Part 6

Mr. Thomas Duncombe said he did not retract one single charge that he had made—viz., that within the last two years there had been a most unscrupulous use made of the power vested in the Government in opening the letters of different parties, and to a very great extent; and he believed that if an inquiry were instituted, he should be able to prove that so far from the Right Hon. Baronet (Sir James Graham, the Home Secretary) having only done what every Secretary of State had done since the time of Queen Anne, there had been more letters opened contrary to law within the last two years than had been opened within the last ten or twenty years. He understood that there existed in the General Post Office an office which was commonly called or known by the subordinates of the establishments, as well as by the superior officers, as “the secret or Inner Office.” In this office these deeds of darkness took place. It was a sort of Star Chamber—a sort of Post Office Inquisition. Letters were carried into that place, where they were examined, and from thence a message was sent to the Home Office, and copies were taken of these letters, according to the value of their contents.... He understood, and that was capable of contradiction if not true, that at this moment day after day the letters of Foreign Ministers were opened and read; that at all events they went into some other office, and no one could tell whether they had been opened or not.... It was said before that it was an un-English custom, but it now appeared to be peculiarly English, particularly in the way we carried it out; for he found that in Austria even, if not always, but nine times out of ten, whenever any letters were opened they were re-sealed with the government seal, by which it was known that they had been opened by authority. And very often Ferdinand, Grand Duke of Tuscany, after perusing letters detained at the Post Office, was in the habit of writing underneath, “Vidit Ferdinandus.” In England there had never been an instance of any mark being made of a letter having been secretly read at the Post Office, but on all occasions the party was kept in ignorance of his secrets having been disclosed to the Government.... They had opened letters at the instigation of Foreign Powers, and to a very great extent—the letters of Polish exiles, Italians, and others. What had this been done for? What had we to do with misunderstandings in Italy? How little was it known by foreigners that England was guilty of such treachery. Mazzini himself, only the other day, received a letter from one of his expatriated countrymen, who had taken refuge at Corfu, dated May 1, who wrote thus—perhaps the right hon. Baronet had seen this letter: “Now that I have got my foot on British soil, relying upon the well-known loyalty of Englishmen, you may write to me in my own name.” Poor deluded man! What did he do in this letter besides? He thanked the individuals who had assisted him in his escape. These names were found in this letter, the letter was handed over to the Austrian Government, and these individuals were thrown into prison. At this moment fifty or sixty persons were in prison, suffering imprisonment because of the base information of the British to their ambassador, and communicated by the ambassador to his own Government.

AGRICULTURE AND FREE TRADE (1845).

=Source.=—_Hansard_, Third Series, vol. 78, col. 785, March 13.

Mr. Cobden, having presented a petition in favour of his Motion for a Committee of Inquiry into the effects of the Corn Laws on Agriculturists, addressed the House: Sir, the object of this Motion is to appoint a Select Committee to inquire into the present condition of the agricultural interests; and at the same time to ascertain how the laws regulating the importation of agricultural produce have affected the agriculturists of this country. As regards the distress among farmers, I presume we cannot go to a higher authority than those hon. Gentlemen who profess to be the farmers’ friends and protectors. I find it stated by those hon. Gentlemen who recently paid their respects to the Prime Minister, that the agriculturists are in a state of great embarrassment and distress. I find that one gentleman from Norfolk (Mr. Hudson) stated that the farmers in the county are paying their rents, but paying them out of capital, and not profits. I find that Mr. Turner, of Upton, in Devonshire, stated that one-half of the smaller farmers in that county are insolvent, and that the others are rapidly falling into the same condition; that the farmers with larger holdings are quitting their farms with a view of saving the rest of their property; and that, unless some remedial measures are adopted by this House, they will be utterly ruined. The accounts which I have given you of those districts are such as I have had from many other sources. I put it to county members, whether—taking the whole of the south of England, from the confines of Nottinghamshire to the Land’s End—whether, as a rule, the farmers are not now in a state of the greatest embarrassment? ...

I am at a loss to understand what protection to agriculture means, because I find such contradictory accounts given in this House by the promoters of that system. For instance, nine months ago, when my right hon. friend the member for Wolverhampton (Mr. Villiers) brought forward his Motion for the Abolition of the Corn Laws, the right hon. gentleman, then the President of the Board of Trade, in replying to him, said that the present Corn Law had been most successful in its operations. He took great credit to the Government for the steadiness of price that was obtained under that law. Now recollect that the right hon. gentleman was speaking when wheat was 56s. a quarter, and that wheat is now 45s. The right hon. Baronet at the head of the Government says: “My legislation has had nothing to do with wheat being at 45s. a quarter”; but how are we to get over the difficulty that the responsible member of Government at the head of the Board of Trade, only nine months ago, claimed merit for the Government to have kept up the price of wheat at 56s.? These discrepancies themselves between members of the Government and its supporters render it more and more necessary that this question of protection should be inquired into. I ask, what does it mean? The price of wheat is 45s. this day. I have been speaking to the highest authority in England on this point—one who is often quoted by this House—within the last week, and he tells me that, with another favourable harvest, he thinks it very likely that wheat will be 35s. a quarter. What does this legislation mean, or what does it purport to be, if you are to have prices fluctuating from 56s. down to 35s. a quarter, and probably lower? Can you prevent it by the legislation of this House? ...

