Chapter 26

The advocates of free trade are not insensible to the superior advantages of the rising over the old state in agriculture, and of the latter over the former in manufactures. On the contrary, it is a secret but clear sense of the reality of this distinction, which causes them so strenuously to contend for the removal of all restrictions. They hope, by so doing, to effect a great extension of their sales in foreign countries, without, as they pretend, creating any diminution in their own. But the views which have now been given show that this is a vain conceit, and demonstrate how it has happened, that the more strenuously England contends for the principles of free trade, and the more energetically that she carries them into practice, the more decided is the resistance which she meets on foreign states in the attempt, and the more rigorously do they act on the principles of protection. It is because they are striving to become manufacturing and commercial communities that they do this--it is a clear sense of the ruin which awaits them, if deluged with British goods, which makes them so strenuous in their system of exclusion. The more that we open our trade, the more will they close theirs. They think, and not without reason, that we advocate unrestricted commercial intercourse only because it would be profitable to us, and deprecate our old system of exclusion only because it has now been turned against ourselves. "Now, then," say they, "is the time, when England is suffering under the system of exclusion, which we have at length had sense enough to borrow from her, to draw closer the bonds of that system, and complete the glorious work of our own elevation on her ruins. Our policy is clearly chalked out by hers; we have only to do what she deprecates, and we are sure to be right." It is evident that these views will be permanently entertained by them, because they are founded on the strongest of all instincts that of self-preservation. When we cease to be a great manufacturing nation, when we are no longer formidable rivals, they will open their harbours; but not till then. In striving to introduce a system of free trade, therefore, we gratuitously inflict a severe wound on our domestic industry, without any chance even of a compensation in that which is destined for the foreign markets. We let in their goods into our harbours, but we do not obtain admission, nor will we ever obtain admission, for ours into theirs. The reciprocity is, and ever must be, all on one side.

It is by mistaking the dominant influence among the continental states, that so large a portion of the community are deceived on this subject. They say, if we take their grain and cattle, they will take our cotton goods; that their system of exclusion is entirely a consequence of, and retaliation for, ours. Can they produce a single instance in which our concessions in favour of their rude produce have led to a corresponding return in favour of ours? How can it be so, when, in all old states, the monied is the prevailing interest which sways the determinations of government? The landholders, separated from each other, without capital, almost all burdened with debt, are no match in the domestic struggle for the manufacturing and commercial interests. Their superiority is founded on a very clear footing--the same which has rendered the British House of Commons omnipotent. _They hold the purse._ It is their loans which support the credit of Government; it is by the customs which their imports pay that the public revenue is to be chiefly raised. The more popular that governments become, the more strongly will their influences appear in the war of tariffs. If pure democracies were established in all the neighbouring states, we would be met in then all by a duty of sixty per cent. Witness the American tariff of 1842, and the progressive increases of duties against us since the popular revolutions we have fostered and encouraged in France, Belgium, and Portugal.

Is, then, a free and unrestrained system of commercial intercourse impossible between nations, and must it ever end in a war of tariffs and the pacific infliction of mutual injury? We consider it is impossible between two nations, both manufacturing, or aspiring to be so, and in the same, or nearly the same, age and social circumstances. It is mere folly to attempt it; because interests which must clash, are continually arising on both parts, and reciprocity, if attempted, is on one side only. With such nations, the only wisdom is, to conclude treaties, not of reciprocity, but of _commerce_; that is, treaties in which, in consideration of certain branches of our manufactures being admitted on favourable terms, we agree to admit certain articles of their produce on equally advantageous conditions. Thus, a treaty, by which we agreed to admit, for a moderate duty, the wines of France, which we can never rival, in return for their admitting our iron and cotton goods on similar terns, would be a measure of equal benefit to both countries. It would be as wise a measure as Mr Huskisson's reduction of the duties on French silks, gloves, and clocks, was a gratuitous and unwarranted injury to staple branches of our own industry. The only countries to which the reciprocity system is really applicable, are distant states in an early state of civilization, whose natural products are essentially different from our own, and whose stage of advancement is not such as to have made them enter on the career of manufacture, of jealousy, and of tariffs. Colonies unite all these advantages; and it is in them that the real sources of our strength, and the only secure markets for our produce, are to be found; but that subject, so vast, so interesting, so vital to our individual and national advancement, must be reserved for a future occasion.

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