Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 70, No. 434, December, 1851. Various

when measured by the monetary standard, and circulated through a thousand channels, all our incomes are derived – you, who supply the whole population with the necessaries and luxuries of life, (fabricated by others, but passing through your hands,) must necessarily have the best means of knowing whether the circumstances of that population have, on the aggregate, been bettered or made worse. When Napoleon in the bitterness of his heart declared that we were a nation of shopkeepers, he uttered no terms of reproach, though he intended to convey a taunt. Your position in the community is such that you cannot flourish independent of its general prosperity. The exporting manufacturer, and even the foreign merchant, may multiply their gains, and realise fortunes, whilst other classes, whose wellbeing is far more important to the stability of the empire, are hastening to decay. Such phenomena are common in old states, when the process of dissolution has begun. The parasite lives and thrives, while the tree round which it has wound its tendrils is crumbling into rottenness. But such is not your case. Your interests are identical with those of the productive classes, for without them you could not exist. Ill-remunerated labour – unproductive capital – lessened means – deteriorated property – are things which affect you as deeply as though you were the direct sufferers or losers. Upon the wealth of your customers depends your own. And therefore, in such an important crisis as the present, when the existing commercial system of the country is vigorously assailed by one party, and as obstinately defended by another – when facts and statements apparently of much weight are adduced on either side, to serve as arguments for the overthrow or the maintenance of that system – when some cite statistical tables to prove that the country must be prosperous, and others adduce real evidence to show that the reverse is the case – you cannot afford to sit idly by, without throwing the weight of your testimony and experience into one or other of the scales. You have had admirable opportunities of noticing the working of the Free-Trade system. It matters not what were the original prepossessions of any of you, or what might have been your opinion with regard to the merits of this or that scheme, while it was still in embryo and untried. A more complex question than that of Free Trade, as affecting the importation of corn, probably never was presented to the public consideration. Many excellent, judicious, and thoroughly patriotic men, relying upon the truth of statements which were regarded by others as mere plausible theories, were willing to submit to the experiment. And when, by the grossest act of political perfidy that was ever perpetrated – an act which future times, if not the present, will stigmatise with deserved opprobrium – the last and most important change, save that which subsequently assailed our maritime interest, was suddenly effected, it was the declared opinion of the majority that the new system must at least have a trial, until its real results were developed, and until it became apparent to the nation whether or not Free Trade would operate for the advantage of the people, as its advocates and promoters had predicted.

      Here we must, for a moment or two, however unwillingly, digress. The later measures of Free Trade have assailed interests so important and so strong, that its former and earlier advances, stealthily and cautiously made, have almost faded from the public view. Free Trade, as a political system, did not alone strike at the agricultural or the shipping interest. Since the days of Mr Huskisson, who brought with him into active life the principles which he had imbibed in youth from his associates in French Jacobinism, the principles of Free Trade have been gradually but cautiously applied to various branches of British industry. The slow and insidious nature of the movement on the part of the statesmen, who, even then, were yielding to the influence of the modern economical school, showed their distrust of the system, which, if true, ought at once to have been openly promulgated. Like the late Sir Robert Peel, Huskisson was destitute of that manly courage which scorns concealment or deceit, and walks steadfastly to its goal. Cunning was an ingredient of his nature: whatever he did was accomplished by tortuous methods, and vindicated upon false pretences. The tendency of that policy which he commenced was to maintain by all means, at all hazards, and at the sacrifice, if needful, of every other interest, the manufacturing supremacy, of England in the foreign market – an object for which we still are striving, though at the imminent risk of the dismemberment of the British empire. It is due, however, to the memory of Mr Huskisson, to remark, that, although the originator of this policy, he does not seem to have contemplated the extent to which it would be carried out by his successors. His opinions upon the subject of protection to agriculture were clear and decided: "There is no effectual security, either in peace or war, against the frequent return of scarcity, but in making ourselves independent of foreign supply. Let the bread we eat be the produce of corn grown among ourselves; and, for one, I care not how cheap it is – the cheaper the better. It is cheap now, and I rejoice at it, because it is altogether owing to a sufficiency of corn of our own growth; but, to insure a continuance of that cheapness, and that sufficiency, we must insure to our own growers protection against foreign importation, which has produced those blessings, and by which alone they can be permanently maintained." The time, however, was fast approaching when the reins of government were to fall into the hands of a scion of the manufacturing body, in whose eyes the momentary supremacy of party was of more importance than any principle of national policy. There is no more curious page in history than that which records the rise of British manufactures towards the close of last century. Invention after invention, whereby manual labour was superseded by machinery, and the power of production almost indefinitely multiplied, paved the way for that monopoly which our manufacturers enjoyed for at least a quarter of a century, during which time every other country in Europe except our own was devastated by war, and the peaceful arts forgotten or overthrown. It was during that period that the gigantic fortunes of the Arkwrights and the Peels were made, and that influence secured to the manufacturing body in the British House of Commons which it never possessed before. But with the return of peace the monopoly disappeared. By invention in mechanical appliances, Britain had the start of other nations in the creation of manufactures; by war, she was enabled long to enjoy the undivided benefits. But inventions are not the property of a single nation; they pass from one to another with the rapidity of lightning; they are available by the foreign, even more easily than by the domestic, rival. Hence it very soon became apparent that other states were preparing to compete with us in those branches of industry which had proved so exceedingly profitable. France, Belgium, Germany, Russia, Switzerland, and America, all entered keenly into the contest; and then commenced that decline of prices which has continued, almost without intermission, to the present hour. Reciprocity treaties were tried, but were in fact of little avail; for the great bulk of the English exports consisted of those very textile fabrics which it was the object of each country to produce for its own consumption, if not to export to others. During the war, both the expenses of government and the interest of the National Debt had doubled in amount, and the monetary changes effected in 1819 added at least one-third to the weight of that augmented burden. In order to make this taxation bearable, the industry of the people was protected in their own market by a scale of customs duties, which prevented the influx of foreign produce at rates which must have annihilated the British workman. Protection is a clear necessity which arises out of taxation. If the tobacco, tea, coffee, sugar, beer, soap, and other articles of the labourer's consumption, are taxed in order to maintain an expensive establishment, and to defray the interest of an enormous debt, he must have a compensation of some kind. The only kind of compensation which can be granted, and which the wit of man can devise, is to be found in an equitable scale of duties, by means of which all produce imported into Britain shall be taxed as heavily as though it had been reared, grown, or made up on British ground by British labourers. Unless this be done, there is no fair competition. The less burdened foreigner must ultimately carry the day against the heavily-taxed Englishman. And when we consider that all taxes must be paid out of produce, there being no other source whatever from which they can be drawn, the importance of maintaining the market value of our produce at a point equal to the pressure of our taxation will at once become apparent.

      There are, however, plausible, though in reality most fallacious grounds, upon which the Protective System may be assailed. In this, as in every other country, the first and most important branch of industry is that which provides food for the population. To that all others are subordinate. It is impossible to estimate the amount of capital which has been laid out upon the soil of Britain, first in reclaiming it from a state of nature, and, since then, in maturing and increasing its fruitfulness. But some idea may be formed of its magnitude from the fact that, in 1846, the annual agricultural produce of the United Kingdom was valued, according