its cultivation; and in which the greatest manufacturing states of former days, Florence and Flanders, had, on the decay of their manufacturing industry, found a never-failing resource for a denser population than now exists in Great Britain.

But, more than all, England possessed, in her immense and rapidly-increasing colonies in every quarter of the globe, at once an inexhaustible vent and place of deposit for its surplus home population, the safest and most rapidly-increasing market for its manufacturing industry, and the most certain means, in the keeping up the communication between the different parts of so vast a dominion, of maintaining and extending its maritime superiority. This was a resource unknown to any former state, and apparently reserved for the Anglo-Saxon race, whom such mighty destinies awaited in the progress of mankind. The forests of Canada, the steppes of Australia, the hills of New Zealand, the savannahs of the Cape, seemed spread out by nature to receive the numerous and sturdy children of the Anglo-Saxon race, whom the natural progress of opulence, the division of labour, the extension of machinery, and the substitution of female and juvenile for male labour, were depriving of employment in their native seats. In the colonies, manual labour was as much in demand as it was redundant in the parent state. No machinery or manufactures existed there to displace the arm of the labourer's industry; the felling of the forest, the draining of the morass, the cultivation of the wild, chained the great majority of the human race to agricultural employments, for generations and centuries to come. Even the redundant number and rapid increase of the Celtic population in Ireland could not keep pace with the demand for agricultural labour in our Transatlantic dominions. The undue preponderance of the female sex, felt as so great and consuming an evil in all old and wealthy cities, might be rendered the greatest possible blessing to the infant colonies, in which the greatest social evil always experienced is the excessive numbers of the male sex. All that was required was the removal of them from the overburdened heart to the famishing extremities of the empire; and this, while it relieved the labour, promised to afford ample employment to the national navy. The magnitude of this traffic may be judged of by the fact that the 212,000 emigrants who arrived at New York in the year 1850 were brought in 2000 vessels. At the same time the rapid growth of the colonies, under such a system, would have furnished a steady market for the most extensive manufacturing industry at home, and that in a class of men descended from ourselves, imbued with our habits, actuated by feeling our wants, and chained by circumstances, for centuries to come, to the exclusive consumption of our manufactures. What the magnitude of this market might have been may be judged of by the fact that, in the year 1850, Australia and New Zealand, with a population which had not yet reached 250,000 souls, took off in the year 1850 £2,080,364 of our manufactures, being at the rate of £8 a-head; while Russia, with a population of 66,000,000, only took off £1,572,593 worth, being not 6d. a-head.[16]

[16] Parliamentary Return, 1851.

The social evils which at first sight appear so alarming, therefore, in consequence of the extension of our manufacturing population, and the vast increase of our wealth, were in reality not only easily susceptible of remedy, but they might, by a wise and paternal policy, alive equally to the interests _represented and unrepresented_ of all parts of the empire, have been converted into so many sources of increasing prosperity and durable social happiness. All that was required was to adopt a policy conducive alike to the interests of _all_ parts of our varied dominions, but giving no one an undue advantage over the other; legislating for India as if the seat of empire were Calcutta, for Canada as if it were Quebec, for the West Indies as if it were Kingston. "Non alia Romæ alia Athenæ," should have been our maxim. Equal justice to all would have secured equal social happiness to all. The distress and want of employment consequent on the extension of machinery, and the growth of opulence in the heart of the empire, would have become the great moving power which would have overcome the attachments of home and country, and impelled the multitudes whom our transmarine dominions required into those distant but still British settlements, where ample room was to be found for their comfort and increase, and where their rapidly increasing numbers would have operated with powerful effect, and in a geometrical ratio, on the industry and happiness of the parent state. Protection to native industry at home and abroad was all that was required to bless and hold together the mighty fabric. So various and extensive were the British dominions, that they would soon have arrived at the point of being independent of all the rest of the world. The materials for our fabrics, the food for our people, were to be had in abundance in the different parts of our own dominions. We had no reason to fear the hostility or the stopping of supplies from any foreign power. The trade of almost the whole globe was to Great Britain a home trade, and brought with it its blessings and its double return, at each end of the chain.