I show you after thirty years’ trial what is the depressed condition of the agriculturists; I prove to you what is the impoverished state of farmers, and also of the labourers, and you will not contest any one of those propositions. I say it is enough, having had thirty years’ trial of your specific with no better results than these, for me to ask you to go into Committee to see if something better cannot be devised. I am going to contend that free trade in grain would be more advantageous to farmers—and with them I include labourers—than restriction; to oblige the hon. member for Norfolk, I will take with them also the landlords; and I contend that free trade in corn and grain of every kind would be more beneficial to them than to any other class of the community. I should have contended the same before the passing of the late tariff. But now I am prepared to do so with tenfold more force. What has the right hon. Baronet (Sir R. Peel) done? He has passed a law to admit fat cattle at a nominal duty. Some foreign fat cattle were selling in Smithfield the other day at about £15 or £16 per head, paying only about 7-½ per cent. duty; but he has not admitted the raw material out of which these fat cattle are made. I say, give free trade in that grain which goes to make the cattle. I contend that by this protective system the farmers throughout the country are more injured than any other class in the community. I would take, for instance, the article of clover-seed. I believe clover-seed is to be excluded from the schedule of free importation. Now I ask for whose benefit is this exception made? I ask the hon. member for North Northamptonshire, whether those whom he represents, the farmers of that district, are, in a large majority of instances, sellers of clover-seed? I will undertake to say they are not. How many counties in England are there which are benefited by the protection of clover-seed? I will take the whole of Scotland. If there be any Scotch members present, I ask them whether they do not in their country import the clover-seed from England? They do not grow it. I undertake to say there are not ten counties in the United Kingdom which are interested in the exportation of clover-seed out of their own borders. Neither have they any of this article in Ireland. But yet we have clover-seed excluded from the farmers, although they are not interested as a body in its protection at all. Again, take the article of beans. There are lands in Essex where they can grow them alternate years with wheat. I find that beans come from that district to Mark Lane; and I believe also that in some parts of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire they do the same; but how is it with the poor lands of Surrey or the poor downland of Wiltshire? Take the whole of the counties. How many of them are there which are exporters of beans, or send them to market? You are taxing the whole of the farmers who do not sell their beans, for the pretended benefit of a few counties or districts of counties where they do. Mark you, where they can grow beans on the better and stronger soils, it is not in one case out of ten that they grow them for the market. They may grow them for their own use; but where they do not cultivate beans, send them to market, and turn them into money, those farmers can have no interest whatever in keeping up the money price of that which they never sell. Take the article of oats. How many farmers are there who ever have oats down on the credit side of their books, as an item upon which they rely for the payment of their rents? The farmers may, and generally do, grow oats for feeding their own horses; but it is an exception to the rule—and a rare exception, too—where the farmer depends upon the sale of his oats to meet his expenses. Take the article of hops. You have a protection upon them for the benefit of the growers in Kent, Sussex, and Surrey; but yet the cultivators of hops are taxed for the protection of others in articles which they do not themselves produce. Take the article of cheese. Not one farmer in ten in the country makes his own cheese, and yet they and their servants are large consumers of it. But what are the counties which have the protection in this article? Cheshire, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, part of Derbyshire, and Leicestershire. Here are some four or five dairy counties having an interest in the protection of cheese; but recollect that those counties are peculiarly hardly taxed in beans and oats, because in those counties where they are chiefly dairy farms, they are most in want of artificial food for their cattle. There are the whole of the hilly districts; and I hope my friend the member for Nottingham (Mr. Gisborne) is here, because he has a special grievance in this matter; he lives in Derbyshire, and very commendably employs himself in rearing good cattle upon the hills; but he is taxed for your protection for his beans, peas, oats, Indian corn, and everything which he wants for feeding them. He told me, only the other day, that he should like nothing better than to give up the little remnant of protection on cattle, if you would only let him buy a thousand quarters of black oats for the consumption of his stock.... Take the whole of the hilly districts, and the down country of Wiltshire; the whole of that expanse of downs in the south of England; take the Cheviots, where the flockmasters reside; the Grampians in Scotland; and take the whole of Wales; they are not benefited in the slightest degree by the protection on these articles; but, on the contrary, you are taxing the very things they want. They require provender as abundantly and cheaply as they can get it. Allowing a free importation of food for cattle is the only way in which those counties can improve the breed of their lean stocks, and the only manner in which they can ever bring their land up to anything like a proper state of fertility. I will go further and say that farms with thin soil, which you will find in Hertfordshire and Surrey, farmers with large capital, arable farmers, I say those men are deeply interested in having a free importation of food for their cattle, because they have thin, poor land. The land does not of itself contain the means of increased fertility; and the only way is the bringing in of an additional quantity of food from elsewhere, that they can bring their farms up to a proper state of cultivation. I have been favoured with an estimate made by a very clever experienced farmer in Wiltshire. That gentleman estimates that upon every 400 acres of land he could increase his profits to the amount of £280, paying the same rent as at present, provided there was a free importation of foreign grain of all kinds. He would buy 500 quarters of oats at 15s., or the same amount in beans or peas at 14s. or 15s. a sack, to be fed on the land or in the yard; by which he would grow additional 160 quarters of wheat, and 230 quarters of barley, and gain an increased profit of £300 upon his sheep and cattle. His plan embraces the employment of an additional capital of £1,000; and he would pay £150 a year more for labour. I had an opportunity, the other day, of speaking to a very intelligent farmer in Hertfordshire. He told me that last year he paid £230 enhanced price on his beans and other provender which he bought for his cattle—£230 enhanced price in consequence of that restriction upon the trade in foreign grain, amounting to 14s. a quarter on all the wheat he sold off his farm.... I think I could give you from every county the names of some of the first-rate farmers who are as ardent free-traders as I am.... They say, “Let us have our Indian corn, Egyptian beans, and Polish oats, as freely as we have our linseed cake, and we can bear competition with any corn-growers in the world.”

