We take our stand upon the principle of protection to national agriculture and industry, in the existing and peculiar circumstances of the country. We do not love restrictions for their own sake, or desire any protection by which nothing is to be protected. But we think that protection is demanded by the exigencies of the whole community, and to that extent and on that ground we advocate its preservation for the general good. We shall not enquire at present how far the amount or the form of that protection may be modified. That may no doubt be a varying question, of which the discussion is to be controlled only by the grave consideration that its too frequent agitation is a great evil, as inevitably unsettling important rights and arrangements. But if it be thought that the rapid progress of events in this railway age admits or requires a relaxation or re-construction of existing restrictions, we are prepared candidly to consider any specific plan that may be tabled, and to weigh deliberately the amount and kind of protection that may now be necessary to preserve our status quo, having regard to the facilities of transit, the discoveries of science, the progress of improvement, the increase of population, the abundance of money, and any other elements which may be alleged as to a certain extent emerging since the last adjustment of the scale, and having special regard also to any alteration in the distribution of taxation which may accompany the proposal for such change. We do not see our way to such a change. We do not recognise its necessity; but we think it unbecoming the position occupied by those who concur in our principles to offer a blind or bigoted resistance to any discussion of a practical matter, which must always depend greatly on surrounding circumstances and complex calculations. Far less shall we here enquire whether the time is soon or is ever to arrive when all protection is to cease. In politics, as in other things, the absolute words of "always" or "never" are rarely to be spoken. It is sufficient for us to say, that the period when such a revolution ought to take place has not as yet been presented to our minds as an object of present and practical contemplation.
Let us unite, then, in support of these national principles with a calm, candid, and temperate firmness, demanding a just and fair protection, so far and so long as it is needed to keep our soil in cultivation, and to foster those improvements, which cannot be carried on without the prospect of a due return, and by means of which alone, if ever, the necessity of protection may be superseded, or its amount diminished. Let us oppose any rash or undue alteration, from whatever quarter it may come; but, above all, let us resist to the uttermost the attempts of selfish Leaguers and the more reckless portion of the Whigs, whose interested or unprincipled policy would overlook all those large and deep-seated considerations, which in every view require so much management, and such nice computation, before any thing can be done in so momentous a matter as the providing permanently for a nation's food, and the development of a nation's resources with a due regard to those various interests which seem often to be conflicting, but which, in a just point of perspective, are ultimately identical.
Our pain in contemplating the loss of one ministry, is not alleviated by our anticipation of the ministry that is expected to succeed. The rash and presumptuous man who has been called to take office, does not possess, and his character, so far as hitherto known, is not calculated to command, the confidence of the British nation. We could not look back upon the crude projects and unscrupulous practices by which the last Whig ministry disgraced their office and endangered their country, without a feeling of the deepest alarm—if we believed it possible that a repetition of them would now be tolerated. What is to be the character and course of our new rulers? Independently of the corn-laws, what is to be their policy as to Ireland, as to foreign affairs, as to domestic finance? Is the Popish Church to be endowed in the sister kingdom? or is the Protestant Establishment to be overthrown? Is repeal to be openly patronized, or only covertly connived at? Is Lord Palmerston to be let loose on our relations with other powers, and to embroil us, before six months are over, in a quarrel with France and a war with America? Is our revenue to be supported to the level of our expenditure, or is a growing deficiency to be permitted to accumulate, till our credit is crippled, and our character branded with almost Pensylvanian notoriety? Is the country prepared for such enormities as these, or for the risk of their being attempted? We hope not: we think not. We feel assured that the very contemplation of their possibility, would make the nation rise in a mass, and eject the imbecile impostors who have already been so patiently tried, and so miserably found wanting.
Then, as to the corn-laws, is the new minister to adhere to his last manifesto, or has he used it merely as a lever for opposition purposes, to be laid aside, like some implement of housebreaking, when an entry into the premises has been effected? That attempt will scarcely be tolerated by his own supporters. Then how is he to carry his measure? With the present House of Commons, he cannot hope to do so, nor can he entertain that anticipation from any dissolution, except one carried on under such circumstances of unprincipled agitation, as would convulse the country, and prove fatal to commercial credit and prosperity.
