Now, why do we insist upon these things? For two reasons. In the first place, we wish you to observe that the cheapness of manufacturing products does not of itself induce consumption. There must be buyers as well as sellers in order to constitute a market, and the tendency of our late legislation has been to diminish the means of the former. It by no means follows that, if we have cheap food and cheap manufactures, the relative position of all classes can be maintained. Never forget that our burdens all the while remain at a fixed money rate, and that, as the value of produce is lowered, the weight of those burdens is aggravated. This consideration, which is now well understood, is beginning to tell strongly against the doctrines of the Free-Traders, even with some of those, who were once their ardent supporters. Mr James Harvey of Liverpool, late a member of the Anti-Corn-Law League, but now a strenuous opponent of their system, thus chronicles the leading cause of his conversion. We quote from his pamphlet just published, Remunerative Price the Desideratum, not Cheapness. He says:—"My suspicions were first awakened by the blind devotion of the Manchester school of political economy to the doctrine of CHEAPNESS; for it struck me as a self-evident proposition, that to buy cheap is to sell cheap, in which case there can be no possible gain, but a positive loss, arising from the necessary aggravation of all fixed charges." In order to place the producers of this country in the same position as before, it would be necessary to reduce all fixed charges, the interest of debt both public and private, the expenses of government, and all salaries and annuities, to an amount corresponding to the forced decline of prices. This would be called a war against property; but, in reality, the war against property began when the Legislature admitted foreign untaxed produce to compete with the produce and labour of our tax-paying population at home.
Our second reason for drawing your attention to the cheerless prospect of manufactures, has reference to the sacrifices, not only indirect but direct, which the other classes of the community were called upon to make in order to prop them up. In the first place, the Property and Income Tax, which we are still called upon to pay, was imposed by Sir Robert Peel expressly for the object of effecting "such an improvement in the manufacturing interests as will react on every other interest in the country." He admitted that it was an unjust and partial impost, and therefore promised that it should be only temporary—however, we have endured it for ten years, and the Whigs will no doubt make an effort to continue it still longer. Here, then, you have a sum of five millions and a half annually confiscated for the benefit of the manufacturers, who were relieved from taxation to that amount. So far for sacrifice the first. Then came sacrifice the second, in the shape of Free Trade, mulcting the productive classes of this country to the extent of at least five-and-thirty per cent of their annual returns. Then came sacrifice the third, which handed over the carrying trade to the foreigner.
Now, considering that all these sacrifices have been made for the encouragement of manufactures, or at least with that professed object, is it not, to say the least of it, extraordinary that they have not thriven? How are we to account for a result so wholly contrary to the avowed anticipations of our statesmen? The explanation is, after all, not very difficult. All these sacrifices have been made, not for the great body of the manufacturers, but for a mere section of them. We possess no authentic official information as to the amount of manufactures consumed at home; but we have records, more or less trustworthy, of the amount of our exports, and these are used to mislead the minds of the multitude as to the actual extent and relative importance of our trade. England has no more title than France has to the character of the workshop of the world. We are driven from the markets of civilised countries by the protective duties imposed by their governments for the righteous and prudent purpose of fostering native industry, and we are compelled to seek our marts among people who are not yet so far advanced in political economy as to detect the enormous discrepancy between our principles and our practice. Listen to Mr Harvey's sketch of our foreign trade:—
"From the theories and systems I turned my attention to passing events and recorded facts: I saw the West Indies prostrated; Canada thrown into a state of revolt, succeeded by a smothered feeling of discontent; Ireland depopulated; the magnificent resources of India undeveloped; and the British farmer reduced to the dire necessity of paying rent out of capital. I also perceived that the change in our commercial policy had substituted a cosmopolitan cant in the place of patriotism and nationality. To become the friend of every country but his own had become the pride and the glory of statesmanship. Foreign goods were admitted, duty free, into our ports, in the vain hope of reciprocity being established; but our manufactures were subjected to heavy imposts on the Continent of Europe, and in the United States. China, unversed in the mysteries of political economy, only levies five per cent upon our goods, whilst, in direct contravention of our pet notions of Free Trade and reciprocity, we impose a tax of 300 per cent upon her teas. Our hopes have been disappointed, our calculations falsified. We are the dupes of our own fantastic ideas and Quixotic concessions. We are the laughing-stock of the Old and the New Worlds. The Germanic Zollverein shuns our overtures; the American excludes our ships from his seaboard."