PEEL’S CHANGE OF VIEWS (1844).

=Source.=—_Memoirs by Sir Robert Peel_, vol. ii., p. 98. (London: 1858.)

I will briefly refer to the position of the Corn Law question at the close of the Session of 1845, unaffected as it then was by failure, or apprehension of failure, in any particular article of food.

The progress of discussion had made a material change in the opinions of many persons with regard to the policy of protection to domestic agriculture, and the extent to which this policy should be carried.

I had adopted at an early period of my public life, without, I fear, much serious reflection, the opinions generally prevalent at that time among men of all parties, as to the justice and necessity of protection to agriculture.

They were the opinions of Sir Henry Parnell and Mr. Ricardo, of Lord John Russell and Lord Melbourne, as well as of the Duke of Wellington, Mr. Canning, and Mr. Huskisson. I had, however, been a willing party, both in 1828 and 1842, to the reductions which took place in the amount of protection fixed by the Corn Law of 1815, a law which was based on the assumption that wheat could not profitably be grown at a price lower than eighty shillings a quarter.

One of the first acts of the Government over which I presided (the Government of August, 1841) was to propose a material change in the Corn Law of 1828.... That proposal was ultimately adopted, after considerable discussion in Cabinet, and a Bill was brought into the House of Commons at an early period of the Session of 1842, which finally passed into a law, providing for a material diminution in the amount of the import duties on the several kinds of foreign grain. The prohibition which then existed on the import of foreign cattle and meat was removed in the same Session, and their import permitted on moderate rates of duty. These changes, although they gave little satisfaction to the most eager opponents of the Corn Law, and were indeed denounced by some as perfectly nugatory, were not effected without great murmuring and some open opposition to the Government on the part of many of its supporters.

The Duke of Buckingham resigned his seat in the Cabinet rather than be a party to them, nor was it an easy matter to procure the unanimous adoption of the measures I proposed by the remaining members of the Government.

During the discussions in Parliament on the Corn Law of 1842 I was more than once pressed to give a guarantee (so far as a Minister could give it) that the amount of protection established by that law should be permanently adhered to; but, although I did not then contemplate the necessity for further change, I uniformly refused to fetter the discretion of the Government by any such assurances as those that were required from me. It is unnecessary for the purposes of this memoir that I should refer in detail to the events that took place between the passing of the Corn Bill in 1842 and the close of the Session in 1845. During that interval the opinions I had previously entertained on the subject of protection to agriculture had undergone a great change.

