Now, let it be supposed that this increase, which will amount to less than L.7,000,000 in our exports in the whole year, is all to be set down to the credit of Free Trade. Let us suppose that Californian gold, which has given so unparalleled a stimulus to America, and the lowering the discounts of the Bank of England to 2½ per cent—which has done so much, as it always does, to vivify industry and raise prices at home—and the pacification of Germany by Muscovite influences or bayonets, which have again, after the lapse of two years, opened the Continental markets to our produce, have had nothing at all to do with this increase in our exports,—what, after all, does it amount to, and what, on striking the balance of profit and loss of Free Trade, has the nation lost or gained by its adoption?
It has increased our exports by L.7,000,000 at the very utmost; and as the total produce of our manufactures is about L.180,000,000, this is an addition of a twenty-fifth part. It has made four or five hundred thousand persons employed in the export manufactures prosperous for the time, and increased, by five or six hundred thousand pounds in the last year, the incomes of some eighty or a hundred mill-owners or millionnaires.
Per contra. 1. It has lowered the value of agricultural produce of every kind fully twenty-five per cent, and that in the face of a harvest very deficient in the south of England. As the value of that produce, prior to the Free-Trade changes, was about L.300,000,000 a-year, it has cut L.75,000,000 off the remuneration for agricultural industry over the two islands.
2. It has cut as much off the funds available to the purchase of articles of our manufacture in the home market; for if the land, which pays above half the income tax, is impoverished, how are the purchasers at home to find funds to buy goods?
3. It has totally destroyed the West Indies—colonies which, before the new system began, raised produce to the value of L.22,000,000, and remitted at least L.5,000,000 annually, in the shape of rent, profits, and taxes, to this country.
4. It has induced such ruin in Ireland, that the annual emigration, which chiefly comes from that agricultural country, last year (1849) reached 300,000 souls, and this year, it is understood, will be still greater.[15] This is as great a chasm in our population as the Moscow retreat, or the Leipsic campaign, made in that of France; but it excites no sort of attention, or rather the pressure of unemployed labour is felt to be so excessive, that it is looked on rather as a blessing. The Times observes, on January 1, 1851:—
"We see the population of Ireland flowing off to the United States in one continuous and unfailing stream, at a rate that in twenty years, if uninterrupted, will reduce them to a third of their present numbers. We see at the same time an increasing emigration from this island. England has so long been accustomed to regard excess of population as the only danger, that she will be slow to weigh as seriously as perhaps she ought this rapid subtraction of her sinew and bone, and consequent diminution of physical strength. It is impossible, however, that so considerable a change should be attended with unmixed advantage, or that human forethought should be able to compass all the results. The census of next spring may invite attention to a subject, the very magnitude of which may soon command our anxiety."
5. It has totally ruined the West Highlands of Scotland, which depend on two staples—kelp and black cattle—the first of which has been destroyed by free trade in barilla, and the second ruined by free trade in cattle, for the benefit of our manufacturing towns, and sent their cottars in starving bands to Glasgow, already overwhelmed by above L.100,000 a-year of poor-rates.
6. It has so seriously affected the internal resources of the country, that, with a foreign trade prosperous beyond what has been seen since 1845, the revenue is only L.165,000 more than it was in the preceding year, which was one of great depression; and the last quarter has produced L.110,000 less than the corresponding quarter of 1849.
7. It has so lowered the incomes of people in the country, that although the number of travellers by railways has greatly increased, and the total receipts of the lines have been swelled by L.1,700,000 since last year, the mileage has decreased-proving, that the general traffic of the country bears no adequate proportion to its railway lines. It stands thus,—