Can these things be controverted? We defy the ingenuity of mankind to do it.
So much for the foreign trade; but there still remains the home trade, in which by far the largest portion of our manufacturing capital is embarked, and which furnishes a much greater amount of employment to British labour than the other. You see what is the state of that trade, notwithstanding the savings which may have been effected by the lowered price of food, and also notwithstanding that partial protection which several branches of it are still allowed to retain. One word as to that incidental point. Mr Cobden is reported to have said, that he did not care how soon these remnants of protection were abolished. Let him be as good as his word, and, IF HE DARES, rise up in his place in the House of Commons, and make a motion to that effect. We shall then have an opportunity of testing the exact nature of his principles. To what cause can such a depression as this, so long and continuous, be attributed, except to a general curtailment of demand on the part of the consumers, arising from the insufficiency of their means to make purchases as before? You are probably aware that what is called strict economy in families is not favourable to the interests of manufacture or of trade. Of manufactures of all kinds there must be a certain yearly consumption, based upon the necessities of the people. Besides food, men require clothes to cover them, and houses in which to dwell, and those houses must be more or less furnished. But between the bare supply of such necessities, and that point which is considered by persons, according to their tastes, education, or habits, as constituting comfort, there is a wide interval. Nothing is a more sure criterion of the wealth and income of a people than the ordering of their homes, and the manner of their living; and the traveller who passes from one country into another can at once form an estimate, from such appearances, of their respective wealth or poverty. Diminish income, and a reduction is immediately made. All superfluities are lopped off and renounced. The broker, who deals in second-hand articles, drives a larger business than the man who is the vendor of new ones; and even in domestic labour there is a large economy practised, by reducing establishments. That this must be so, will be evident on the slightest reflection. Reduce a man's income from £1000 to £800 or £600, and he will, if he has any wisdom or prudence, cut down his expenses to meet the fall. It is upon the home manufacturer in the first place, and upon the shopkeeper secondly, that these reductions tell. The one finds that his amount of production is much greater than the demand; the other does not turn over his capital nearly so rapidly as before. Add to this that the home manufacturer, in many branches, is exposed to strong foreign competition. Sir Robert Peel, in his last alterations of the tariff, did indeed continue Protection—more largely than is generally understood, for the mere amount of revenue-duty drawn from importations of foreign articles, adapted to compete with ours in the home, is no criterion of the Protective value—to some branches of industry; but others were exposed without shelter, and have since suffered accordingly. It is undeniable that a very large amount of foreign manufactures, which have paid no duty at all, or merely an elusory one, are consumed within this country—thereby inflicting extreme injury upon British labour, and depressing trades which, though severally not important, give in the aggregate, or ought to give, the means of employment to thousands. Regard the subject in any light you will, this cheapness, of which we have heard so much, just amounts to a diminution of the income of every class, except the annuitants and fund-holders, while it consequently renders the payment of the fixed burdens more grievous to every one of us.
You, gentlemen, to whom we have ventured to submit these remarks, have a very great deal in your power. You can, by your decision, either confirm the present policy, or cause it to be reversed; and your own experience will suffice to show you in what manner the system has worked. Statists may parade their figures, economists may puff their plans, statesmen may indulge in high-coloured pictures of the success which they expect to follow their measures—but the true test of every measure which has a practical tendency will be found in the effect which it produces upon the circumstances of the people, and especially upon those of the middle classes. We, who have, from the very first, anticipated the baneful effects of this attack upon British industry—we, who have no more connection than any of yourselves with territorial aristocracy, and who consider the welfare of the people as the grand object which it is the duty of the Government to promote—ask you to apply your own reason to the facts which are before you and in your reach, and to decide and act accordingly. It was, we knew from the very beginning of this struggle, impossible that you could decide until the effects of the Free-Trade experiment became visible and palpable among yourselves. We foresaw that it was only through the suffering and impoverishment of the producers that the practical lesson could reach you, and that, until this took place, it was of little use to invoke your aid, or even to entreat your judgment. Probably, by this time, you will have formed an accurate estimate of the value of the doctrines promulgated by the babblers on political economy—a sect which has never yet been allowed to interfere with the internal affairs of any nation, without producing the most disastrous results. To them we are indebted for that change of the currency which has added fully one-third to our fixed burdens, and for those complex monetary arrangements which insure periodically the return of a commercial crisis. But whatever you may think of them, do not allow yourselves to be influenced by their representations, or by those of their accredited organs. The time for theory is over. You have now to deal with facts, regarding which every man of you is competent to form an opinion. We do not ask you to accept our statements implicitly, any more than those of our opponents—though, if we did so, we might hold ourselves justified on this ground, that the greater part of our evidence is taken from the admissions of our adversaries. We appeal to your own experience, and upon that we leave you to decide.