The main causes of that change are stated in a public letter which I addressed to my constituents shortly before the General Election of 1847, from which the following is an extract. The latter part of this extract refers to a question in some respects distinct—namely, the difficulty there would be in subsequently maintaining inviolate the Corn Law of 1842 in the event of its suspension in 1845 on account of apprehended scarcity. I will give, however, the extract entire, as the reasoning applies with nearly equal force to the principle of continued protection as well as to the policy of its revival after having been once in abeyance. The letter is dated July, 1847.

_To the Electors of Tamworth._

My confidence in the validity of the reasons on which I had myself heretofore relied for the maintenance of restrictions on the import of corn had been materially weakened. It had been weakened by the conflict of arguments on the principle of a restrictive policy; by many concurring proofs that the wages of labour do not vary with the price of corn; by the contrast presented in two successive periods of dearth and abundance, in the health, morals, and tranquillity and general prosperity of the whole community; by serious doubts whether, in the present condition of this country, cheapness and plenty are not ensured for the future in a higher degree by the free intercourse in corn, than by restrictions on its importation for the purpose of giving protection to domestic agriculture.

It had been weakened also by the following considerations, which were in a great degree new elements in forming a judgment on this vital matter.

The general repeal of prohibitory duties, and the recent application of the principles of free trade to almost all articles of import from abroad, made the Corn Laws the object of more searching scrutiny and more invidious comment, and narrowed the ground on which their defence could be maintained.

Among the articles of foreign import prohibited up to the year 1842, and then admitted at low rates of duty, were some important articles of agricultural produce, salted and fresh meat, oxen, sheep, cows, etc. You probably recollect the panic which this admission caused—the forced sale of stock, the prophecies that it would be impossible to compete with the foreign grazier, and that meat would be reduced to threepence a pound. Five years have passed since this great change in the law took place, and your own experience will enable you to judge whether the panic was well founded, and whether the prophecies have been fulfilled.

The complete failure of these prophecies had naturally had its effect on public opinion with regard to the probable consequences of a free intercourse in other articles of agricultural produce.

There was another circumstance still more calculated to diminish apprehensions as to the risk of opening the corn market of this country to foreign competition. There has appeared of late years a tendency to increase in the consumption of articles of subsistence much more rapid than the increase in the population. It is difficult, if not impossible, on account of the absence of statistical information, to measure accurately that increase in the case of articles of first necessity, such as corn and meat; but it may be inferred from the relative consumption at different periods of articles in respect to which the comparison can be instituted.

The following is an account of some of the principal articles entered for home consumption in the years 1841 and 1846 respectively:

┌─────────────────────────┬────────────────────┬────────────────────┐ │ Articles. │ 1841. │ 1846. │ ├─────────────────────────┼────────────────────┼────────────────────┤ │ Cocoa │ 1,930,764 lbs. │ 2,962,327 lbs. │ │ Coffee │ 28,420,980 lbs. │ 36,781,391 lbs. │ │ Currants │ 190,071 cwts. │ 359,315 cwts. │ │ Rice │ 245,887 cwts. │ 466,961 cwts. │ │ Pepper │ 2,750,790 lbs. │ 3,297,431 lbs. │ │ Sugar │ 4,065,971 cwts. │ 5,231,845 cwts. │ │ Molasses │ 402,422 cwts. │ 582,665 cwts. │ │ Tea │ 36,681,877 lbs. │ 46,728,208 lbs. │ │ Tobacco and Snuff │ 22,308,385 lbs. │ 27,001,908 lbs. │ │ Brandy │ 1,165,137 gallons │ 1,515,954 gallons │ │ Geneva │ 15,404 gallons │ 40,211 gallons │ │ British Spirits │ 20,642,333 gallons │ 23,122,581 gallons │ │ Malt, charged with duty │ 36,164,448 bushels │ 41,979,000 bushels │ └─────────────────────────┴────────────────────┴────────────────────┘

Surely it is impossible to refer to this comparative table without being forcibly struck by the rapid increase in the consumption of the articles which it embraces. Can there be a doubt that if the consumption of articles of a secondary necessity has been thus advancing, the consumption of articles of first necessity—of meat and of bread, for instance—has been making at least an equally rapid progress?

During the greater part of the period included in the return, from the middle of 1842 to the end of 1846, the free trade measures have been in operation. They have been in operation, therefore—concurrently, at least—with these evidences of the increasing ease and comfort of the people. Other causes have no doubt contributed to that ease and comfort; but even if the whole effect be assigned to those other causes—to railway enterprise or anything else—it does not affect my present argument. If there be from any cause a tendency to the consumption of articles of the first necessity much more rapid than the increase of population, the responsibility of undertaking to regulate the supply of food by legislative restraints, and the difficulty of maintaining these restraints in the event of any sudden check to prosperity or increased price of subsistence, will be greatly augmented; while, on the other hand, the danger to be apprehended from foreign competition is materially lessened.