"Has been built up, as alone the industry of a nation can be, under a system of protection, from time to time modified as experience has dictated; but never destroyed by specious abstractions or the dogmas of mere doctrinaires. Fifty years ago manufactures were unknown there, and the caravans trading to the interior and supplying the wants of distant tribes in Asia went laden with the products of British and other foreign workshops. When the present emperor mounted the throne, in 1825, the country could not produce the cloth required to uniform its own soldiers; further back, in 1800, the exportation of coloured cloth was prohibited under severe penalties; but through the influence of adequate protection, as early as 1834, Russian cloth was taken by the caravans to Kiachta; and at this day the markets of all Central Asia are supplied by the fabrics of Russian looms, which in Affghanistan and China are crowding British cloths entirely out of sale—notwithstanding the latter have the advantage in transportation—while in Tartary and Russia itself British woollens are now scarcely heard of. In 1812 there were in Russia 136 cloth factories; in 1824, 324; in 1812 there were 129 cotton factories; in 1824, 484. From 1812 to 1839 the whole number of manufacturing establishments in the empire more than trebled, and since then they have increased in a much greater ratio, though from the absence of official statistics we are not able to give the figures. Of the total amount of manufactured articles consumed in 1843, but one-sixth were imported. And along with this vast aggrandizement of manufacturing industry and commerce, there has been a steady increase of both imports and exports, as well as of revenue from customs. The increase in imports has consisted of articles of luxury and raw materials for manufacture. And, as if to leave nothing wanting in the demonstration, the increase of exports has constantly included more and more of the products of agriculture. Thus in this empire we see what we must always see under an adequate and judicious system of protection, that a proper tariff not only improves, refines, and diversifies the labour of a country, but enlarges its commerce, increases the prosperity of its agricultural population, renders the people better and better able to contribute to the support of the Government, and raises the nation to a position of independence and real equality among the powers of the globe. All this is indubitably proved by the example of Russia, for there protection has been steady and adequate, and the consequences are what we have described."—N. York Tribune.
The reader may advantageously compare the following sketch, from the same source, of the present position of Russia, so recently a scene of barbarism, with that already laid before him, of her neighbour Turkey, whose policy commands to so great an extent the admiration of those economists who advocate the system which looks to converting the whole world outside of England into one vast farm, and all its people, men, women, and children, into field labourers, dependent on one great workshop in which to make all their exchanges:—
"Russia, we are told, is triumphant in the Great Exhibition. Her natural products excite interest and admiration for their variety and excellence; her works of art provoke astonishment for their richness and beauty. Her jewellers and gold-workers carry off the palm from even those of Paris. Her satins and brocades compete with the richest contributions of Lyons. She exhibits tables of malachite and caskets of ebony, whose curious richness indicates at once the lavish expenditure of a barbaric court, and the refinement and taste of civilization. Nor do we deem it of much account that her part of the exhibition is not exclusively the work of native artisans. Her satins are none the less genuine product of the country because the loveliest were woven by emigrants from the Croix Rousse or the Guillotiére, seduced by high wages from their sunnier home in order to build up the industry of the Great Empire and train the grandsons of Mongol savages in the exquisite mysteries of French taste and dexterity. It matters not that the exhibition offers infinitely more than a fair illustration of the average capacity of Russian labour. It is none the less true that a people who half a century ago were without manufactures of any but the rudest kind, are now able by some means to furnish forth an unsurpassed display, though all the world is there to compete with them.
"We are no lover of Russian power, and have no wish to exaggerate the degree of perfection to which Russian industry has attained. We do not doubt that any cotton factory in the environs of Moscow might be found imperfect when contrasted with one of Manchester or Lowell. We are confident that the artisans of a New-England village very far surpass those of a Russian one in most qualities of intelligence and manhood. Indeed, it is absurd to make the comparison; it is absurd to do what travellers insist on doing—that is, to judge every nation by the highest standard, and pronounce each a failure which does not exhibit the intellect of France, the solidity and power of England, or the enterprise, liberty, and order of the United States. All that should be asked is, whether a people has surpassed its own previous condition and is in the way of improvement and progress. And that, in respect of industry, at least, Russia is in that way, her show at the Exhibition may safely be taken as a brilliant and conclusive proof."
Russia is powerful, and is becoming more so daily. Why is it so? It is because her people are daily more and more learning the advantages of diversification of labour and combination of exertion, and more and more improving in their physical and intellectual condition—the necessary preliminaries to an improvement of their political condition. Turkey is weak; and why is it so? Because among her people the habit of association is daily passing away as the few remaining manufactures disappear, and as the travelling pedler supersedes the resident shopkeeper.
It is said, however, that Russian policy is unfavorable to commerce; but is not its real tendency that of producing a great internal commerce upon which alone a great foreign one can be built? That it does produce the effect of enabling her people to combine their exertions for their common benefit is most certain; and equally so that it tends to give her that direct intercourse with the world which is essential to the existence of freedom. The slave trades with the world through his master, who fixes the price of the labour he has to sell and the food and clothing he has to buy, and this is exactly the system that Great Britain desires to establish for the farmers of the world—she being the only buyer of raw products, and the only seller of manufactured ones.
So long as Russia exports only food and hemp, she can trade with Brazil for sugar, and with Carolina for cotton, only through the medium of British ships, British ports, British merchants, and British looms, for she can need no raw cotton; but with the extension of manufactures she needs cotton, which she can draw directly from the planter, paying him in iron, by aid of which he may have machinery. In illustration of this, we have the fact that so recently as in 1846, out of a total consumption of cotton amounting to 310,656 cwts., no less than 122,082 cwts. had passed through British spindles; whereas in 1850, out of a total consumption more than one-half greater, and amounting to 487,612 cwts., only 64,505 cwts. had passed through the hands of the spinners of Manchester.
The export of raw cotton to Russia has since largely increased, but the precise extent of increase cannot be ascertained, although some estimate may be formed from the growth of the consumption of one of the principal dyeing materials, indigo; the export of which from England to Russia is thus given in the London Economist:—
1849. 1850. 1851. 1852.
——- ——- ——- ——-
Chests, 3225……. 4105……. 4953……. 5175
We have here an increase in three years of almost sixty per cent., proving a steady increase in the power to obtain clothing and to maintain commerce internal and external, directly the reverse of what has been observed in Turkey, Ireland, India, and other countries in which the British system prevails; and the reason of this is that that system looks to destroying the power of association. It would have all the people of India engage themselves in raising cotton, and all those of Brazil and Cuba in raising sugar, while those of Germany and Russia should raise food and wool; and we know well that when all are farmers, or all planters, the power of association scarcely exists; the consequence of which is seen in the exceeding weakness of all the communities of the world in which the plough and the loom, the hammer and the harrow, are prevented from coming together. It is an unnatural one. Men everywhere seek to combine their exertions with those of their fellow-men; an object sought to be attained by the introduction of that diversification of employment advocated throughout his work by the author of The Wealth of Nations. How naturally the habit of association arises, and how beneficial are its effects, may be seen from a few extracts now offered to the reader, from an interesting article in a recent English journal. In Russia, says its author—