[The Orders in Council increased the English export trade to the South of Europe, and Africa and the Levant were supplied with English substitutes for Continental cottons and linens.]
What has been the state of your trade for the last eighteen months, and, as far as you have been informed, of the country in general?—The state of the trade during the last eighteen months has been depressed; for the last twelve months it has been recovering, but for the six months previous it was very much depressed indeed.
To what do you attribute that depression?—We attribute the depression of trade which took place to the effect of the Berlin and Milan decrees. [Northern Europe, the Baltic, etc., were shut against English trade, and English ships were sequestered even in Swedish ports.]
[394] Brassfounding, hardware, plated ware, jewellery, etc.
14. Debate on the Corn Law [Parliamentary History, 1st Series, Vol. XXIX, Cols. 798-818], 1815.
House of Commons. February 17, 1815.
The State of the Corn Laws.
The Hon. Frederick Robinson immediately rose.... He had never disguised from himself, and he was not ashamed to confess it, the extreme difficulty, as well as the extreme importance, of this question. He could not, however, but feel that the prejudices on this subject had, from further inquiry, been very much removed. But, above all, he was happy to see that the misrepresentations, for so he thought they were, with respect to the motives of those who supported this measure, and with reference to the effects which it was likely to produce, were done away with. There did not now exist in the public mind the feeling by which it was before influenced. It was not now supposed that the object sought to be accomplished by the alteration of the corn law was the mean and base and paltry one of getting, for a particular class of society, a certain profit at the expense of the rest. "For my part," said Mr. Robinson, "I declare to God, if I thought this was the motive which actuated any individual who supported the alteration; and, above all, if I conceived that such would be the effect of the measure, no consideration on earth could tempt me to bring it forward." ...