These great and magnificent objects, which are as clearly pointed out by Providence as the mission of the British nation--and which the peculiar character of the Anglo-Saxon race so evidently qualified it to discharge--as if it had been declared in thunders from Mount Sinai, were in a great degree attained, though in an indirect way, under the old constitution of England; and accordingly, while it lasted, and was undisturbed in its action by local influences in the heart of the empire, distress was comparatively unknown at home, and disaffection was unheard of in our distant settlements. The proof of this is decisive. The tables already given in the former part of this paper demonstrate when distress at home and sedition abroad seriously set in, when emigration advanced with the steps of a giant, and crime began to increase ten times as fast as the numbers of the people--and the poor-rates, despite all attempts to check them by fresh laws, threatened to swallow all but the fortunes of the _millionnaires_ in the kingdom. _It was after 1819 that all this took place._ Previous to this, or at least previous to 1816, when the approaching great monetary change of that year was intimated to the Bank, and the contraction of the currency really began, distress at home was comparatively unknown, and the most unbounded loyalty existed in our colonial settlements in every part of the world. But from that date our policy at home and abroad underwent a total change. Everything was changed with the change in the ruling influences in the state. The words of the Christian bishop who converted Clovis were acted upon to the letter--"Brulez ce que vous avez adoré; adorez ce que vous avez brulé." The moneyed came to supplant the territorial aristocracy, the interests of realised capital to prevail over those of industry and wealth in the course of formation. The Reform Bill confirmed and perpetuated this change, by giving the moneyed class a decided majority of votes in the House of Commons, and the House of Commons the practical government of the country. From that moment suffering marked us for her own. Misery spread in the heart of the empire; many of its most flourishing settlements abroad went to ruin; and such disaffection prevailed in all, that Government, foreseeing the dissolution of the empire, has already taken steps to conceal the fall of the fabric by voluntarily taking it to pieces.

Without going into details, unhappily too well known to all to require any lengthened illustration, it may be sufficient to refer to three circumstances which have not only immensely aggravated the internal distress and external disaffection of the empire, but interrupted and neutralised the influence of all those causes of relief provided for us by nature, and which, under a just and equal policy, would have entirely averted them.

The first of these, and perhaps the most disastrous in its effects upon the internal prosperity of the empire, was the great contraction of the currency which took place by the bill of 1819. By that bill the bank and bankers' notes, which at the close of the war had amounted, in Great Britain and Ireland, to about £60,000,000 in round numbers, were suddenly reduced to £32,000,000, which was the limit formally imposed, by the acts of 1844 and 1845, on the circulation issuable on securities in the country. We know the effect of these changes: the _Times_ has told us what it has been. It rendered the sovereign worth two sovereigns; the fortune of £500,000 worth £1,000,000; the debt of £800,000,000 worth £1,600,000,000; the taxes of £50,000,000 worth £100,000,000 annually. As a necessary consequence, it reduced the average price of wheat from 90s. to 40s.; and the entire wages of labour and remuneration of industry, throughout the country, _to one-half_ of their former amount. The prodigious effect of this change upon the real amount of the national burdens, and the remuneration of the industry which was to sustain it, may be judged of by the invaluable table quoted on the next page, which is stated to be taken from Mr Porter's valuable work on the _Progress of the Nation_, published in 1847, and furnished by that gentleman with his wonted courtesy to the _Midland Counties Herald_, to the end of 1850. Its import will be found to be correctly condensed in the following statement, by that able writer Gemini, contained in the same paper of January 30:--

S. D.
"The average price of wheat
from 1800 to the close of the
war, was, 90 7

The average price of wheat from
the passing of the Corn Law
of 1815 to 1827, each inclusive, 67 2

The average price of wheat from
the passing of the Corn Law
of 1828 to 1841, each inclusive, 58 10

The average price of wheat from
the passing of the Corn Law
of 1842 to 1849, each inclusive, 53 6

The average price of 1850 40 2

During the war the average quantity of wheat required to
be sold to pay one million of taxation amounted to 220,791
quarters. The quantity required to be sold to pay one million
of taxation, according to the prices of 1850, amounts to
497,925 quarters, or 56,343 quarters more than _double_ the
quantity required to be sold during the war. The enormous
increase in the burdensomeness of taxation may be thus clearly
estimated."

Comment is unnecessary, illustration superfluous, on such a result.

