It is the same with nearly all the other articles. How our manufacturers and artisans are to go on, any more than our farmers, striving against this prodigious and rapid increase of foreign importations, it is for them to say; but probably experience will, ere long, enlighten their understandings on this subject.
Indeed this inevitable reaction of domestic distress in trade, as well as agriculture, against the Free Trade System, has already set in. We make the following extracts from the Circular of Messrs T. & H. Littledale & Co. of Liverpool, perhaps the greatest brokers in the world, for Monday 4th March 1850:—
| Import of Cotton. | ||
|---|---|---|
| From Jan. 1 to March 5, 1849. | From Jan. 1 to March 5, 1850. | |
| Bales, | 328,523 | 267,666 |
| Sales of do. | 464,070 | 368,950 |
| Home consumption, | 305,040 | 207,960 |
| Stock at this date, | 384,230 | 518,170 |
Here is a decline from 3 to 2 in all branches of the cotton trade, since the two first months of last year, except in stocks, in which there is an increase from 4 to 5¼. We recommend this to the attention of the gentlemen in Manchester who introduced the Free Trade System. We shall not imitate their example by saying it is a "Cotton Lord Question," with which the public generally has no concern.
In the close of the same Circular it is stated:—
"General Remarks.—The month of February affords little matter for comment. It has been a particularly dull month in business, and, when contrasted with the energy and speculative excitement of January, the sudden change appears the more striking. There is probably no one cause to which this can be attributed, but principally, no doubt, from a reaction, the invariable consequence of over-activity. The old complaints of railway depression and Continental disquiet may have had some influence, but the large arrivals of some articles, Tea, for instance, of which twenty-five cargoes have come to hand in five weeks, and the near approach of the import season for Sugar, Coffee, and other produce, taken in connexion with the advance of prices at the opening of the year, have deterred the wholesale houses from operating beyond their immediate wants.
"Great complaints are made of the bad state of the country shopkeepers in the agricultural districts. We have closely questioned some of our wholesale grocers and tea-dealers, who assure us that there is no disguising the fact that such is the case, and that the general answer received from travellers is, 'they can get neither money nor orders.' The serious falling off in the deliveries of sugar, coffee, tea, and cocoa, for the two months of this year, compared with those of the last, but too truly confirms these complaints, and are perhaps the most alarming features in our present prospects. As given in Prince's Public Prices Current of 1st inst. they stand as follows:—
| 1850. | 1849. | 1848. | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sugar, | 37,006 | 43,408 | 42,368 tons. | |
| Coffee, | 3,795,712 | 4,907,691 | pounds. | |
| Cocoa, | 450,774 | 558,888 | " | |
| Tea, | 5,375,648 | 5,502,931 | " |
"The Chancellor's Budget is expected to be brought forward on the 15th instant, when some measure may possibly be proposed to check the unfair use of Chicory with Coffee; and to do this, it is thought by some that an equalisation of the Duties on Colonial and Foreign Coffee may be necessary; but, in the present relative position of prices here and on the Continent, the effect of such a change would not be much felt."
It is evident that squalls are approaching, which, indeed, under our present Free Trade and Monetary System, are the inevitable results of a brief period of prosperity; and let it be recollected, when another crisis does arrive, as arrive it will, the consequences will be far more disastrous than the last. Then the agricultural interest was prosperous, because the Corn Laws were not repealed; and the magnitude of the Home Markets sustained the nation during the dreadful commercial crisis which prostrated so large a part of the foreign manufacturers. Now the case is just the reverse,—distress is beginning with the home markets: and the agricultural population, so far from supporting the manufacturing in their difficulties, will be fain to recur to them for support in their distresses. Hundreds of thousands of agricultural labourers, thrown out of bread by the effects of Free Trade, will be crowding into the towns as they did into the great cities in the later periods of the Roman Empire, in the hope of finding that employment from the wealth of the urban population, or that relief from their charities, which they can no longer look for in their native seats.
A highly distinguished officer and writer, who will not readily be suspected of a leaning towards Tory principles, General Sir William Napier, the eloquent historian of the Peninsular War, has lately written a letter, which has appeared in the columns of the Observer, portraying the effects of Free Trade upon the fate and independence of the nation in future times, in such powerful and graphic colours, that we cannot resist the satisfaction of giving it additional publicity through the columns of this Magazine:—