No evil is unmixed with good. The murmurs of the alarmists at home, unfounded as we believe them to be, have brought out, more clearly than we could have hoped for, the state of foreign feeling with regard to British enterprise, and the prospects of future supply upon which this country must depend, should the sliding-scale be abrogated and all import duties abolished. The most infatuated Leaguer will hardly deny, that if the corn-law had ceased to exist three years ago, and a great part of our poorer soils had in consequence been removed from tillage, our present position with regard to food must have been infinitely worse. In fact, we should then have presented the unhappy spectacle of a great industrial community incapable of rearing food for its population at home, and solely dependent for a supply on foreign states; and that, too, in a year when the harvests throughout Europe, and even in America, have suffered. And here, by the way, before going further, let us remark, that the advocates of the League never seem to have contemplated, at all events they have never grappled with, the notorious fact, that
the effects of most unpropitious seasons are felt far beyond the confines of the British isles. This year, indeed, we were the last to suffer; and the memory of the youngest of us, who has attained the age of reason, will furnish him with examples of far severer seasons than that which has just gone by. What, then, is to be done, should the proportion of the land in tillage be reduced below the mark which, in an average year, could supply our population with food—if, at the same time, a famine were to occur abroad, and deprive the continental agriculturists of their surplus store of corn? The answer is a short one—Our people must necessarily STARVE. The manufacturers would be the first to feel the appalling misery of their situation, and the men whom they would have to thank for the severest and most lingering death, are the chosen apostles of the League!
Is this an overdrawn picture? Let us see. France at this moment is convinced that we are on the verge of a state of famine. Almost all the French journalists, believing what they probably wish for, and misled by the repealing howl, and faint-hearted predictions of the coward, assume that our home stock of provision is not sufficient to last us for the ensuing winter. That is just the situation to which we should be reduced every year, if Messrs Cobden, Bright, and Company had their will. What, then, says our neighbour, and now most magnanimous ally? Is he willing—for they allege they have a superfluity—to supply us in this time of hypothetical distress—to act the part of the good Samaritan, and pour, not wine and oil, but corn into our wounds? Is he about to take the noblest revenge upon a former adversary, by showing himself, in the moment of need, a benefactor instead of a foe? Oh, my Lord Ashley! you and others, whose spirit is more timid than becomes your blood, had better look, ere you give up the mainstay of your country's prosperity—ere you surrender the cause of the agriculturist—to the animus that is now manifested abroad. We have reason to bless Heaven that it has been thus early shown, before, by mean and miserable concession to the clamours of a selfish interest, we have placed Britain for the first time absolutely at the mercy of a foreign power. Scarce a journal in France that does not tell you—loudly—boldly—exultingly—what treatment we may expect from their hands. "At last," they say, "we have got this perfidious Albion in our power. Nature has done for us, in her cycle, what for centuries the force of our arms and concentrated rancour could not achieve. The English newspapers in every column teem with the tidings of failure. The crop of corn is bad beyond any former experience. It cannot suffice to feed one half of the population. The potato crop also, which is the sole subsistence of Ireland, is thoroughly ruined. Scarce a minute fraction of it can be used for the purposes of human food. The British Cabinet are earnestly deliberating on the propriety of opening the ports. The public, almost to a man, are demanding the adoption of that measure—and doubtless erelong they will be opened.
"What, then, are we to do? Are we to be guilty of the egregious folly of supplying our huge and overgrown rival, at the moment when we have the opportunity to strike a blow at the very centre of her system, and that without having recourse to the slightest belligerent measures? Are we, at the commencement of her impending misery, to reciprocate with England—that England which arrested us in the midst of our career of conquest, swept our navies from the seas, baffled our bravest armies, and led away our Emperor captive? The man who can entertain such an idea—be he who he may—is a traitor to the honour of his country. Let England open her ports if she will, and as she must, but let us at the self-same moment be prepared to CLOSE our own. Let not one grain of corn, if possible, be exported from France. We have plenty, and to spare. Our hardy peasantry can pass the winter in comfort; whilst, on the opposite side of the Channel, we shall have the satisfaction of beholding our haughty enemy convulsed, and wallowing like a stranded Leviathan on the shore! We pity the brave Irish, but we shall not help them. To do so would be, in fact, to exonerate Britain of her greatest and primary burden."
This is the language which the
French journalists are using at the present moment. Let no Englishman delude himself into the belief that it does not express the true sentiments of the nation. We know something of the men whose vocation it is to compound these patriotic articles. They are fostered under the pernicious system which converts the penny-a-liner into that anomalous hybrid, a Peer of France—which make it almost a necessary qualification to become a statesman, that the aspirant has been a successful scribbler in the public journals. And this, forsooth, they call the genuine aristocracy of talent! Their whole aim is to be popular, even at the expense of truth. They are pandars to the weakness of a nation for their own individual advancement. They have no stake in the country save the grey goose-quill they dishonour; and yet they affect to lead the opinions of the people, and—to the discredit of the French intellect be it recorded—they do in a great measure lead them. In short, it is a ruffian press, and we know well by what means France has been ruffianized. The war party—as it calls itself—is strong, and has been reared up by the unremitting exertions of these felons of society, who, for the sake of a cheer to tickle their own despicable vanity, would not hesitate for a moment, if they had the power, to wrap Europe again in the flames of universal war. Such will, doubtless, one day be the result of this unbridled license. The demon is not yet exorcised from France, and the horrors of the Revolution may be acted over again, with such additional refinements of brutality as foregone experience shall suggest. Meantime, we say to our own domestic shrinkers—Is this a season, when such a spirit is abroad, to make ourselves dependent for subsistence—which is life—upon the chance of a foreign supply?
Yes, gentlemen journalists of France—whether you be peers or not—you have spoken out a little too early. The blindest of us now can see you in your genuine character and colours. But rest satisfied; the day of retribution, as you impiously dare to term it, has not yet arrived. Britain does not want your corn, and not for it will she abandon an iota of her system.
There can be no doubt, that the news of a famine here would be received in France with more joy than the tidings of a second Marengo. The mere expectation of it has already intoxicated the press; and, accordingly, they have begun to speculate upon the probable conduct of other foreign powers, in the event of our ports being opened. Belgium, they are delighted to find, is in so bad a situation, in so far as regards its crop, that the august King Leopold has thought proper to issue a public declaration, that his own royal mouth shall for the next year remain innocent of the flavour of a single potato. This looks well. Belgium, it is hoped, is not overabundant in wheat; but, even if she were, Belgium owes much to France, and—a meaning asterisk covers and conveys the remaining part of the inuendo. Swampy Holland, they say, can do Britain no good—nay, have not the cautious Dutch been beforehand with Britain, and forestalled, by previous purchase, the calculated supply of rice? Well done, Batavian merchant! In this instance, at least, you are playing the game for France.
Then they have high hopes from the Zollverein. That combination has evidently to dread the rivalry of British manufacture, and its managers are too shrewd to lose this glorious opportunity of barricado. There are, therefore, hopes that Germany, utterly forgetting the days of subsidies, will shut her ports for export, and also prevent the descent of Polish corn. If not, winter is near at hand, and the mouths of the rivers may be frozen before a supply can be sent to the starving British. Another delightful prospect for young and regenerated France!
Also, mysterious rumours are afloat with regard to the policy of the Autocrat. It is said, he too is going to shut up—whether from hatred to Britain, or paternal anxiety for the welfare of his subjects, does not appear. Yet there is not a Parisian scribe of them all but derives his information direct from the secret cabinet of Nicholas. Then there is America—have we not rumours of war there? How much depends upon the result of the speech which President Polk shall deliver! He knows well by this time