------+-------------+--------+-------------+--------------+---------+
| Amount of | Yearly | Revenue | Rent of 200 |Price of |
|revenue paid |average |estimated in | acres of |wheat at |
Years.| into the | price | qrs. of |land, at 30s. |a seven |
| Exchequer, |of wheat|wheat, at the| per acre, | years' |
| the produce |per qr. |average price| estimated in |average, |
|of taxation. | |of the year. |qrs. of wheat.| per qr. |
------+-------------+--------+-------------+--------------+---------+
| £ | S. D. | qrs. | qrs. bus. | S. D. |
| | | | | |
1800 | 34,145,584 |113 10 | 5,999,224 | 52 5 | ... |
1801 | 34,113,146 |119 6 | 5,709,313 | 50 1 | ... |
1802 | 36,368,149 | 69 10 | 10,415,698 | 85 7 | ... |
1803 | 38,609,392 | 58 10 | 13,125,005 | 101 7 | ... |
1804 | 46,176,492 | 62 3 | 14,835,820 | 96 5 | ... |
1805 | 50,897,706 | 89 9 | 11,342,107 | 66 6 | ... |
1806 | 55,796,086 | 79 1 | 14,110,706 | 75 6 | 84 8 |
1807 | 59,339,321 | 75 4 | 15,753,802 | 79 5 | 79 2 |
1808 | 62,998,191 | 81 4 | 15,491,358 | 73 5 | 73 7 |
1809 | 63,719,400 | 97 4 | 13,093,027 | 61 5 | 77 8 |
1810 | 67,144,542 |106 5 | 12,619,177 | 56 3 | 84 5 |
1811 | 65,173,545 | 95 3 | 13,684,383 | 62 7 | 89 2 |
1812 | 65,037,850 |126 6 | 10,282,604 | 47 4 | 94 5 |
1813 | 68,748,363 |109 9 | 12,528,175 | 54 3 | 98 10 |
1814 | 71,134,503 | 74 4 | 19,139,328 | 80 6 | 98 8 |
1815 | 72,210,512 | 65 7 | 22,020,994 | 91 4 | 96 5 |
1816 | 62,264,546 | 78 6 | 15,863,578 | 76 3 | 93 7 |
1817 | 52,055,913 | 96 11 | 10,742,406 | 61 7 | 92 4 |
1818 | 53,747,795 | 86 3 | 12,463,256 | 69 4 | 91 6 |
1819 | 52,648,847 | 74 6 | 14,133,918 | 80 4 | 83 4 |
1820 | 54,282,958 | 67 10 | 16,004,803 | 88 5 | 77 8 |
1821 | 55,834,192 | 56 1 | 19,911,153 | 106 7 | 75 1 |
1822 | 55,663,650 | 44 7 | 24,970,609 | 134 7 | 72 1 |
1823 | 57,672,999 | 53 4 | 21,627,374 | 112 4 | 68 6 |
1824 | 59,362,403 | 63 11 | 18,574,937 | 93 7 | 63 9 |
1825 | 57,273,869 | 68 6 | 16,722,297 | 87 4 | 61 2 |
1826 | 54,894,989 | 58 8 | 18,714,200 | 102 2 | 58 11 |
1827 | 54,932,518 | 58 6 | 18,780,348 | 102 4 | 57 7 |
1828 | 55,187,142 | 60 5 | 18,268,847 | 99 2 | 58 3 |
1829 | 50,786,682 | 66 3 | 15,331,828 | 90 4 | 61 4 |
1830 | 50,056,616 | 64 3 | 15,581,825 | 93 4 | 62 11 |
1831 | 46,424,440 | 66 4 | 13,997,318 | 90 4 | 63 3 |
1832 | 46,988,755 | 58 8 | 16,018,893 | 102 2 | 61 10 |
1833 | 46,271,326 | 52 11 | 17,488,375 | 113 3 | 61 0 |
1834 | 46,425,263 | 46 2 | 20,112,027 | 130 0 | 59 3 |
1835 | 45,893,369 | 39 4 | 23,335,611 | 152 4 | 56 3 |
1836 | 48,591,180 | 48 6 | 20,037,600 | 123 6 | 53 8 |
1837 | 46,475,194 | 55 10 | 16,647,830 | 107 3 | 52 6 |
1838 | 47,333,460 | 64 7 | 14,658,103 | 92 7 | 52 3 |
1839 | 47,844,899 | 70 8 | 13,541,009 | 84 7 | 54 0 |
1840 | 47,567,565 | 66 4 | 14,341,979 | 90 3 | 55 11 |
1841 | 48,084,360 | 64 4 | 14,948,505 | 93 2 | 58 6 |
1842 | 46,965,631 | 57 3 | 16,407,207 | 104 6 | 61 0 |
1843 | 52,582,817 | 50 1 | 20,998,129 | 119 6 | 61 3 |
1844 | 54,003,754 | 51 3 | 21,074,635 | 117 0 | 60 7 |
1845 | 53,060,354 | 50 10 | 20,876,204 | 118 0 | 58 8 |
1846 | 53,790,138 | 54 8 | 19,679,318 | 109 6 | 56 4 |
1847 | 51,546,265 | 69 9 | 14,780,291 | 86 0 | 56 10 |
1848 | 53,388,717 | 50 6 | 21,144,046 | 118 7 | 54 10 |
1849 | 52,951,749 | 44 3 | 23,932,993 | 135 4 | 53 0 |
1850 | ...... | 40 2 | ...... | 149 3 | 51 6 |
------+-------------+--------+-------------+--------------+---------+

--_Midland Counties Herald_, January 31, 1851. The prices of wheat here given are the _average_ prices of the year.

