Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 70, No. 433, November 1851

"As the memorable first of May 1823 drew near, the country bankers, as well as the bank of England, naturally prepared themselves, by a gradual narrowing of their circulation, for the dreaded hour of gold and silver payments "on demand," and the withdrawal of the small notes. We have already seen the fall of prices produced by this universal narrowing of the paper circulation. The effects of the distress produced all over the country – the consequence of this fall – we have yet to see."

"The distress, ruin, and bankruptcy, which now took place, were universal; affecting both the great interests of land and trade; but amongst the landlords, whose estates were burdened by mortgages, jointures, settlements, legacies, &c., the effects were most marked, and out of the ordinary course. In hundreds of cases, from the tremendous reduction in the price of land which now took place, the estates barely sold for as much as would pay off the mortgages; and hence the owners were stripped of all, and made beggars. I was myself personally acquainted with one of the victims of this terrible measure. He was a schoolfellow, and inherited a good fortune, made principally in the West Indies. On coming of age, and settling with his guardians, he found himself possessed of fully forty thousand pounds; and with this he resolved to purchase an estate, to marry, and to settle for life. He was a young man addicted to no vice; of a fair understanding and a most excellent heart; and was connected with friends high in rank, and likely to afford him every proper assistance and advice. The estate was purchased, I believe, about the year 1812 or 1813, for eighty thousand pounds, one moiety of the purchase money being borrowed on mortgage of the land bought. In 1822-3 he was compelled to part with the estate, in order to pay off his mortgage, and some arrears of interest; and when this was done, he was left without a shilling – the estate bringing only half of its cost in 1812."8

But isolated instances, however great may be their interest, will not adequately exhibit the effects of this measure upon the vital interests of the country. At least one half of the National Debt was incurred after the suspension of cash payments, and during the prevalence of the Paper Currency. The interest of that debt was now, and in all time coming, to be paid in coin greatly above the value of the currency in which it was contracted; and the Private Creditor shared in the advantage which thus was given to the Fund-holder. The taxes were all to be levied in the same way, the metallic standard being made of universal application. As a matter of course, prices fell, and fell in a corresponding ratio.

The great prosperity of England during the war, and the unexampled development of its resources, whether agricultural, manufacturing, or commercial may be traced to the combination of at least three causes. In the first place, England was thoroughly protected. Her artisans and labourers had nothing to fear from foreign competition. They had the monopoly of their own home market, and were not liable to be undersold by the products of other nations. In the second place, we had a most extensive foreign trade, the real value of which cannot be ascertained from the official tables, owing to the manner in which that trade was carried on. But even according to the defective records which we possess, it appears that our exports in 1805 were equal to those of 1823, many of the intermediate years showing a much larger amount. In 1810, our exports were close upon forty-six millions; in 1832 they were barely above thirty-six. In the third place, the country possessed a large circulating medium, which gave ample scope to enterprise. We shall not enter upon the vexed question of systems of currency in the abstract; it is enough for us to know that for more than twenty years British prosperity went on without a check, until it was strangled by the bullionists. At present, we have neither Protection, nor an Expanded Currency. Our foreign trade, in so far as exports are concerned, is nominally large; but those who are best qualified to judge of the value of that trade, declare that it is unremunerative.

We are therefore very much at a loss to know what element of prosperity exists at the present time. We have every faith in British energy if it is allowed fair play, but that is precisely what we contend is not vouchsafed to it. Our whole legislation, under the guidance of the political economists, may be characterised as a systematic attempt to depress British industry. This could not have been effected at once, or by one isolated effort: several attacks upon the productive classes were required before this was consummated. The change of currency lowered the value of produce, and increased the burden of taxation. In other words, it brought down both prices and wages, to the manifest gain of the capitalist. Then came the gradual relaxation of the tariff, which has resulted in free importation – a measure by which all the working-classes, without any exception, are assailed. This was effected with a perseverance and ingenuity which we cannot help admiring, even when we denounce it as diabolical. The first advances to Free Trade were no more remarked by the public in general than the footmarks of the tiger in the jungle when he advances stealthily on his prey. The real instigators were the exporting manufacturers. After the return of peace, they saw clearly enough that their old monopoly was at an end. Cobbett wrote, very shrewdly, though in his own peculiar manner, in 1815: —

"It is now hoped by some persons that the restoration of the Pope, the Inquisition, the Jesuits, and the Bourbons, will so far brutalise the people of the Continent of Europe that we shall have no rivals in the arts of peace; and that thus we shall be left to enjoy a monopoly of navigation, commerce, and manufactures; and be thereby enabled to pay the interest on our debt, and to meet the enormous annual expenses of our government. Without stopping to comment on the morality and humanity of this hope, entertained in a country abounding with Bible Societies, I venture to give it as my decided opinion, that the hope is fallacious. Russia, Denmark, Sweden, Holland, Austria, Spain, the Italian States, and even the Bourbons, will all push forward for their share of the benefits of the arts of peace. While our purse is open to them all, they will be subservient to us; but that cannot be for ever."

