Declared Value of Exports of Home Produce and Manufactures for
Nine Months. Jan. 5 to October 10.
| 1845. | 1846. | 1847. |
| £41,732,143. | £40,008,874. | £39,975,207. |
The general decrease is apparent, but it is necessary to go a little more minutely to work, and inquire into the respective items. It is only by doing so that we can fully understand the true operation of free trade, and the manner in which it is calculated to undermine and ultimately to overthrow the strongholds of our domestic industry. We entreat the earnest attention of our readers to the great decline, which is exhibited in the following staples of export.
| 1845. | 1846. | 1847. | |
| Cotton Manufactures, | £14,761,236 | £13,632,880 | £13,682,095 |
| Ditto Yarn, | 5,379,400 | 6,112,918 | 4,601,180 |
| Linen Manufactures, | 2,353,879 | 2,110,666 | 2,273,427 |
| Ditto Yarn, | 807,418 | 639,245 | 504,727 |
| Wool, | 456,170 | 228,645 | 214,756 |
| Woollen Yarn, | 835,370 | 685,712 | 778,725 |
| Woollen Manufactures, | 6,224,981 | 5,146,699 | 5,616,536 |
| __________ | |||
| £30,818,454 | £28,556,765 | £27,671,445 |
The decline upon these staple commodities of export is so obvious as to need no remark. There is also a falling off, as between 1845 and 1847, in the following exported articles:—Butter, candles, coals, earthenware, glass, leather, copper and brass, lead, tin-plates, soap, and refined sugar. The rise, on the contrary, is upon cheese, fish, hardwares, machinery, iron and steel, unwrought tin, salt, and silk manufactures; of which two items certainly important.
| 1845. | 1846. | 1847. | |
| Machinery, | £644,839 | £897,442 | £942,533 |
| Iron and steel, | 2,854,048 | 8,374,335 | 4,096,367 |
| __________ | __________ | __________ | |
| £3,498,887 | £4,271,777 | £5,038,900 |
This shows the pace at which manufactures are advancing abroad, and explains but too clearly the reason of the decrease in our staple exports. The product of British industry is declining; and we can only partially redeem the deficit by sending abroad the sinews of our national prosperity. We are in the condition of the artisan whose expenditure exceeds his wages, and who is driven to part with his tools. We are fitting up foreign mills with our choicest machinery, furnishing our opponents with weapons, and yet the free traders tell us that on such terms we can afford to cope with, and to vanquish them!
The truth is, so long as we proclaim ourselves the gold-bankers of the world, and make perpetual boast of the hoards which we have from time to time accumulated, we shall never be safe against a money drain from England. We cannot force foreigners to take our British manufactures; the demand, as we said before, is precarious, and we cannot go on making calicoes and cottons for ever at a loss. In exchange for extended imports, two things may be taken, goods or specie, and with the prospect of lower prices to come, the foreigner will always choose the latter. Hence, in a great measure, arose the drain of bullion, which was sent to America. We were at that time in want not only of corn, but of cotton, and a supply of the latter material was indispensably necessary to keep the factories open. In ordinary times, no doubt, the American would have taken goods in exchange, but in the then posture of affairs, he saw the subsequent advantage which he must derive by carrying away her bullion from England, without decreasing her stock, for, as a natural consequence, that stock must sorely depreciate in value. And it is not until we can get rid of our ready manufactured stores, at whatever sacrifice, that we shall again recover that precious basis of our currency, which we cling to with the most doting affection, and for the sake of which we are content every few years to undergo a national convulsion.
Such being the state of our exports under the operation of free trade, let us now look a little to the other side of the balance sheet. The duties levied at the custom-houses constitute, as every one knows, the largest portion of our revenue, and therefore cannot be made the subject of experiment, without extreme risk of defalcation. We have already shown that, although, upon the whole, our imports have risen, the gain has exclusively proceeded from that portion of imports upon which the duty has not been reduced, and that wherever we have lost any thing, it has been through the attempt to approximate to free trade. The experiment, however, has already been made upon a large scale; it has cost us many millions, and the odious income tax remains as a tangible proof of its failure. It was, according to Sir Robert Peel, the sure method of commanding reciprocity from the foreigner, and of extending our exports largely. Neither result has followed; we are as far from reciprocity as ever, and the exports have seriously decreased.
It is necessary also that we should remark what kind of articles have been selected for the late experiment, because some, although not all, of our import duties are framed with a view to protection as well as for revenue purposes. For example, no one will dispute that we have a great interest in procuring such raw materials as cotton and silk for our manufactures as cheap as possible, because we cannot produce those articles at home, and our success depends upon their reproduction in the shape of fabrics. Here then there is no question of competition, apart from colonial interests, and we do right to throw no obstacle in the way of their introduction. But the admission of manufactured articles, either of silk or of cotton, at so low a rate of duty as to encourage the foreigner to compete with us in the home market, is a totally different matter. It is a blow to native industry of the worst and most insidious description, and cannot be justified even on the ground that the cheapness thereby induced is a recompense to the agricultural portion of the community for the sweeping measures which abrogated not only the grain duties, but those which were formerly imposed upon all kinds of foreign provisions. The agriculturists of Britain, from the landlord to the peasant, desire no such recompense. They do not wish that in addition to the hardships which they themselves have sustained, other classes of the community should be doomed to suffer; they do not wish that the wages of the manufacturing operative should be reduced in order that French silks and velvets and millinery may be brought in to inundate the market; and they will be no parties to any scheme for the depression of our national labour. It may suit Sir Robert Peel and the Whigs to hold up cheapness as the great desideratum of commercial legislation, but our creed, is otherwise: we protest against the tariff of 1846, as injurious to the revenue, as hostile to home industry, and as an engine of destruction to the already over-taxed and over-burdened artisan. Let us extract from the tariffs of the last two years some instances of this unnatural policy:—