This insistence upon the paramount importance of domestic policy led the Manchester men into an exaggerated contempt for foreign policy. Their patriotism was not wanting in sturdiness, but it was of that noble and rare variety which is not afraid to rebuke national insolence and oppression. Their opposition to the Crimean War and the support which most of them gave to the North during the American Civil War are among the best things which the School ever did for England. Bright spoke of "the high example of a Christian nation, free in its institutions, courteous and just in its conduct towards all foreign States, and resting its policy on the unchangeable foundation of Christian morality.... I believe there is no permanent greatness to a nation except it is based upon morality.... The moral law was not written for men alone in their individual character, but that it was written as well for nations."[[240]] The patriotism of a man like this may have been mistaken, but it was never mean. The title of a "Peace at any price man" was never deserved by any member of the School. It opposed only the aggressive and risky policy, which in Palmerston's day passed for the maintenance of national dignity and influence, and wasted the wealth of the people in quarrels with which they had no real
concern. "The middle and industrious class of England can have no interest apart from the preservation of peace. The honour, the fame, the emoluments of war belong not to them; the battle-plain is the harvest-field of the aristocracy, watered with the blood of the people.... It is only when at peace with other States that a nation finds the leisure for looking within itself, and discovering the means to accomplish great domestic ameliorations."[[241]] So they suspected British rule in India, partly because it involved wars, partly because its temper reacted upon free government at home. So they maintained that England should never interfere in the quarrels of other peoples. The Balance of Power was to them a mere phrase, and unless the interests of England were directly involved, the Government had no right to inflict upon her common people the miseries even of a successful war. If Russia abused the Poles, or invaded Hungary to reduce it into the power of Austria, that was their affair, and not ours. "We are no more called upon," said Cobden, "to wrest the attribute of vengeance from the Deity, and deal it forth upon the Northern aggressor, than we are to preserve the peace and good behaviour of Mexico, or to chastise the wickedness of the Ashantees."[[242]] "It is not our duty," said Bright, "to make this country the knight-errant of the human race."[[243]] This was a rule of good sense. The breach of it was not only costly, but a bad precedent. "If you claim the right of intervention in your Government you must tolerate it in other nations also.... I say, if you want to benefit nations struggling for their freedom, establish as one of the maxims of international law the principle of non-intervention."[[244]] Cobden once went so far as to say that "at some future election we may probably see the test of 'no foreign politics' applied to those who offer to become the representatives of free constituencies."[[245]] But he was never opposed to a policy which protected our own
interests, and he approved of offers to mediate between two contending foreign nations.[[246]] This dislike of armed force went much farther than the old Whig principle. The Whigs denounced active interference in the domestic affairs of other peoples. The Manchester School would have prevented interference for the protection of one nation against another. Let the Continent settle its own quarrels, and however much we may abhor particular acts of immorality, let us confine ourselves to cases where we are ourselves concerned. This marked the extreme of the reaction against the policy of aggression, and it went farther than a Liberal ought to go. The Manchester men were probably driven to exaggerate their principles by the excesses of Palmerston. Canning, who was a true Liberal, interfered in defence of national rights, but only when he had a good chance of success. Palmerston often interfered when he had no chance of success, and irritated to no purpose. The reaction against Palmerston's ill-judged activity brought the Manchester School to the point of justifying inactivity even where activity would have been safe for England and of benefit to a foreign people. But however ill-judged it may have been in particulars, the general effect of this depreciation of foreign affairs was beneficial. The condition of England has ever since remained the first care of English Governments.
The domestic policy which the Manchester School made the first object of government was in the direct course of Liberalism. As has already been stated, they agreed generally with the individualist proposals of the Philosophic Radicals. "I do not partake," said Cobden, "of that spurious humanity which would indulge in an unreasoning kind of philanthropy at the expense of the great bulk of the community. Mine is that masculine species of charity which would lead me to inculcate in the minds of the labouring class the love of independence, the privilege of self-respect, the disdain of being patronized or petted, the desire to accumulate, and the ambition to rise.... Whilst I will not be the sycophant of the great, I cannot become the parasite of the
poor."[[247]] This habit of mind was expressed in a general opposition to institutions and policies which interfered with individual freedom. The School gave no assistance to proposals for economic regulation, and opposed Factory Bills in the same spirit as they opposed Protection.
The greatest practical service which they rendered was the emancipation of industry from the system of Protection. Import duties were an interference by Government with the freedom of the individual to use his capital and his intelligence as he thought best, and they gave advantages to certain classes and interests over other classes and interests and over the community at large. An import duty raised the price of the taxed article for the benefit of the industry which produced the same article in England. Two consequences followed. The industries which used the taxed article paid an artificially high price for the benefit of the industries which made it, and the tax might be so high that they would be unable to continue in the face of foreign competition. Government was incapable of selecting what industries might be taxed in this way without injury. It made an arbitrary selection without regard to the general interest, or at the instigation of classes which desired to be benefited at the expense of the community. Some industries were maintained by this artificial system which could not have maintained themselves by their own efficiency. Other industries were crippled which, in a freer system, could develop themselves to an indefinitely greater extent. Protection was vicious precisely as government by a class was vicious or as a system of religious disabilities was vicious. It established an aristocracy of industry, which was as bad as an aristocracy of birth or of creed. Every industry should have an equal chance with every other, and no industry should be given the chance of exploiting the common people.
The Free Trade movement had begun with Adam Smith in the eighteenth century. But little progress had been made in practical politics before the Reform Act. A
few economists like Ricardo and Joseph Hume argued the case in the Commons with as much persistency as Cobden and Bright. But the country gentry were not economists, and their main practical object had been the maintenance of their rents by import duties on corn. The common people, without any direct voice in politics, had been stung by their own sufferings into a vision of the truth, and resolutions in favour of free imports of corn had been passed at some of the Radical meetings after the French War.[[248]] In 1820 a number of London merchants presented a petition to the House of Commons which covered import duties of every kind, and stated "That freedom from restraint is calculated to give the utmost extension to foreign trade, and the best direction to the capital and industry of the country."[[249]] Huskisson, who was President of the Board of Trade from 1826 to 1828, had done something to readjust some of the import duties as between raw materials and partly or wholly manufactured goods. The Whig victory took the matter no farther. The Whigs were at first occupied with constitutional changes, and after Melbourne had succeeded Grey, they ceased to apply themselves to reform of any kind. Immediately before their defeat in 1841 they made one or two vague proposals, but were beaten before they could carry them into effect. The arrival of Peel, a Utilitarian Tory, decided the fate of the old system.
Peel, with Gladstone at the Board of Trade, carried on Huskisson's policy with vigour and success. The tariff in 1842 included no less than 1,200 separate articles. On 750 of these the duties were cut down, and a general rule was established that duties on raw materials should never exceed 5 per cent. of their value. Though this was not Free Trade, it was a great departure from the existing system of regulating trade by taxes. But the corner-stone of Protection was the Corn Law, and this remained in force, modified, but in principle untouched. Whigs and Tories alike believed in the supremacy of land, and nothing
but a revolt of the manufacturers could break it down. The revolt was led by the Manchester School.