In the next place, prodigious as was the addition which this great change made to the burdens, public and private, of the nation, the change was attended with an alteration at times still more hurtful, and, in the end, not less pernicious. This was the compelling the bank to pay _all_ their notes in gold, the restraining them from issuing paper beyond £14,000,000 bond on securities, and compelling them to take all gold brought to them, whatever its market value was, at the fixed price of £3, 17s. 10½d. the ounce. This at once aggravated speculation to a most fearful degree in periods of prosperity, for it left the bank no way of indemnifying itself for the purchase and retention of £15,000,000 or £16,000,000 worth of treasure but by pushing its business in all directions, and lowering its discounts so as to accomplish that object; and it led to a rapid and ruinous contraction of the currency the moment that exchanges became adverse, and a drain set in upon the bank, either from the necessities of foreign war in the neighbouring states, the mutation of commerce, or the occurrence of a large importation of grain to supply the wants of our own country. Incalculable as the distress which those alternations of impulse and depression have brought upon this great manufacturing community, and immeasurable the multitudes whom they have sunk, never more to rise, into the lowest and most destitute classes of society, their effect has by no means been confined to the periods during which they actually lasted. Their baneful influence has extended to subsequent times, and produced a continuous and almost unbroken stream of distress; for, long ere the victims of one monetary crisis have sunk into the grave, or been driven into exile, another storm arises which precipitates fresh multitudes, especially in the manufacturing towns, into the abyss of ruin. The whole, or nearly the whole, of this terrific and continued suffering is to be ascribed to the monstrous principles adopted in our monetary system--that of compelling the banks to foster and encourage speculation in periods of prosperity, and suddenly contract their issues and starve the body politic, when a demand for the precious metals carries them in considerable quantities out of the country. A memorable instance of the working of that system is to be found in the Railway mania of 1845 and 1846, flowing directly from the Acts of 1844 and 1845, which landed the nation in an extra expenditure of nearly £300,000,000 on domestic undertakings, at a time when commerce of every kind was in a state of the highest activity, followed by the dreadful crash of October 1847, which, by suddenly contracting the currency and ruining credit, threw millions out of employment, and strained the real capital of the nation to the very uttermost, to complete a part only of the undertakings which the Currency Laws had given birth to. And the example of the years 1809 and 1810--when the whole metallic currency was drained out of the country by the demands for the war in the Peninsula and Germany, but no distress was experienced, and the national strength was put forth with unparalleled vigour, and, as it proved, decisive effect--proves how easily such a crisis might be averted by the extended issue of a paper currency not liable to be withdrawn, when most required, by a public run for gold.

In the third place, to crown the whole, and as if to put the keystone in the arch of public distress, Free-Trade in every department was forced upon the country by Sir Robert Peel and his successors in 1846, 1847, and 1849, under the dictation of the Manchester school, and to promote the interest of master-manufacturers by lowering the wages of labour and of realised capital, by cheapening the price of everything else, and raising the value of money. We see the effects of this already evinced in every department to which the system has applied; and we see the commencement only of the general ruin with which it is fraught. In agriculture, Great Britain and Ireland, which were, practically speaking, in ordinary seasons self-supporting, have come already to import from _nine to ten millions_ of foreign grain for the support of the inhabitants, besides sheep and cattle in an equal proportion. At least fifteen millions yearly is sent out of the country, for the most part in hard cash, to buy food, which formerly was nearly all spent in it, and enriched all classes of its people. The exchangeable value of what remains has been lowered by at least £75,000,000 annually, and of course so much taken away from the means of supporting domestic labour, and paying the national defences and the interest of public and private debt. The West Indies, formerly the right arm of the naval strength of England, and no small source of its riches, have been _totally ruined_; and, as a necessary consequence, the exports of our manufactures to those once splendid settlements, which, prior to the commencement of the new measures in 1834, had reached £3,500,000 a-year, had sunk in 1850 to £1,821,146! Canada has been so much impoverished by the withdrawing of all protection to colonial industry, which has annihilated its intercolonial trade with the West Indies, and seriously injured its export trade in grain and wood to this country, that the British exports to that country, which in 1839 amounted to £3,047,000, had sunk in 1850, notwithstanding the subsequent addition of above 50 per cent to its population, to £2,280,386.

EXPORTS TO

Canada. West Indies.
1839 L.3,047,671 L.3,986,598
1840 2,847,970 3,574,970
1841 2,947,061 3,504,004

1850 2,280,386 1,821,146

In Ireland from four to five hundred thousand acres have gone out of the cultivation of wheat alone; although the calamitous failure of the potato crop in 1846, and the subsequent doubts as to the success of that prolific esculent, should have tended to an _increase_ of cereal crops as the only thing that could be relied on, and undoubtedly would have done so, but for the blasting influence of Free Trade, which deprived the farmer of all hope of a profitable return for agricultural expenditure. As a necessary consequence, above 200,000 cultivators have disappeared from the soil of the Emerald Isle in the four last years; about 250,000 of them or their families are immured, idle and miserable, in the Irish workhouses, and above 40,000 in its prisons; while above 200,000 persons from that island alone, and 300,000 from the two islands, are annually driven into exile! Lastly, as if Free Trade had not worked sufficient mischief on the land, it has invaded the sea also; no longer can the Englishman say--

"His march is on the mountain wave
His home is on the deep."

