Gleanings in Europe

by James Fenimore Cooper

With one lady I had a short but a sharp discussion on political economy, to-night. She was thoroughly free trade, and this is a doctrine that I hold to be bottomed on a complete fallacy. It would be quite as easy to prove, in my opinion, that liberty can exist without government, as to show that nations can equally profit by trade, without consulting their peculiar circumstances. She asked me if trade did not consist in an exchange of equivalents. I thought not, in fact, but in an exchange of apparent equivalents. I did not believe, that the Indian who sold a beaver skin for half a dollar, in the forest, which, after deducting charges, brought four or five dollars of profit in the market, obtained any thing more than an apparent equivalent. He was a loser by his ignorance and his social facts, while the trader was, in the same proportion, a gainer. But free trade would permit the Indian to bring his own peltry down, and pocket the difference himself. True, as a theory; but life is composed of stubborn facts, that laugh at theories of this sort. He cannot come. Could restriction supply a remedy? Certainly; by appointing a clever agent, for instance, at a salary, to dispose of their peltry in common for them, and by excluding the traders from their territory, they might get double or treble the present prices. Their agent might cheat them. So does the trader. The buyers would go elsewhere. They cannot; the Indian has a monopoly of the article. Did I not believe free trade increased commerce, and indirectly diffused its advantages over the whole world? I made no doubt that many restrictions were absurd, and in this fact I saw all the true argument that can be adduced in favour of free trade. Let us imagine a garden filled with fine fruit, on which the owner sets a moderate price. He refuses, however, to open his gates but once a week, and half his fruit is lost in consequence. This is an abuse of restriction. Convinced of his error, he throws his gates open altogether, and bids all enter and help themselves; and to render things equal, he prohibits the use of ladders, or of climbing. A tall man enters and picks as much as he wants; but the short man at his side can reach nothing. But free trade would let him take a ladder. True, if he could carry one; but he can get none, or is too feeble. Now, knowledge, capital, practice, establishments, skill, and even natural aptitude, compose the difference in stature between nations, and the laws must provide the ladders, or the shorter will go altogether without fruit, or get it at the tall man’s prices. But competition would regulate this, as other things, and the market would settle down into a fair system of equivalents. It is easy to make this out in theory, but difficult to prove it in practice. We usually expect too much from competition, whose natural tendency, in trade, is to combination. The thousand interests of life derange the action of the most ingenious theory. The world has never yet seen a fair exchange of equivalents in traffic, and I doubt if it ever will. It is said we can’t buy more than we sell, and that the balance of trade regulates itself. This will do on paper, but it is not true in fact. We may sell too low and buy too dear. When England takes a pound of our cotton at ten cents, and sells it back again at a dollar, leaving a clear profit of fifty cents, by which her manufacturers roll in their coaches, while the planter is living from hand to mouth, we are pretty clearly doing one or the other. But let natural efforts regulate this, and do not have recourse to laws. When a strong man gets a weak one down, if the liberation of the latter depends on his natural efforts, he will never rise.

Here I bade my fair antagonist good night, as I do you.

LETTER XII.
TO WILLIAM JAY, ESQ., BEDFORD, NEW YORK.

Although I had been several times at St. Stephen’s, I never, until quite lately, got into the House of Lords. A young connexion, who happens to be travelling in Europe, and myself, have, however, just made a visit to the Hospital of Incurables. Several members of this house have offered to procure permission for me, but it has always been in a way that has rendered the civility any thing but a favour. It is a marked fault in English manners, that they extend the factitious system, by which every concession of politeness of this nature has the appearance of being, sought, to strangers.[16]

I may say the same thing of the House of Commons, into which I have had a dozen offers of admission beneath the gallery, though but once in a way that I did not feel it to be a humiliation to accept. The exception was a case of thoroughly gentlemanlike attention, and I record it with the greater satisfaction.

As I am writing with the intention to supply comparisons of national manners, I will relate a recent occurrence that took place at Paris. A party of American travellers arrived at the door of the Chamber of Deputies, and, in the absence of all other means of getting in, they took the bold measure of sending their cards to the president, with a request to be admitted, and immediately had convenient places assigned them. I do not say I would imitate this course, but it is impossible not to admire the courtesy which overlooked the mistake.

There are men who ply about the doors of the two houses of parliament, to show strangers the way into them; for it is almost as much an affair of management and bribery to get into St. Stephen’s chapel, after one is elected, as it is to get the legal return. We contracted with a man at the outer door to deliver us safe in the House of Lords, for three shillings sterling, each. The rogue carried us no farther than the first inner door, however, where he turned us over to one a step above him in dignity, coolly demanding a shilling for his pains. Our new guide carried us through a door or two more, when we reached the real vendor of places. We paid the second guide another shilling, and the stipulated price went into the hands of the regular box-office-man.

I am far from complaining of the practice of paying for these admissions, though the price is too high. Members, you will remember, can grant admissions. It is quite impossible for every one to be present, and in a town like London, the half crown may be a very healthful check, both morally and physically. The legislative body that has not the power to clear its hall, would become contemptible. The publicity of congress is only commanded through its journals, the admission of strangers being purely a matter of favour. Here the latter are present, only, by a fiction, as indeed they are sometimes absent; for frequently when ordered to withdraw, they do not budge. The same principles substantially regulate the proceedings of congress and of parliament, though there exists one difference between them, that is founded on a fundamental distinction in the governments. In congress the vote is taken openly, in parliament it is not. It is a great pity that, while we admit of this affinity in forms, we do not always perceive the essential difference that exists in substance.