The old sergeant was perfectly right – with the return of peace our monopoly of the foreign market was over; but the question still remained, whether, by the sacrifice of home labour, our exporting manufacturers might not be able, for a considerable period at least, to keep ahead of their new rivals in distant markets. Unfortunately for us all, the political economists determined to make the attempt.

In some important branches of manufacture Britain was still unrivalled. The nearest, readiest, and therefore most lucrative market for these was to be found in Europe, and in consequence, it was deemed necessary that concessions should be made to admit some kinds of produce as imports, by way of inducing the foreigners to concede a free admission to our exports. There is a scene in Shakspeare's play of Julius Cæsar, in which Antony, Octavius, and Lepidus are represented, seated at a table, conceding amicably the deaths of the near relations of each, in exchange for a similar surrender. This is not quite a parallel to the case before us. Our statesmen doomed their friends and fellow-countrymen without requiring a reciprocal sacrifice, and the consequence was that we gradually opened our home market to the foreigner, without insisting that he should render to us the same measure of justice. The artisans were the first to feel the blow. They had already suffered, most severely, from the change in the currency, which brought down prices, and, with them, the remuneration of labour; and the withdrawal of Protection from them made them the natural enemies of all those who were still shielded from foreign competition. The feeling was perfectly natural. The system begun by Huskisson, and consummated by Peel, could have no other effect than in arming one class of the community against the other. Deprive John forcibly of his coat, under the pretext of justice, and he will immediately insist that the same measure of deprivation shall be extended to James. He has a converse of a Christian rule to utter in his defence – "Why should not others be done to, precisely as I have been done by?"

This argument, in the hands of its able advocates, has proved irresistible. John and James are alike without coats; and until they agree with one another, and come to a common understanding, there is not much likelihood of their resumption of their necessary wear. It never has been, and never can be, for the interest of the producer that prices should be generally low. Very great nonsense has of late years been talked by public men, and, amongst others, by members of the present cabinet, regarding the "natural price" of corn. They seem to think that they have stumbled upon a happy phrase, and claim credit to themselves for patriotism in resisting all attempts to make the bread of the people dearer. But they do not, or will not, see that the great body of the people are interested in this question, not as consumers, but as producers. The vast majority of the population of these islands have hitherto derived their means of subsistence, not from manufactures, but from the soil. Manufactures do not in reality constitute more than one-fourth part of the annual creation of our wealth; and two-thirds at least of all our manufactures are intended for the home market, and will be profitable or not according to the circumstances of the general body of consumers. Now, the natural price of corn depends upon the circumstances of the country in which it is produced. It may be ten shillings in Poland: it may be sixty shillings in England. No doubt you can get corn, and are getting it, from Poland far cheaper than you can raise it in England – but at what cost? Why, at the sacrifice of that enormous capital which has been sunk in the cultivation of the land, and of nearly one-half of the annual creation of our wealth!

The average price of wheat, for a number of years preceding 1790, was 46s. per quarter. It is so stated in Mr Arthur Young's table, which we have given above, and may be taken as the average of thirty years. The average for 1790 was considerably higher, for we observe that Mr Porter states it at 53s. 2d. Now, since that period, both the amount of our debt and of our current annual public expenditure has been tripled – that is, we have three times as much to pay in the shape of taxation as formerly. This is independent of poor-rates and local taxation, which have also greatly increased. That being the case, we ask how it is possible that corn can be grown now in Britain at a profit, when the ruling price, owing to importations from abroad, is eight shillings per quarter lower than it was on an average of years preceding 1790? The absurdity is palpable.

How, then, are the taxes to be paid? That is the question. Not out of the profits of the foreign trade certainly, for the whole value of our exports is not much above the amount of the national expenditure, and when we add the local taxes, would not reach one-half of the requisite sum. Besides, at the present moment, the exports are not nearly balancing the imports. According to the official tables, the declared value of the exports for the year ending 5th January 1850, was £63,596,025; the official value of the imports for the same period was £105,874,607. We presume it will be admitted that taxes can only be permanently paid out of profits, and we want to know where these profits are? It is perfectly evident that the cultivation of the land cannot be carried on for ever at a loss. Sooner or later both capital and credit must be exhausted; soils of an inferior description – indeed all except the best land in the neighbourhood of towns – must be abandoned and withdrawn from tillage, and the working-classes will find themselves utterly unable to meet the demands of taxation. An immense portion of our taxation is, and must be, drawn from the labouring men. They contribute largely to our revenue through the customs and excise, and the extent of their consumption depends entirely upon the amount of the wages which they receive. Any measure which tends to lessen the sphere of production is a direct blow at their interests. Cheap bread is just another word for low wages, as already many of them have discovered to their cost; and we have now arrived at that stage of the experiment when its effects will be rapidly developed.