The ocean is fast becoming the home for other people, to the exclusion of its ancient lords. One single year of Free Trade in shipping, following the repeal of the Navigation Laws, has occasioned, under the most favourable circumstances for testing the tendency of the change, so great a diminution in British and increase in foreign shipping in all our harbours, that it is evident the time is rapidly approaching, if the present system is continued, when we must renounce all thought of maintaining naval superiority, and trust to the tender mercies of our enemies and rivals for a respite from the evils of blockade and famine.[17]

[17] The following Returns from three seaports alone--London, Liverpool, and Dublin--in 1849 and 1850, will show how rapidly this ruinous process is going on:--

| | | |
| | 1849. | 1850. |
| I. LONDON-- | Ships. | Tons. | Ships. | Tons. |
| British, | 6,917 | 1,444,311 | 6,497 | 1,376,233 |
| Foreign, | 3,040 | 443,923 | 3,413 | 527,174 |
| |--------+-----------+--------+-----------|
| II. LIVERPOOL-- | | | | |
| British, | | | | |
| Foreign, | | 56,500 | | 124,800 |
| |--------+-----------+--------+-----------|
|III. DUBLIN-- | | | | |
| British, | 351 | 63,263 | 279 | 44,146 |
| Foreign, | 125 | 27,774 | 183 | 39,250 |
+------------------+--------------------+--------------------+
| |Decrease of British.|Increase of Foreign.|
| | | |
| | Ships. | Tons. | Ships. | Tons. |
| I. LONDON, | 420 | 78,078 | 373 | 83,251 |
| |--------+-----------+--------+-----------|
| II. LIVERPOOL, | | | | 78,300 |
| |--------+-----------+--------+-----------|
|III. DUBLIN, | 72 | 19,117 | 58 | 11,476 |
| |--------+-----------+--------+-----------|
| Total, | | | | 173,027 |

The vast emigration of 300,000 annually which is now going on from the United Kingdom, might reasonably be expected to have alleviated, in a great degree, this most calamitous decrease in the staple branches of industry in our people; and so it would have, certainly, had a wise and paternal Government taken it under its own direction, and sent the parties abroad who really were likely to want employment, and whose removal would at once prove a relief to the country from which they were sent, and a blessing to that for which they were destined. But this is so far from being the case, that there is perhaps no one circumstance in our social condition which has done more of late years to aggravate the want of employment, and enhance the distress among the working-classes, than _the very magnitude of this emigration_. The dogma of Free Trade has involved even the humble cabins of the emigrant's ship: there, as elsewhere, it has spread nothing but misery and desolation. The reason is, that it has been left to the unaided, undirected efforts of the emigrants themselves.

Government was too glad of an excuse not to interfere: the constantly destitute condition of the Treasury, and the ceaseless clamour against taxation, in consequence of the wasting away of the national resources under the action of Free Trade and a contracted currency, made them too happy of any excuse for avoiding any payments from the public Treasury, even on behalf of the most suffering and destitute of the community. This excuse was found in the plausible plea, that any advances on their part would interfere with the free exercise of individual enterprise--a plea somewhat similar to what it would be if all laws for the protection of paupers, minors, and lunatics, were swept away, lest the free action of the creditors on their estates should be disturbed. The consequence has been that the whole, or nearly the whole, of the immense stream of emigration which general distress has now caused to flow from the British Islands, has been sustained by the efforts of private individuals, and left to the tender mercies of the owners or freighters of emigrant ships. The result is well known. Frightful disasters, from imperfect manning and equipment, have occurred to several of these misery-laden vessels. A helpless multitude is thrown ashore at New York and Montreal, destitute alike of food, clothing, or the means of getting on to the frontier, where its labour could be of value; and the competition for employment at home has been increased to a frightful degree by the removal of so large a proportion of such of the tenantry or middle class as were possessed of little capitals; and had the means either of maintaining themselves or giving employment to others. At least L.3,000,000 yearly goes abroad with the emigrant ships, and that is drawn almost entirely from the lower class of farmers, the very men who employ the poor. The class who have gone away was for the most part that which should have remained, for it had the means of doing, something in the world, and employing others; that which was left at home, was that which should have been removed, because they were the destitute who could neither find employment in these islands, nor do anything on their own account from want of funds. Hence above a million and a-half of persons in Great Britain, and above seven hundred thousand in Ireland, on an average of years, are constantly maintained by the poor-rates, for the most part in utter idleness, although the half of them are able-bodied, and their labour--if they could only be forwarded to the frontier of civilisation in America--would be of incalculable service to our own colonies or the United States.

