of commodities. To this doctrine of freedom from restraint I, for one, make not the least objection. But we have nothing like it. We allow all foreign goods to come in at a low duty, but none of our own can we sell, without paying a high one. While we admit the manufactures of foreigners at 10 per cent., they make us pay from 25 to 60: and this we call "free trade." Long, indeed, this state of things cannot continue; for, under the philosophical "experiments" of our economical Dousterswivels, British Industry is fast becoming a caput mortuum, and Britain, nothing but an exhausted receiver. PROTECTION. Yes, Sir; this system of Free Trade is merely Monopoly in disguise; Monopoly battening on Confiscation; the tyranny of Wealth over Labour; the Socialism of the Rich! As Daniel Webster remarked last year-" There seems to be in this free-trade policy a bloodhound scent to follow Labour, and to run it down, and to seize and strangle it wherever it may be found." We are plausibly told that the principle of our free-trade system is, that every one shall be allowed to do the best he can for himself, with his capital and labour. How does the practice square with the principle? Our Wealth is now invested in bringing over cheap foreign commodities, to lower the wages of our working classes, by underselling those who employ them; thus turning its parricidal hand against the very Labour that created it, and overwhelming the lace-makers and hose-manufacturers of Nottingham, the riband-makers of Coventry, and the weavers of Spitalfields. Our Wealth, prompted to "buy in the cheapest market," prohibits, by that very act, our Labour from "selling in the dearest." While Wealth Spreads it's light wings, and in a moment flies," Labour, chained to the barren rock by the fetters of Free Trade, like the dying eagle of the Grecian fable, sees his own feathers wing the arrow that strikes him to the heart. Go, and visit, as I have, the Maisons centrales de détention in France; and see prisoners employed on cotton goods, and gloves, to compete, at a low duty, with our own honest and industrious people! Is it not hard enough to have pauper labour at home underselling our working classes, who are struggling to keep out of the workhouse? But, Oh infamy! the felon labour of the Continent. Happy France! Happy Germany !— "Have you a ruffian, that will swear, drink, dance, The oldest sins the newest kinds of ways? Be happy, he will trouble you no more: Ay, the bread out of the mouths of her own starving operatives to fatten foreign convicts, that British annuitants may come off cheap: yet, this robbery of the poor by the rich; this rendering unto Cæsar the things that are not Cæsar's; this taking (as the Psalmist says) "the labours of the people in possession"; this is the system which our pharasaical charlatans call "universal benevolence," this is the system which those hypocrites have the audacity to call "Christianity"! ARISTOCRAT. And, Madam, on a par with the cruelty and wickedness of this system, is the inconceivable folly of it. To imagine that foreign nations who closely tracked the steps by which England rose to unparalleled prosperity, and who are watching as eagerly the steps by which she is beginning, alas! to decline; to imagine, for one moment, that they will be parties to the ruin of their rising commerce, for the sake of gratifying our selfish and theoretical whims, does appear to me an hallucination, so strange, as to border on insanity. More than three years ago, when the argument of reciprocity was so vehemently urged, it was remarked,— "But then, this repeal of the Customs' duties has been a message of peace' sent to foreign nations to induce them to follow our example! What marvellous infatuation! We are throwing away the substance for the shadow, and are literally becoming the laughing-stock of every man of sense in either hemisphere. Why, the very language in 6 which we tell our tale lays bare the imposture. (Aside). We have only to reduce our working 6 classes to the level of a "cheap bread" com munity; and, as we have the largest capital and the greatest industry, it follows, as a matter of course, that we shall undersell these foreigners, not only ' in neutral markets, but even in their own.' Our olive-branch of peace is, in truth, to them a rod of iron, worse than war. Foreign Statesmen are not the fools our legislative wiseacres take them to be: if they consult their own interests, they will turn a deaf ear to all our selfish invitations; and the more pitilessly we pelt them with the storm of Free Trade, the more closely will they wrap round them the cloak of Protection. England, most justly, has long been the object of their envy and admiration; and they believe that Protection will make them all they aspire to be, because they know that Protection has made us all that we are." * And during this long period of three years the longest time required by modern statesmen for "experience"-not a single glimmer of Reciprocity appears above the horizon. PROTECTION. But will they never then open their ports to British Manufactures? * "A Letter to the Electors of Westminster," from a Conser ARISTOCRAT. "Yes: when, by the application of British money, and British machinery, to their cheap labour, they shall feel themselves strong enough, by success in neutral markets, to undersell us in their own; then, and not till then, will they be dolts enough to embrace our doctrines of free importation."* The whole matter strikes me as so very ridiculous, that I never think of it without fancying I hear once more the voice of Grimaldi in "Mother Goose": "Dilly, dilly, dilly, won't you come and be kill'd?" PROTECTION. Then, in short, you regard reciprocity as a mere fable. ARISTOCRAT. Quite so, Madam; precisely that." What a sacrifice!" cries the whole cunning race, as Albion, with a tragic air of self-devotion, flings down her tail in the midst of the " vicious circle." "What a sacrifice, and this from Perfide Albion, too! who'd have thought it?"-" Ay, my dear brethren," the tears starting from her eyes, "I now perceive you feel the injustice of your suspicions. Well aware "A Letter to the Electors of Westminster," from a Protectionist. Hearne, 1848. |