Nor is there any difficulty in understanding how it happens that the substitution of a large portion of foreign, for an equal amount of home-grown produce, occasions such disastrous effects, and in particular proves so injurious to the commercial classes, who in the first instance generally suppose they are to be benefited by the change. If two or three millions of rural labourers in the poorest and worst cultivated districts of the island, are thrown out of employment, either by a failure in the vegetable on which alone, in their rude state, they can employ their labour, or by the gradual substitution of foreign for home produce in the supply of food for the people, it is a poor compensation to them to say that an equal amount of foreign grain has been brought into the commercial emporiums of the empire—that if they will leave Skibbereen or Skye, and come to Liverpool or Glasgow, they will find warehouses amply stored with grain, which at the highest current prices they will obtain to any extent they desire. The plain answer is, that they are starving; that their employment as well as subsistence is gone; that they have neither the means of transport, nor any money to buy grain when they reach the neighbourhood of the bursting warehouses. But then they will be absorbed in the great manufacturing districts, where their labour will be more profitable to themselves and others, than in their native wilds! Yes, there is a process of absorption goes on, on the occurrence of such a crisis; but it is not the absorption of labour by capital, but of capital by pauperism. Floods of starving destitutes inundate every steam-boat, harbour, and road, on the route to the scene of wo; and while the interior of the warehouses in the great commercial cities are groaning beneath the weight of foreign grain, the streets in their vicinity are thronged by starving multitudes, who spread typhus fever wherever they go, and fall as a permanent burden on the poor-rates of the yet solvent portions of the community.
And the effect of this importation of foreign grain, from whatever cause it arises, necessarily is to prevent this absorption of rural pauperism by manufacturing capital, to which the Free-traders so confidently look for the adjustment of society after the change has been made. The nations who supply us with grain do not want our manufactures. They will not buy them. What they want, is our money. They have not, and will not have, the artificial wants requisite for the general purchase of manufactures for a century to come. Generations must go to their graves during the transition from rustic content to civilised wants. America has sent us some millions of quarters of grain this year, but there is no increase in her orders for our manufactures. On the contrary, they are diminishing. Even the Free Trade Journals now admit this; constrained by the evidence of their senses to admit the entire failure of all their predictions.[12] The reason is evident. They want our money, and our money they will have; and if they find our manufactures are beginning to flow in, in enlarged quantities, in consequence of our purchase of their grain, they will soon stop the influx by a tariff. This is what we did, when situated as they are—it is what all mankind will, and must do, in similar circumstances. It was distinctly perceived and foretold by the Protectionists that this effect would follow from free-trade, and that, unless something was done to enlarge the currency to meet it, a commercial crisis would ensue. These words published a year ago might pass for the history of the time in which we now live:—"Under the proposed reduced duties during the next three years, and trifling duty after that period on all sorts of grain, there can be no doubt that a very great impulse will be given to the corn-trade. It being now ascertained, by a comparison of the prices during the last twenty years, that there is annually a difference of from twenty to thirty shillings a-quarter between the price that wheat bears in the British islands and at the shores of the Baltic, while the cost of importation is only five or six shillings a-quarter, there can be no question that the opening of the ports will occasion a very large importation of foreign grain. It may reasonably be expected that, in the space of a few years, the quantity imported will amount to four or five millions of quarters annually, for which the price paid by the importers cannot be supposed to be less, on the most moderate calculation, than seven or eight millions sterling. The experience of the year 1839 sufficiently tells us what will be the effect of such an importation of grain, paid for, as it must be, for the most part in specie, upon the general monetary concerns and commercial prosperity of the empire. It is well known that it was this condition of things which produced the commercial crisis in this country, led to three years of unprecedented suffering in the manufacturing districts, and, as is affirmed, destroyed property in the manufacturing districts of Lancashire, to the amount of £40,000,000."[13]
Lastly, the famine has taught the empire an important lesson as to Irish Repeal. For many years past, that country has been convulsed, and the empire harassed by the loud and threatening demand for the Repeal of the Union, and the incessant outcry that the Irish people are perfectly equal to the duties of self-government, and that all their distresses have been owing to the oppression of the Saxon. The wind of adversity has blown, and where are these menaces now? Had Providence punished them by granting their prayer—had England cut the rope, as Mr Roebuck said, and let them go, where would Ireland have been at this moment? Drifting away on the ocean of starvation. Let this teach them their dependence upon their neighbours, and let another fact open their eyes to what those neighbours are. England has replied to the senseless clamour, the disgraceful ingratitude, by voting ten millions sterling in a single year to relieve the distresses which the heedlessness and indolence of the Irish had brought upon themselves. We say advisedly, brought upon themselves. For, mark-worthy circumstance! the destruction of the potato crop has been just as complete, and the food of the people has been just as entirely swept away in the West Highlands of Scotland, as in Ireland, but there has been no grant of public money to Scotland. The cruel Anglo-Saxons have given it all to the discontented, untaxed Gael in the Emerald isle.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Viz. 5-1/2 per cent on all advances on cash or current accounts, and 1/2 per cent commission on all sums overdrawn.
[8] Table showing the quantity of grain, including flour and meal, entered for home consumption, from 5th July 1846, to 5th February 1847, from the London Gazette official returns:—
| qrs. | ||
| Quarters of grain (including flour and meal) entered for home consumption, in the months from 5th July to 5th January as reported, 1st February, | 5,148,449 | |
| Quantity duty paid in month ending 5th Feb. | 539,418 | |
| Do. do. flour and meal, 427,036 cwts. | 142,345 | |
| _______ | 681,763 | |
| _________ | ||
| Quantity duty paid up to 5th January, | 5,830,212 | |
| In bond, 5th February, | 68,939 | |
| Do. do. flour and meal, 318,240 cwts. | 106,080 | |
| _______ | 175,019 | |
| _______ | ||
| Quantity in qrs. of duty paid and presently in bond, from month ending 5th July to 5th Feb. | 6,005,231 | |
| _________ | ||
| 1844. | 1845. | 1846. | ||
| Imports, | total official value, | £75,441,555 | £85,281,958 | |
| Sugar, cwts. | " | 4,139,983 | 4,880,780 | 5,231,818 |
| Tea, lbs. | " | 41,369,351 | 44,195,321 | 46,728,208 |
| Coffee, lbs. | " | 31,391,297 | 34,318,121 | 36,781,391 |
| Butter, cwts. | " | 180,965 | 240,118 | 255,130 |
| Cheese, cwts. | " | 212,286 | 258,246 | 327,490 |
| Live animals, No. | " | 8,007 | 34,426 | 140,752 |
| Brandy, | " | 1,033,650 | 1,058,777 | 1,515,954 |
| Geneva, | " | 14,937 | 15,536 | 40,266 |
| Rum, | " | 2,198,870 | 2,469,485 | 2,683,515 |
[10] In 1840, the total amount was estimated at £180,000,000, of which £47,000,000, at that period, was for exportation, and £133,000,000 for the home market. As this £47,000,000 had swelled, in 1846, to £53,000,000, it is reasonable to suppose that those for the home market had undergone a similar increase, and are now about £200,000 annually.—See Speckman's Stat. Tables for 1842, p. 45.