The Prussian thaler is 2s. 10-3/4d. sterling.
Year by year the rise has been uninterrupted; and with the growth of imported commodities thus represented by the revenue, have indigenous products multiplied, and native manufactures flourished and extended more rapidly and widely still.
In a review of protected nations it is impossible that France should be lost sight of. More rigorously protective than Belgium, prohibitive even in some essential parts of her system, whilst stimulating by bounties in others, the results of a policy so artificial and complicated can hardly fail to confound your dabblers in first principles and rigid uniformity. In the sense economical France has not hesitated to violate outrageously all these first principles, all that perfect theory, in the worship and application of which, politically and socially, her philosophers were wont to run raging mad, and her legislators, like frantic bacchanals, were in such sanguinary "haste to destroy." Singular as it may seem, and audaciously heretical as the consummation in defiance of the order inevitable of first causes and consequences invariable, the comparative freedom of commercial principles in the old régime of France allied with political despotism, was, however, ruthlessly condemned to the guillotine, along with the head of the Capets, never to be replaced by the ferocious spirit of democracy, revelling in the realization of all other visionary abstractions of perfect liberty, equality, levelling of distinctions and monopolies. With the reign of the rights of man was established, in the body politic, that of prohibition and restriction over the body industrial—gradually sobered down, as we find it now, to a system singularly made up of prohibition, restriction, protective, and stimulant, since the last great revolution of July. It is in vain to deny that, under the reign of that system, France has prospered and progressed beyond all former example; that whether freer Switzerland may have stood still or not, France, at least, has never retrograded one step, nor ceased to advance for one year, as thus may be concisely exemplified in the citation of three terms of her commercial career, faithfully indicative of the annual consecutive movement of the whole series:—
| Imports.—General Commerce, | Exports. | ||
| 1831 | 512,825,551 | francs, | 618,169,911 |
| 1836 | 905,575,359 | ... | 961,284,756 |
| 1841 | 1,122,000,000 | ... | 1,065,000,000 |
Thus the imports in ten years had more than doubled, whilst the exports had advanced 400 millions in official value; say upwards of twenty millions sterling per annum for imports, and sixteen millions for exports. The special commerce of France, representing exports of indigenous and manufactured products, and imports for consumption, and, therefore, significative of the march of domestic industry, presents the following movement:—
| Imports.—Special Commerce. | Exports. | |
| 1831 | 374,188,000 | 455,574,000 |
| 1836 | 504,391,000 | 628,957,000 |
| 1841 | 805,000,000 | 761,000,000 |
The imports, therefore, for consumption, that is, duty paid upon and consumed, had multiplied twofold in the ten years; and the exports of the products of the soil and manufactures, at the rate of 300 millions of francs or twelve millions sterling.
Thus flourish, wherever we turn our eyes, the interests of industry, where defended and encouraged by that protection to which so righteously entitled at home. The abolition of all protection, in the economical sense, would be policy just as sane as, politically, to dismantle the royal navy, start the guns overboard, and leave the hulls of the men-of-war to sink or swim, in harbour or out, as they might. Conscious of the inherent rottenness or insanity of such a destructive principle of action, its advocates would now persuade us, that, although inimical to protective imposts, they are by no means averse from the imposition of such fiscal burdens as might be necessary for raising the amount of revenue required for State exigencies. The difference between one sort of impost and the other, would seem little more than a change of name—a flimsy juggle of words—"a rose by any other name would smell as sweet;" and, to the consumer, it matters little whether the tax he pay is levied for protection or finance, the sum being equal. It is, and it has been objected against various protective duties, that, as revenue, they are little productive; but, in fact, they were not originally or generally laid on with a view to revenue direct, but with the intent of protecting those growing or established interests, which are productive of revenue indirectly, by enabling protected producers to consume largely of taxed commodities, or to contribute, by direct taxation, their quota towards general revenue. If, by reciprocal agreement and stipulations with foreign states which are, or might become, consumers of the products of national industry, equitable equivalents can be found for the sacrifice of a certain amount of home protection, that may be a question deserving of consideration; but a very different question from the one-sided suicidal abolition of all protection. It may pass under review hereafter. In the mean time, let us hope that neither Government nor Legislature will be insidiously betrayed, or openly bullied, into any unsafe tampering with, or rash experiments upon, a sound and rational principle.