[FREE TRADE (1825).]
Source.—William Cobbett's Rural Rides, ed. by Mr. Pitt Cobbett, 1885.
One newspaper says that Mr. Huskisson is gone to Paris, and thinks it likely that he will endeavour to "inculcate in the mind of the Bourbons wise principles of free trade!" What next! Persuade them, I suppose, that it is for their good that English goods should be admitted into France and into St. Domingo with little or no duty? Persuade them to make a treaty of commerce with him; and in short persuade them to make France help to pay the interest of our debt and dead-weight, lest our system of paper should go to pieces, and lest that should be followed by a radical reform, which reform would be injurious to "the monarchical principle!" This newspaper politician does, however, think that the Bourbons will be "too dull" to comprehend these "enlightened and liberal" notions; and I think so too. I think the Bourbons, or, rather, those who will speak for them, will say: "No thank you. You contracted your debt without our participation; you made your dead-weight for your own purposes: the seizure of our museums and the loss of our frontier towns followed your victory of Waterloo, though we were 'your Allies' at the time; you made us pay an enormous tribute after that battle, and kept possession of part of France till we had paid it; you wished, the other day, to keep us out of Spain, and you, Mr. Huskisson, in a speech at Liverpool, called our deliverance of the King of Spain an unjust and unprincipled act of aggression, while Mr. Canning prayed to God that we might not succeed. No thank you, Mr. Huskisson, no. No coaxing, sir: we saw, then, too clearly the advantage we derived from your having a debt and a dead-weight, to wish to assist in relieving you of either. 'Monarchical principle' here or 'monarchical principle' there, we know that your mill-stone debt is our best security. We like to have your wishes, your prayers, and your abuses against us, rather than your subsidies and your fleets; and so, farewell, Mr. Huskisson; if you like, the English may drink French wine; but whether they do or not, the French shall not wear your rotten cottons. And, as a last word, how did you maintain the 'monarchical principle,' the 'paternal principle,' or as Castlereagh called it, the 'social system,' when you called that an unjust and unprincipled aggression which put an end to the bargain by which the convents and other Church property of Spain were to be transferred to the Jews and jobbers of London? Bon jour, Monsieur Huskisson, ci-devant membre et orateur du club de quatre-vingt-neuf!"
If they do not actually say this to him, this is what they will think; and that is, as to the effect, precisely the same thing. It is childishness to suppose that any nation will act from a desire of serving all other nations, or any one other nation, as well as itself. It will make, unless compelled, no compact by which it does not think itself a gainer; and amongst its gains, it must, and always does, reckon the injury to its rivals. It is a stupid idea that all nations are to gain by anything. Whatever is the gain of one, must, in some way or other, be a loss to another. So that this new project of "free trade" and "mutual gain" is a pure humbug as that which the newspapers carried on during the "glorious days" of loans, when they told us, at every loan, that the bargain was "equally advantageous to the contractors and to the public!" The fact is the "free trade" project is clearly the effect of a consciousness of our weakness. As long as we felt strong, we felt bold, we had no thought of conciliating the world; we upheld a system of exclusion, which long experience proved to be founded in sound policy. But we now find that our debts and our loads of various sorts cripple us. We feel our incapacity for the carrying of trade sword in hand: and so we have given up all our old maxims, and are endeavouring to persuade the world that we are anxious to enjoy no advantages that are not enjoyed also by our neighbours. Alas! the world sees very clearly the cause of all this; and the world laughs at us for our imaginary cunning. My old doggrel, that used to make me and my friends laugh in Long Island, is precisely put to this case.
When his man was stuffed with paper,
How John Bull did prance and caper!
How he foam'd and how he roared:
How his neighbours all he gored.
How he scrap'd the ground and hurled
Dirt and filth on all the world!