The times are past, indeed, when gratuitous distributions of grain will be made to an idle population, as under the Roman emperors, or bread be sold for centuries by government at a fixed and low price, as under their papal successors. But the same causes which produced these effects are still in full operation. The cry for cheap bread in a popular state, is as menacing as it was to the emperors or popes of Rome. The only difference is, the sacrifice of domestic industry is now more disguised. The thing is done, but it is done not openly by public deliveries of the foreign grain at low prices, but indirectly under the specious guise of free trade. Government does not say, "We will import Polish grain, and sell it permanently at thirty-six or forty shillings a quarter;" but it says, "we will open our harbours to the Polish farmers who can do so. We will admit grain duty free from a country where wages are sixpence a-day, and rents half-a-crown an acre." They thus force down the price of grain to the foreign level, augmented only by the cost and profit of importations, as effectually as ever did the emperors or Casa Annonariaof Rome.
And what has Rome—the urban population of Rome—for whose supposed interests, and in obedience to whose menacing cry, the Roman market has for eighteen centuries been supplied with foreign bread—what have they gained by this long continuation of government to their wishes? Sismondi has told us in one word—"In Rome there is no commerce between the town and the country." They would have foreign grain with its consequences, and they have had foreign grain with its consequences. And what have been these consequences? Why, that the Eternal City, which, even when taken by the Goths, had 1,200,000 inhabitants within its walls, can now scarcely number 170,000, and they almost entirely in poverty, and mainly supported by the influx and expenditure of foreigners. The Campagna, once so fruitful and so peopled, has become a desert. No inhabitant of the Roman states buys any thing in Rome. Their glory is departed—it has gone to other people and other lands. And what would have been the result if this wretched concession to the blind and unforeseeing popular clamour had not taken place? Why, that Rome would have been what Naples—where domestic industry is protected—has become; it would have numbered 400,000 busy and active citizens within its walls. The Campagna would have been what the marches of Ancona now are. Between Rome and the Campagna, a million of happy and industrious human beings would have existed in the Agro Romano, independent of all the world, mutually nourishing and supporting each other; instead of an hundred and seventy thousand indolent and inactive citizens of a town, painfully dependent on foreign supplies for bread, and on foreign gold for the means of purchasing it.
Disastrous as have been the consequences of a free trade in grain to the Roman States, alike in ancient and modern times, it was introduced by its rulers in antiquity under the influence of noble and enlightened principles. The whole civilized world was then one state; the banks of the Nile and the plains of Lybia acknowledged the sway of the emperors, as much as the shores of the Tiber or the fields of the Campagna. When the Roman government, ruling so mighty a dominion, permitted the harvests of Africa and the Ukraine to supplant those of Italy and Greece, they did no more than justice to their varied subjects. Magnanimously overlooking local interests and desires, they extended their vision over the whole civilized world, and
"View'd with equal eyes, as lords of all,"
their subjects, whether in Italy, Spain, Egypt, or Lybia. Though the seat of government was locally on the Tiber, they administered for the interest of the whole civilized world, alike far and near. If the Campagna was ruined, the Delta of Egypt flourished! If the plains of Umbria were desolate, those of Lybia and Spain, equally parts of the empire, were waving with grain. But can the same be said of England, now proclaiming a free trade in grain, not merely with her colonies or distant provinces, but with her rivals or her enemies? Not merely with Canada and Hindostan, but with Russia and America? With countries jealous of her power, envious of her fame, covetous of her riches. What should we have said of the wisdom of the Romans, if they had sacrificed Italian to African agriculture in the days of Hannibal? If they had put it into the power of the Carthaginian Senate to have said, "We will not arm our galleys; we will not levy armies; we will prohibit the importation of African grain, and starve you into submission?" How is England to maintain her independence, if the autocrat of Russia, by issuing his orders from St Petersburg, can at any moment stop the importation of ten millions of quarters of foreign grain, that is, a sixth of our whole annual consumption? And are we to render penniless our home customers, not in order to promote the interest of the distant parts of our empire, but in order to enrich and vivify our enemies?