And do not be afraid to give free utterance to your opinion. There exists not in this land—there exists not in all the world, the power which can rise up against you. The British producer on the one hand, and the exporting manufacturer on the other, may have conflicting interests not altogether reconcilable with the public good, for isolated interest always begets selfishness; and where individual or class profit is concerned, principle is apt to be overlooked. But you are, eminently, THE CLASS to pronounce upon conflicting opinions. Your interest is that of the nation whose pulse is beneath your finger. You can tell, with greater accuracy than others, whether any political prescription has stimulated the circulation of the blood, or caused it to run torpidly in the national veins. You can mark the changes in the circumstances of your customers, and from these you can form an estimate whether or not the late experiment has been successful.
If, judging by that test, you should think it has been successful, our case is lost. We, who have advocated the Protective Principle in legislation, cannot continue to maintain it, if those whose incomes depend mainly upon British custom find themselves advantaged by measures which have reduced the value of British produce. In matters of this kind there is no abstract dogma involved, on the strength of which any man could make himself a creditable martyr. Men have died for their faith or for their allegiance, believing either to be their highest duty; but no one in his senses will spend a lifetime, or any considerable portion of it, in combating absolute facts. The reason why Protection is still a living principle—the reason why it finds so many supporters among the learned and the thoughtful—the reason why it is progressing step by step towards triumph—is because, in the minds of those who advocate it, there is a strong and deep-rooted conviction that you already know that the opposite system has entirely failed to realise the predictions of its advocates, and that you feel that its permanency is contrary to your interest, and to that of the great body of the people. If we are right in this conviction, then we are entitled not only to solicit, but to demand, your earnest co-operation. These are not times for political cowardice, or weak suppression of opinion. Liberty of thought, and liberty of the expression of sentiment, are our unalienable prerogative; but of late years, and in the hands of a certain party, that prerogative has been scandalously overstretched. We now hear men—even members of the Legislature—threatening the country, and you, with hints of insurrection, in case you exercise your undoubted right of pronouncing a free and unbiassed judgment upon any point of commercial policy. Let the caitiffs bluster! They know, from the bottom of their ignoble souls—for none save an ignoble soul would have dared to conceive that such threats would intimidate any man of British birth or blood—that their menace is as meaningless and vain as their miserable motives are apparent. Let them bluster! They, the advocates of lowered wages—they, the combatants for lengthened labour—they, the crushers of the infants, have no large margin of operative sympathy upon which they can afford to trade. Had John Fielden been alive, he could have told you what these men were, and what sympathy they were likely to command. Well do the workmen know with whom they have to deal!
Let us not be misunderstood. We never have underrated the difficulty of a change such as we contemplate; but no difficulty attending that, is for a moment to be put into the balance against the general welfare of the country, if, on reflection, and on considering your own position, you shall be of opinion that the interests of the country demand that change. But, at any hazard, we cannot afford to go down-hill. To bring us, as the Manchester men contemplate, to the Continental level in point of wages as well as expenditure, is to seal the ruin of the British empire, burdened as it is; or, in the least dangerous view, to necessitate repudiation. That matter is, as we have said before, for you to decide; and the period for your decision is rapidly drawing near. On the next general election depends the fate of the country, and—without saying one syllable more upon the merits of the systems at issue—the decision or inclination of your body will form the most important, because it must be considered, as between conflicting interests, the most impartial element, of the expression of British opinion.