Mr Porter, whose brains are principally valuable in the preparation of cumbrous statistics, breaks out, for once in a way, into a fine burst of eloquence on the subject of over-population. Let us hear him in his animated mood: —

"Whence arises this fear – this childish fear of the increase of our numbers? – childish, because it exists without regard to the lessons of experience. What evidence is there in our present condition to justify the complaint of 'surplus population,' that did not exist in as great, or even in a greater degree of force, when our numbers had not reached one-half their present amount? Why, then, shall we not go forward to double, and again to double our population in safety, and even to advantage, if, instead of rearing millions of human clods, whose lives are passed in consuming the scanty supplies which is all that their task of intelligence enables them to produce, the universal people shall have their minds cultivated to a degree that will enable each to add his proportion to the general store?"9

Good lack, Mr Porter, there was no occasion at all for your putting yourself into such an inconvenient heat! Nobody, so far as we know, is making any complaint of surplus population. You and your friends have taken effectual measures to prevent such a state of matters, and we may now rest without any apprehension of a visit from the ghost of Malthus. The "universal people" alluded to in your last brilliant though somewhat unintelligible sentence, are likely to follow your advice, and abstain from "rearing millions of human clods," at least upon British soil. Be satisfied – you have done for the clods. Ireland is a noble example of your trophies in that way; and if you want to glorify yourself on another, you may refer to the Scottish Highlands. The true way to provide against the evils of over-population is to lower the value of produce, which is the condition of labour, below the remunerative point. Do that, and you may make a wilderness out of the most fertile region of the earth. But then, Mr Porter, did you never ask yourself what is to become of those who derive their subsistence and incomes from the labour of these self-same clods? A good many of us, we suspect, are in that condition, and very melancholy indeed would be our countenances if called upon to assist at the funeral of the last of that race. "Meddle not," said the Giant, in the German fable, to his child, who had picked up a peasant as a plaything – "meddle not with the husbandman! But for him, what would become of us Giants?" It would be well if you and your political allies had the intelligence to apprehend the moral.

The Times, in a late number, has treated the subject of emigration in a lively manner. The depopulation which has taken place since Free Trade became the law of the land, is too startling a fact to be passed over without notice; and it is thus that the leading journal speculates on the strange phenomenon. The announcement in the opening sentence may puzzle, if not alarm, some of the most zealous advocates of foreign production: —

"The stream of emigration now set towards America will not stop till Ireland is absolutely depopulated; and the only question is, when will that be? Twenty years at the present rate would take away the whole of the industrious classes, leaving only the proprietors and their families, members of the learned professions, and those whose age or infirmities keep them at home. Twenty years are but a short time in treating great social or political questions. It is more than twenty years since the passing of the Emancipation Act and the introduction of the Reform Bill. What if it should really come to pass that before another twenty years the whole Celtic race shall have disappeared from these isles, and the problem of seven centuries received its solution? We dwell in wonderful times, in an age of great discoveries, splendid improvements, and grand consummations. Art has always been found the handmaid of human developments. The discovery of gunpowder put an end to the little wars and little states of the middle ages, and introduced larger political manipulations. The discovery of printing prepared for the revival of learning and arts, and paved the way to the Reformation. The discovery of the mariner's compass showed our navigators a path to the East Indies and the New World. It may be the first mission of railways to set all the populations of the Old World on the move, and send them in quest of independent and comfortable homes.