The very magnitude of the trade employed in the exportation of the emigrants, and the importation of food for those who remain, has gone far to conceal the ruinous effects of Free Trade. Between the carrying out of emigrants, and the bringing in of grain--the exportation of our strength, and the importation of our weakness--our chief seaports may continue for some time to drive a gainful traffic. The _Liverpool Times_ observes:--

"The number of emigrant vessels which sailed from Liverpool
during the last year, was 568. Of these vessels, many are
from 1500 to 2000 tons burden, and a few of them even reach
3000 tons. They are amongst the finest vessels that ever were
built, are well commanded, well-manned, fitted out in excellent
style, and present a wonderful improvement in all respects,
when compared with the same class of vessels even half a dozen
years ago. Taking the average passage-money of each passenger
in these vessels at £6, the conveying of emigrants yields a
revenue of upwards of £1,000,000 sterling to the shipping which
belongs to or frequents this port, independent of the great
amount of money which the passage of such an immense multitude
of persons through the town must cause to be spent in it. In
fact, the passage and conveyance of emigrants has become one of
the greatest trades of Liverpool."--_Liverpool Times_, Jan. 10,
1851.

The number of emigrants from the Mersey and the Clyde, since the days of Free Trade began, have been prodigious, and rapidly increasing. They have stood thus:--

Year. Liverpool. Clyde.
1847 134,524 7,728
1848 131,121 10,035
1849 153,902 14,968
1850 174,187 14,203

It was precisely the same in the declining days of the Roman empire--the great seaport towns continued to flourish when all other interests in the state were rapidly sinking; and when the plains in the interior were desolate, or tenanted only by the ox or the buffalo, the great cities were still the abodes of vast realised wealth and unbounded private luxury. We are rapidly following in the same path. The realised capital of Great Britain was estimated in 1814 at L.1,200,000,000; in 1841, Mr Porter estimated it at L.2,000,000,000; the capital subject to legacy duty in Great Britain, on an average of forty-one years, from 1797 to 1841, was L.26,000,000; in the single year 1840 it was L.40,500,000. The increase of realised capital among the rich has been nearly as great as that of pauperism, misery, and consequent emigration among the poor--the well-known and oft-observed premonitory symptoms of the decline of nations.

* * * * *

It is in the midst of these numerous and overwhelming evils, the result mainly of theoretical innovation and class government in the country--when above two millions of paupers in the two islands are painfully supported by public assessment; when three hundred thousand are annually driven into exile, and a hundred and fifty thousand more are constantly supported in jails, one-half of whom are committed for serious crimes;[18] when all classes, excepting those engaged in the export trade of human beings and the import of human food, are languishing from the decline of domestic employment, and the constantly increasing influx of foreign goods, both rude and manufactured--that we are assured by one benevolent set of philanthropists that all will be right, if we only give the starving working-classes model houses, rented at L.8 each, to live in; by another, that ragged schools for their destitute children will set all in order; by a third, that a schoolmaster in every wynd is alone required to remove all the evils under which we labour; by a fourth, that cold baths and wash-houses to lave their emaciated limbs, are the great thing; by a fifth, that church extension is the only effectual remedy, and that, till there is a minister for every seven hundred inhabitants, it is in vain to hope for any social amelioration. We respect the motives which actuate each and all of these benevolent labourers in the great vineyard of human suffering; we acknowledge that each within a limited sphere does some good, and extricates a certain number of individuals or families out of the abyss of degradation or suffering in which they are immersed. As to anything like national relief, or alleviation of distress in any sensible degree, from their united efforts, when the great causes of evil which have been mentioned continue in undiminished activity, it is as chimerical as to expect by the schoolmaster or the washing-woman to arrest the ravages of the plague or the cholera.

[18] Including the police committals, much more numerous than those for trial.

Two circumstances of general operation, and overwhelming importance, render all these various and partial remedies, while the great causes which depress the demand for labour and deprive the people of employment continue in operation, entirely nugatory and ineffectual, in a general view, to arrest our social evils.