But suppose he had the power, how would he use it? Would his measure be such as would immediately throw any considerable portion of land out of cultivation? That seems to be the hinging point of this corn-law question; and it is one on which the "total and immediate" men are more evasive, in public discussion, than on any other, though privately such of them as understand the subject, are fully aware of its bearings. If the proposed scheme would not attain or involve the result of throwing inferior soils out of culture, what good would it do to the League and their friends? For, strange to say, when the matter is probed to the bottom, the battle for which the League are truly fighting is directed to the great national end of laying waste inferior land. It is only by lowering rents and prices that they expect benefit, yet it is as clear as day that rents are dependent on the comparative value of the highest and lowest grades of the land in tillage; and if prices fall, those lands that barely pay at the present rates must cease to be cultivated. Read any of the more open and outspoken repealers. Take up the little tales of Miss Martineau, one of the most able and honest of her sect, and see how completely the object is to get rid of the expense attending the cultivation of inferior land. If that object is not attained by total and immediate repeal the whole discussion is a delusion. But if Lord John's proposed measures will throw lands out of cultivation, to a large extent, what provision is to be made to avert the inevitable evils that must ensue? How is the surplus population to be supported that will thus be thrown loose on the market of labour? How are the burdens to be provided for that the land thus disabled has hitherto borne? Are the imposts on agriculture to increase while its returns are to diminish? or is the old Whig expedient to be resorted to, of raising that very tax which they have resisted and denounced? Are all customs-duties to be abolished, and is the deficiency to be supplied by having the property-tax aggravated to whatever multiple the account may require? What safeguards or palliatives are to be devised to prevent the panic likely to ensue from so vast and so sudden a revolution; in which, under the instant diminution of rents and precariousness of prices, every mortgagee will be driven in desperation to recur upon his debtor, and every landlord upon his tenant; while the whole landed interest, high and low, though chiefly, no doubt, the middle and smaller proprietors and tenants, will be compelled to curtail their expenses to the lowest sum, and those who have already but a narrow margin of surplus, be reduced to beggary and ruin.
But would this confusion and distress affect the landed interest alone? No; the same alarm which involved that interest in ruin, would soon extend to manufactures, by striking at their foundation, credit. Already, from a singular and unhappy combination of causes, a period of restricted circulation and of high interest for money, has begun to follow on one of unlimited accommodation: distrust seems ready to take the place of confidence: gigantic schemes in progress are paralysed or threatened with abandonment: the country appears to be trembling on the brink of one of those commercial crises which from time to time, and unavoidably, arise out of the spirit of speculation. Let but this additional element of confusion—the distress of the agricultural classes, and all that depend upon them—be thrown into the already wavering scale, and who can pretend to estimate the amount of ruin which a week may produce? The paradise of free-trade in corn may indeed be obtained, but it will be reached through the purgatory of a general bankruptcy.
But is free-trade to be confined to corn? Are the agriculturists alone to be deprived of protection, the manufacturing interests retaining the advantage of those protecting duties which exclude the competition of foreign markets? That is plainly impracticable. The silk, the wool, the iron, the manufactures of the Continent—the "main articles of food and clothing," according to Lord John Russell's letter—are also to be admitted into our markets at rates with which native industry cannot contend. Is this likely to raise wages, or to keep them as they are? Will it better the condition of the working classes? Or is the condition even of the higher classes in the mercantile circles to be made more comfortable by that immediate increase of the income-tax, which must be imposed, to balance the loss of revenue arising from the deficiency of our customs, if national faith is to be preserved, or the government of the country conducted. In every view of the case, and to every interest in the state, we believe that absolute free-trade, such as appears to be contemplated by the late leader of the Whigs, would be fraught with ruin. The letting loose of such a storm upon the State, with the hand of Lord John Russell to hold the helm, is a contingency from which we believe the very boldest will draw back.
But we feel no apprehension of such a result. There is now no democracy to be fooled into a new excitement in favour of a Whig ministry, or to be cheated by a cry of cheap bread, counteracted as it must be by the contemplation of lower wages, and an increased competition in the labour-market. The middle classes, again, and all who have any thing to lose, are too wise to hazard the prosperity of the last four years, by supporting the men to whose ejection from office that prosperity is attributable.
We should, at the same time, act with a want of candour and frankness towards our agricultural friends, if we did not direct their attention to another aspect of the case. If it be true, contrary to our own hopes and convictions, that repeal is inevitable, every thing depends on the time and manner of effecting it. There is a inestimable value attending every year of continued protection that can yet be gained. Even a comparatively short period might be of infinite importance in completing those great improvements now in progress, which will raise the available fertility of so large a portion of our soil, but which must instantly stop, if protection be suddenly withdrawn. It is not in our power to see far into futurity, but every delay is precious, as enabling us better to meet the demands of public necessity, and to stand a competition with foreign soils, if that competition must ultimately be entered upon without legislative aid. How infinite, too, the difference of any change produced with a panic, and without one! There may be various arrangements, moreover, which, if boldly and equitably made, might possibly go to place our protection on a footing nearly as firm, and not so likely to be assailed. On all this, however, we suspend our judgment for the present, remarking merely that we are not prepared to quit our present amount and plan of protection without demonstration that we cannot fairly or prudently retain it.
In the meantime let us hope and struggle for the best, for the maintenance either of the present law, or of a scale substantially equivalent. If that fails us, let us aim at the next best arrangement; and by a firm and temperate course, we need not at least despair of averting that overwhelming confusion and wide destruction of property that would inevitably follow from the nostrums of desperate and designing men, devised and conducted with an equal absence of wisdom and of honesty.