Reciprocity must lead to free navigation.
The General Shipowners’ Society[31] attributed this prosperity to the guano trade, which had recently arisen on the coast of Africa; but other and far more influential causes had been at work. The treaties of reciprocity had, with all their imperfections, no doubt, tended materially to increase our intercourse with foreign nations, while the admission of their ships to our own ports, strange as it may appear, had greatly increased the employment for our own. Though our shipowners resolutely denied that these measures had anything whatever to do with the increased prosperity, more enlightened men had arrived at entirely different conclusions, and were convinced that the policy of reciprocity, however unsatisfactory in many respects, was not merely a step in the right direction, but was the best, and perhaps then the only, mode of breaking down, bit by bit, the huge fabric of protection, the growth of more than two centuries: indeed, it was clear that the “Great Maritime Charter of England,” as the Act of Cromwell had been somewhat ostentatiously denominated, could only be destroyed by degrees. This vast tree, if it may be so described, had taken too deep root in the soil of England to be overthrown at one blow; and the Reciprocity Treaties undoubtedly served as wedges for its destruction.
In the meantime, Sir Robert Peel had made great changes in the Tariff. Commencing with the coarser sorts of manufactures, he had relinquished all duties on the importation of wool, linen, and cotton, and had reduced the duties on the finer qualities of the same goods from twenty to ten per cent., and on manufactured silks from thirty to fifteen per cent., making equally important reductions in the duties imposed on various other articles.
New Class of Statesmen, well supported by the People outside.
But a new class of men had now arisen to extend the principles of Free-trade, and to force home the wedges of unfettered commerce with heavier blows than Canning, Huskisson, or even Peel, had ever done. The people, led in this instance by men from among themselves, of the industrial classes; and, guided by the voice of Wisdom, were now trumpet-tongued proclaiming their rights and demanding justice, on conditions which, however large, were yet so unanswerable, that, before long, the proudest of our aristocracy and the most exalted of our statesmen paid their homage to the “unadorned eloquence” resounding throughout the land.
Exertions of Lord John Russell,
Though Lord John Russell, an honest adherent from his youth to the enlightened policy of Charles James Fox, followed in their footsteps, and struggled onwards amid innumerable difficulties, it was impossible for him to force his way, almost alone against the class to which he belonged, and through the rank grass and tangled brushwood which surrounded this huge old tree. Indeed, almost every member of the ancient aristocracy except himself was opposed to the course he had resolved to pursue; and although the Parliamentary Reform Bill of 1832 carried on his motion, and, in a great measure, by his early and unwearied exertions, had returned to the House of Commons many men ready to render him every assistance, the power of that House was still insufficient to effect, to anything like the extent he had in view, the laudable and, indeed, noble object of his ambition, a thoroughly unfettered commerce. On the people, however, he could fully rely: they were now inquiring more earnestly than they had ever done how it was that the food necessary for their existence was so heavily taxed, and why they were not allowed to buy that food where they pleased, and to import it on the most economical terms. If their knowledge of geography, as they were sometimes sneeringly told, extended no further than what they had learned from the Sacred writings, that grand old historical record taught them, that Egypt produced grain at less cost and in far greater abundance, than England; so great, indeed, that its granaries had once supplied the wants of Rome and of the Ancient World. When, therefore, they learned that that grain could not be had, because a comparatively small number of men—landowners and shipowners—who, from their wealth, exercising great influence in Parliament, were of opinion that the importation of food from other and cheaper countries meant ruin to them, the people, in mass, unequivocally desired to know, in a more detailed and more satisfactory manner than they had hitherto been told, “the reasons Why.” The question they had now asked, through their leaders, was one which demanded an answer. First promulgated in the workshops of Lancashire, it spread in all directions. It was whispered in Belgravia; loudly proclaimed by the toiling millions; talked about by the cottagers in every valley and by the shepherds on every hillside; till, at length, it was adopted, in the most earnest manner, by the middle classes, the bone and sinew of Great Britain.
who leads the way against Protection.
With such overwhelming aid, Lord Russell and his exploring party were enabled to penetrate the dense forest of protection, and reach the roots of the huge and rank old tree, which not merely overshadowed the rich soil of their native land, but spread its branches over their seaports, so as to prevent the importation from other lands of articles necessary for their existence. They saw that, under its shadow, no herbs grew except such as, from their position, were favoured by a ray of the hazy sunlight of protection; healthy shrubs, luxuriant in their nature, withered and decayed wherever its branches extended.
Richard Cobden and the Anti-Corn-Law League