The first of these is, that these remedies, one and all of them, are calculated for the elevation and intellectual or moral improvement of the people, but have no tendency to improve their circumstances, or diminish the load of pauperism, destitution, and misery with which they are overwhelmed. Until the latter is done, however, all the efforts made for the attainment of the former, how benevolent and praiseworthy soever, will have no general effect, and, in a national point of view, may be regarded as almost equal to nothing. The reason is that, generally speaking, the human race are governed, in the first instance, almost entirely by their physical sufferings or comforts, and that intellectual or moral improvement cannot be either thought of or attended to till a certain degree of ease as to the imperious demands of physical nature has been attained. In every age, doubtless, there are some persons of both sexes who will heroically struggle against the utmost physical privation, and pursue the path of virtue, or sedulously improve their minds, under circumstances the most adverse, and with facilities the most inconsiderable. But these are the exceptions, not the rule. The number of such persons is so inconsiderable, compared to the immense mass who are governed by their physical sensations, that remedies addressed to the intellect of man, without reference to the improvement of his circumstances, can never operate generally upon society. Even the most intellectual and powerful minds must give way under a certain amount of physical want or necessity. Take Newton and Milton, Bacon and Descartes, Cervantes and Cicero, and make them walk thirty miles in a wintry day, and come in to a wretched hovel at night, and see what they will desire. Rely upon it, it will be neither philosophy nor poetry, but warmth and food. A good fire and a good supper would attract them from all the works which have rendered their names immortal. Can we expect the great body of mankind to be less under the influence of the imperious demands of our common physical nature than the most gifted of the human race? What do the people constantly ask for? It is neither cold baths nor warm baths, ragged schools nor normal schools, churches nor chapels, model houses nor mechanics' institutes--"It is a fair day's wage for a fair day's work." We would all do the same in their circumstances. Give them _that_, the one thing needful alike for social happiness and moral improvement, and you make a mighty step in social amelioration and elevation; because you lay _the foundation_ on which it all rests, and on which it must, in a general point of view, all depend--without it, all the rest will be found to be as much thrown away as the seed cast on the arid desert.

In the next place, the intellectual cultivation and elevation which is regarded by so large a political party, and so numerous a body of benevolent individuals, as the panacea for all our social evils, never has affected, and never can affect, more than a limited class in society. We may indeed teach all, or nearly all, to read; but can we make them all read books, or still more, read books that will do them any good, when they leave school, and become their own masters, and are involved in the cares, oppressed with the labours, and exposed to the temptations of the world? Did any man ever find a fifth of his acquaintance of any rank, from the House of Peers and the Bar downwards, who were really and practically directed in manhood and womanhood by intellectual pleasures or pursuits? Habit, early training, easy circumstances, absence of temptation, a fortunate marriage, or the like, are the real circumstances which retain the great body of the human race of every rank in the right path. They are neither positively bad, nor positively good: they are characters of imperfect goodness, and mainly swayed by their physical circumstances. If you come to a crisis with them, when the selfish or generous feelings must be acted upon, nine-tenths of them will be swayed by the former. The disciples of Rousseau will contest these propositions: we would only recommend them to look around them, and see whether or not they are demonstrated by every day's experience in every rank of life. We wish it were otherwise; but we must take mankind as they are, and legislate for them on their _average_ capacity, without supposing that they are generally to be influenced by the intellectual appliances adapted only to a small fraction of their number. And, accordingly, upon looking at the statistical tables given in the commencement of this Essay, it will be found that, while emigration, crime, and pauperism, have advanced rapidly, despite all the efforts of philanthropy and religion, which are _permanent_, but affect only a part of society, they exhibit the most remarkable fluctuations, according to the prosperity or distress of _particular_ years, because the causes _then_ in operation affected the _whole_ of mankind.

The only way, therefore, in which the physical circumstances of the great body of mankind can be ameliorated, or room can be afforded for the moral and intellectual elevation of such of them as have received from nature minds susceptible of such training, is by restoring _the equilibrium between the demand for labour and the numbers of the people_, which our late measures have done so much to subvert. By that means, and that means _alone_, can the innumerable social evils under which we labour be alleviated. Without it, all the other remedies devised by philanthropy, pursued with zeal, cherished by hope, will prove ineffectual. How that is to be done must be evident to every person of common understanding. The demand for labour must be increased, the supply of labour must be diminished. The first can only be done, by a moderate degree of Protection to Native Industry, at present beat down to the dust in every department by the competition of foreign states, where money is more scarce and taxation lighter, and consequently production is less expensive. The second can only be attained by a systematic emigration, conducted at the public expense, and drawing of annually an hundred or an hundred and fifty thousand of the _most destitute_ of the community, who have not the means of transport for themselves, and, if not so removed, will permanently encumber our streets, our jails, our workhouses.

But money is required for these things; and where, it will be asked, is money to be found in this already overtaxed and suffering community? The answer is, the money-question is the easiest of all; for it will be attained in abundance by the very means requisite to attain the other objects. Protection, even on the most moderate scale, to Native Industry, is not to be attained without the imposition of import-duties; and that will at once produce the funds requisite for the attainment of all these objects. Laid on the importation of all goods, rude or manufactured, they would yield such a revenue as would enable us to take off the Income Tax, and thereby let loose L.5,500,000 a-year, now absorbed by it, for the encouragement of domestic industry. Agriculture, manufactures of all sorts, would take a renewed start from the exclusion, to a certain degree, of foreign competition. Domestic industry would cease to languish, because the ruinous competition of foreigners working at a third of our wages would be checked. By these means an ample fund would be raised to enable us to transport, at the public expense, and comfortably settle in their new habitations, some hundred thousand annually of the most destitute class of our people--that class who cannot get away themselves, and, as they are thrown out of employment by Free Trade, now encumber our hospitals, jails, and workhouses. We would convert them from paupers into healthful and sturdy emigrants, doubling in numbers, with constant additions from the parent state, every ten years; and consuming L.8 a-head worth of our manufactures. Property in the colonies would double in value every five years, from the joint effect of domestic labour, and the prolific stream of external immigration; and every acre cleared in these fertile wilds would cause a wheel to revolve, or a spindle to move, or a family to be blessed, in the parent state.