And when will this movement stop? Incuriousness and prejudice are ready with the reply, that it will stop, at all events, when the Celtic race is exhausted. The Englishman, we are assured, is too attached to his country, and too comfortable at home, to cross the Atlantic. But surely it is very premature to name any such period for this movement, or to say beforehand what English labourers will do, when seven or eight millions of Irish have led the way to comfort and independence. The Englishman is now attached to his own home, because he knows of no other. His ideas of other regions are dark and dismal. He trembles at the thought of having to grope his way through the Cimmerian obscurity of another hemisphere. The single fact that he will have no 'parish' in America is, in his mind, a fatal bar to locomotion. But all this is quickly passing away. Geography, union workhouses, ocean mails, and the daily sight of letters arriving in ten days from prosperous emigrants, are fast uprooting the British rustic from the soil, and giving him cosmopolitan ideas. In a very few years the question uppermost in his mind will be whether he will be better off here or there? Whether he should go with the young and enterprising, or stay at home with the old and stupid? If a quarter of a million British subjects have left this country for the Australian colonies in the present generation, there may easily be a much larger movement to a nearer and more wealthy region. It has been imagined, indeed, that such a migration will have a natural tendency to stop itself at a certain stage. We are told that the English labourer will find a new field in Ireland, deserted by the Celt. It will, however, cost no more effort of mind to cross the ocean at once than to cross the Irish Channel for a land which, in the English mind, must ever be associated with violence and blood. High wages, again, we are told, the enjoyment of a liberal government, and an improved condition, will bind the Englishman afresh to the soil of his ancestors. But when you make the English labourer richer, more independent, more intelligent, and more of a citizen, you have put him more in a condition and temper to seek his fortune, wherever it may be found. The men who in the United States leave their homes for the Far West are generally they who have prospered where they are, and who want the excitement of another start in life. On the whole, we are disposed to think that the prospect is far too serious to be neglected, or treated as a merely speculative question. The depopulation of these isles, supposing the Celtic exodus to run out its course, and a British exodus to follow, constitute about as serious a political event as can be conceived; for a change of dynasty, or any other political revolution, is nothing compared with a change in the people themselves. All the departments of industry – the army, the navy, the cultivation of the fields, the rent of landed property, the profit of trades, the payment of rates and taxes – depend on the people, and without the people there must ensue a general collapse of all our institutions. We are, however, rather desirous to recommend the question to the consideration of others, and especially of our statesmen, than to answer it ourselves."

Is it only now that this question is submitted to the consideration of our statesmen? Why, if they are statesmen at all, they must have thought and dreamed of little else for the last few years. The picture here presented, though a frightful one, is by no means new. It has been drawn over and over again by the advocates of the protective policy, and as regularly ridiculed by the Free-Traders as a suggestion of a diseased imagination. Now, the facts have emerged, the prophecy has proved strictly true, and we are asked to consider about a remedy! What remedy is there open to us, save one? Let labour be made remunerative at home, which can only be done by Protection, and we shall answer for it that the tide of emigration will be stayed. People do not leave their country and their homes, at least in numbers like this, except under the coercion of the most stringent necessity. Give an Englishman work to do, and wages to live by, and he will rather remain here than attempt to better his condition in a foreign soil. But in order that he may remain here, his labour must be protected. Very truly says the writer in the Times, that "all the departments of industry, the army, the navy, the cultivation of the fields, the rent of landed property, the profit of trades, the payment of rates and taxes, depend on the people; and without the people, there must ensue a general collapse of all our institutions." To every word of this we adhere. But unless we can suppose that the people will submit to the degraded position of the foreign serfs, with whose produce they are now called upon to compete, Britain cannot hope to retain anything like its present population. The exodus must go on, and every vestige of our former greatness disappear. Unprotected labour and high taxation cannot exist together. Prolong the struggle as we may, the experience of each succeeding month will show the impossibility of such a reconciliation.

We are curious to know if, with such facts before them as those admitted in the Times, Ministers will have the temerity next year to assure us that the country generally is in prosperous circumstances. Do men emigrate wholesale from prosperous countries? Are they ever ready to leave comfort behind them, and recommence the struggle of life on a more unpromising field? If we are forced to reject that conclusion, then we defy any one to arrive at another save this – that our recent legislation has so narrowed the sphere of labour, and so depressed its prospects, that the population are driven per force from their native country, to seek elsewhere the means of existence which they cannot procure at home.

To talk of Protection as hopeless, is to acquiesce in the national doom. All classes of the community, from the fundholder and capitalist down to the meanest labourer, have a stake in this great question. Let not the former deceive themselves. Without the labour of the people their securities are as valueless as the mere paper on which they are written. Therefore, it is their part to see that no line of policy shall be allowed to continue if it has the effect of drying up the springs of our national prosperity. If they will not listen to the remonstrances of the distressed, let them at all events view their own position dispassionately. We may be on the verge of a great crisis, and a great struggle may be approaching, but we have not the slightest doubt that the cause which must ultimately prevail is that which is essentially the cause of the people. Prosperity will only return to the nation when Native Industry is protected.

1

Philip Van Artevelde: A Dramatic Romance.—Edwin the Fair: An Historical Drama; and Isaac Comnenus: A Play—The Eve of the Conquest, and other Poems. By Henry Taylor.

2

Zwei Monate in Paris. Von Adolph Stahr. Two Vols. Oldenburg: Schulzeschen Buchhandlung. London: Williams and Norgate, 1851.

3

Ein Jahr in Italien. Three Vols., 8vo. Oldenburg: 1850.

4

Blackwood's Magazine for December 1848.