It is said public opinion runs in favour of such a change; that the manufacturing has become the dominant interest in the state; that wages must at all hazards be beat down to the continental level; and that, right or wrong, the thing must be done. Whether this is the case or not, time, and possibly a general election, will show. Sometimes those who are the most noisy, are not the most numerous. Certain it is, that in 1841 a vast majority both of the electors and the people were unanimous in favour of protection. But, be the present opinion of the majority what it may, that will not alter the nature of things—It will not render that wise which is unwise. Public opinion in Athens, in the time of Demosthenes, was nearly unanimous to apply the public funds to the support of the theatres instead of the army, and they got the battle of Chæronea, and subjection by Philip, for their reward. Public opinion in Europe was unanimous in favour of the Crusades, and millions of brave men left their bones in Asia in consequence. The Senate of Carthage, yielding to the wishes of the majority of their democratic community, refused to send succours to Hannibal in Italy; and they brought, in consequence, the legions of Scipio Africanus round their walls. Public opinion in France was unanimous in favour of the expedition to Moscow. "They regarded it," says Segur, "as a mere hunting party of six months;" but that did not hinder it from bringing the Cossacks to Paris. The old Romans were unanimous in their cry for cheap bread, and they brought the Gothic trumpet to their gates from its effects. A vast majority of the electors of Great Britain in 1831, were in favour of Reform: out of 101, 98 county members were returned in the liberal interest; and now they have got their reward, in seeing the Reformed Parliament preparing to abolish all protection to native industry. All the greatest and most destructive calamities recorded in history have been brought about, not only with the concurrence, but in obedience to the fierce demand of the majority. Protection to domestic industry, at home or colonial, is the unseen but strongly felt bond which unites together the far distant provinces of the British empire by the firm bond of mutual interest.
MR BROOKE OF BORNEO.
[48]On the 19th of August last, some twenty boats belonging to her Majesty's ships, Agincourt, Vestal, Dædalus, Wolverine, Cruiser, and Vixen, and containing about five hundred men, attacked and destroyed in the Malladu, a river of the Eastern Archipelago, the forts of Seriff Housman, a notorious and daring pirate, whose crimes had paralysed the commerce of the seas of Borneo, and finally rendered British interference absolutely necessary for the security of British life and property. The action was one of the many that the suppression of piracy in these regions has demanded—was gallantly fought, and full reported in the journals of the time;—a narrow river, with two forts mounting eleven or twelve heavy guns, (and defended by from five hundred to one thousand fighting men,) protected by a strong and well-contrived boom, was the position of the enemy. The English boats took the bull by the horns—cut away part of the boom under a heavy fire; advanced and carried the place in a fight protracted for fifty minutes. The enemy fought well, and stood manfully to their guns. The mate of the Wolverine fell mortally wounded whilst working at the boom, axe in hand; but his death was avenged by a wholesale slaughter of the pirates. At two minutes to nine, those who had remained on board the Vixen heard the report of the first heavy gun, and the first column of black smoke proclaimed that the village was fired. On the evening of the 19th, a detachment of ten boats, with fresh men and officers, quitted the Vixen, and arrived at the forts shortly after daylight. The work of destruction was complete. The boom, above spoken of, was ingeniously fastened with the chain-cable of a vessel of three hundred or four hundred tons; other chains, for darker purposes, were discovered in the town; a ship's long-boat; two ship's bells, one ornamented with grapes and vine leaves, and marked "Wilhelm Ludwig, Bremen," and every other description of ship's furniture. Some piratical boats were burned, twenty-four brass guns captured; the other guns spiked or otherwise destroyed. Malladu ceased to exist; the power of Seriff Housman was extinguished in a day.
Small wars, as well as great, have their episodes of touching tenderness. Twenty-four hours after the action, a poor woman, with her child of two years of age, was discovered in a small canoe; her arm was shattered at the elbow by a grape-shot, and the poor creature lay dying for want of water, in an agony of pain, with her child playing around her, and endeavouring to derive the sustenance which the mother could no longer give. The unfortunate woman was taken on board the Vixen, and in the evening her arm was amputated. On board the Vixen she met with one who offered to convey her to the Borneon town of Sarāwak, where she would find protection. To have left her where she was, would have been to leave her to die. To the stranger's kind offers she had but one answer to give. "If you please to take me, I shall go. I am a woman, and not a man; I am a slave, and not a free woman—do as you like." The woman recovered, was grateful for the kindness shown her, and was deposited faithfully and well in the town already named, by the stranger already introduced.