We can affix no limits in imagination to what the British Empire might become, or the amount of social and general happiness it might contain, with the physical advantages which nature has given it, and the character which race, and consequent institutions, have impressed upon its inhabitants. In the centre of the Empire stands the parent state, teeming with energy, overflowing with inhabitants, with coal and ironstone in its bosom capable of putting in motion manufactories for the supply of half the globe. In the extremities are colonies in every quarter of the earth, possessing waste lands of boundless extent and inexhaustible fertility, producing every luxury which the heart of man can desire, and one only of which could furnish the whole staple required for its greatest fabrics.[19] With such providential wisdom were the various parts of this immense empire fitted for each other; so marvellously was the surplus, whether in animated beings or rude produce, of one part adapted to the deficiencies and wants of another, that nothing but a just and equal system of government, alive to the wants, and solicitous for the interests, of every part of its vast dominion, was requisite to render it the most united, prosperous, growing, and powerful state that ever existed on the face of the earth. The Roman Empire, while spread around the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, affords but a faint image of what it might have been. _The ocean was its inland lake_; the British navy its internal means of communication; the foreign trade of the whole earth its home trade. We obtained the empire of the seas precisely to enable us to carry out this magnificent destiny; the victory of Trafalgar presented it to our grasp. But a just and equal system of government was essential to the existence and duration of so immense a dominion; a sense of fair administration, a consciousness of protected interests, would alone hold it together for any length of time. The simple precept of the gospel, "to do to others as we would they should do unto us," would, if duly carried into practice, have for ever kept united the mighty fabric, and caused it to embrace in peace and happiness half the globe. This object was practically attained by the virtual representation of all classes, interests, and colonies, under the old constitution; and thence the steady growth, vast extent, and unvarying loyalty during many a severe contest, of this multifarious dominion. The new constitution, by vesting the government in the representatives of our manufacturing towns, and thence introducing the rule of class interests, is visibly and rapidly destroying it. The only remedy practicable--and even that is so only for a short season--is the _extension to the colonies of a direct share in the Imperial Parliament_; but that is far too just and wise a measure to permit the hope that it will ever be embraced by the class interest who now rule the state.

[19] "At present the native consumption of cotton in India is estimated at from 1,000,000,000 lb. to 3,000,000,000 lb. annually; while the export to Great Britain is only 60,000,000 lb., and to all the world only 150,000,000 lb. In this state of things, the rough production that suits the home market will, of course, only be carried on; while, if sufficient means of conveyance existed to render the cotton that is now grown in the interior, at 1¼d. per lb., remunerative for export, increased care in its preparation would be manifested, as was the case in the United States, just in proportion to the increased reward that would result. In developing these views, Mr Chapman undertakes to demonstrate, by well-arranged facts and tables, that the export of cotton from India to England has risen exactly as the difficulties or expense of its transmission have been diminished; and also that costs and impediments still remain which are sufficient to account for the smallness of the quantity we continue to receive."--_Times_, Jan. 1851.

Notwithstanding all the obvious advantages of the course of policy which we have recommended--though it would at once furnish the means, as we have shown in a former paper, of obviating our external dangers and maintaining our national independence, and at the same time relieve our internal distresses and extend and consolidate our colonial dependencies--we have scarcely any hope that it will be adopted. The Free-traders have got such a hold of the burghs--to which the Reform Bill gave a decided majority in the House of Commons--and their leaders so perseveringly pursue their own _immediate_ interest, without the slightest regard to the ruin they are bringing upon all other interests of the state, that the hope of any change of policy--at least till some terrible external disaster has opened the eyes of the nation to a sense of the impending calamities brought on them by their rulers--may be regarded as hopeless, without a general national effort. The imposition of a moderate import duty upon the produce, whether rude or manufactured, of all other nations, but with an entire exemption to our own colonies, is obviously the first step in the right direction, and would go far to alleviate our distresses, and at the same time replenish the public Treasury and avert our external dangers. In taking it, we should only be following the example of America, Prussia, and nearly all other nations, who levy a duty of 30 per cent on our manufactures, and thereby make us pay half of their taxes. But it is to be feared the mania of Free Trade will prevail over a wise and expedient policy, calculated equally to advance the interests of all classes in the state. We do not say, therefore, that any such system will be adopted; but this we do say, and with these words we nail our colours to the mast,--PROTECTION MUST BE RESTORED, OR THE BRITISH EMPIRE WILL BE DESTROYED.

MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.

BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON.