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THE CONDITION OF THE EMPIRE.

WHEN the "New Liberal System" -we speak of it as a whole, and not merely in so far as concerns tradewas adopted, we predicted that it would lead to public ruin and revolution. It has only been partially applied, and lo! its friends are terrified by the omens which appear in the political horizon. They no longer assure us that it will produce unexampled trade and prosperity-that it will make the Empire overflow with wealth, intelligence, virtue, and happiness; but, instead, they hint of decline of manufactures and fearful commotions. Even the more respectable of the Ministerial writers are taking the alarm. The Quarterly Review, forgetting its late discovery, that this was the "Age of the People"-the " Age of comfort for the Poor"-now discovers, not only that it is the age of revolution, but that symptoms are abroad of the most fatal kind of revolution.

And have all the egotism and boasting ended in this? Is this the realization of the promises that the master should be overwhelmed with riches, and the labourer should have his fowl in the pot, and his sovereign in his pocket? Have the brilliant "Improvements" produced nothing but loss, beggary, misery, and the danger of the most desolating calamities?

Agreeing as we do with the writers we have alluded to on the existence of the danger, we should probably have been silent, if, in giving warning of it, they had pointed out the true sources, and the efficient means of protection. But, instead, they have only offered, for the former, vague, erroneous declamation, and for the latter, counsels only calculated to hasten the crisis, and render its effects the more terrible. As to sources, the Quarterly Review, of course, can find nothing wrong in the new system of government; and as to protection, it repeats the stale slang of the revolutionists by profession. In conjunction with that very godly and patriotic person Richard Carlile, it calls for individual economy; the people of this country have, it appears, become highly extravagant, and they are to return to the frugal expenditure of former ages. It unfortunately happens that, independ ently of individual expenditure, busi

VOL. XXVI. NO, CLIV.

ness now will not pay its own costs: the farmer cannot obtain for his produce what will pay the expenses of his farm; the ship-owner cannot extract any income from his ships; profits are destroyed to frugality as well as extravagance: therefore economy can be no efficient remedy. The employed workman cannot earn a sufficiency of the coarsest necessaries, and the unemployed one can earn nothing; therefore they cannot profit from economy. If the community were to strike off a large part of its expenditure in merchandize and manufactures, we fear this would prove any thing rather than a remedy to the sufferings of agriculture, manufactures, and trade.

Then the Quarterly Review advises economy and retrenchment in the public burdens. The poor rates are to be reduced. As this would add largely to the privations of the labouring classes, we are not convinced that it would form any remedy to public suffering. As to the property of the church, we think it yields as much benefit to the nation in the hands of its present pos sessors, as it would do in those of laymen. If by spoliation of the church and other means, three or four mil lions of annual taxes were abolished, it would only, on the average, benefit each member of the community to the extent of a few shillings per annum, and such benefit would do but little in removing individual distress. Then the aristocracy is cautioned. The poor aristocracy! it is always the bane of public prosperity, and its sacrifice is always the remedy for public evil. We are constrained by the experience of the last few years to think that the further pulling to pieces of the politi cal and social system-additional experiments, derangement, and confu sion-would form the very reverse of a preservative from revolution.

We concur generally with the Review in regard to the culture of waste lands and emigration.

The British empire at this moment possesses incalculable advantages beyond what was ever possessed by any other great nation: it possesses every thing requisite for commanding almost uninterrupted prosperity and happiness. Yet this empire is overwhelmed with suffering, and is admit

ted to be in danger of ruin. Your Ministry and Legislature declare that they cannot account for this, they will attempt nothing in the way of remedy, and all they do enlarges the suffering and makes the ruin more certain. To make you sensible of the real causes, we cannot do better than give you the following infallible receipt for utterly ruining any great empire.

Do not act on vague generalities, and attempt to strike the whole mass at once; but adapt your measures to circumstances, and destroy in detail. The prosperity of the nation can only exist in that of the individual; and the prosperity of the individual can only exist in good profits on the employment of his capital, or good wages. Compel the individual to employ his capital without profit, or at a loss, or to labour for inadequate wages, and you will keep them in constant distress; you will drag every capital ist, in succession, through bankruptcy, and chain every workman to penury and want. By thus ruining the individual, you must inevitably triumph in your efforts to ruin the empire.

Having made these self-evident truths your own, apply them in the first place to your agriculture. If you can only keep the prices of agricultural produce below remunerating ones, this will manifestly strip your landlords and farmers of profits and capital, and your husbandry labourers of the necessary means of subsistence. You cannot accomplish it by prohibiting your farmers from asking other than prices fixed by law, but you may do so in another manner. Open your market to the cheap produce of foreign countries; admit the corn, provisions, wool, seeds, tallow, &c. &c. of such countries, at prices which will not remunerate your own agriculturists; and this will be as effective as a law for fixing prices. Your landowners, farmers, and husbandry labourers-probably half your population-will thus be strictly bound to constant loss and suffering.

Then apply the truths to your shipping interest. Place such foreign ships on an equality with your own, in your market, as can afford to take much lower freights; and it will inevitably bind this interest to constant loss and suffering.

In the same manner, apply the truths to all your manufactures and

trades as far as possible. Admit into your market foreign silks, gloves, lace, shoes, &c. &c., at such prices as your own manufacturers cannot afford to take; and this must inevitably bind all the souls engaged in the fabrication of such articles, to constant loss and suffering.

If you, unhappily, have manufac tures and trades which cannot be undersold by foreign opponents, it will be more difficult to restrict them, by direct means, to continual losing prices. But your measures against your agriculture, &c., by confining considerably more than half your population to unceasing distress, must indirectly go far towards placing the remainder in the same condition. Providence has most wisely made it a law of nature, that the minority shall suffer with the majority. The distress of the majo rity must bind the minority to reduced trade, insufficient employment, stagnation, bad debts, and inadequate prices.

You may, however, to a certain extent, strike directly at these manufac-tures and trades, in common with the rest of your interests. If you take from a man his capital, you take his means of doing business; of course, in proportion as you may annihilate capital, you will produce loss and suffering. It will not be prudent in you to confiscate and destroy individual property in a direct manner; for the sending of troops to rob men of their money, or burn their goods, might create commotions dangerous to your authority; but you may, with safety, employ indirect means equally effica cious. A vast portion of individual capital consists in reality of bank notes, and cannot exist if these notes do not. Suppress the notes, and you will necessarily destroy the capital; the banks cannot lend different money in lieu of them, and their customers cannot borrow any. You will thus as effectually take from almost every man, no matter what his business may be, a part of his capital, as you would do should you rob him of his money or burn his goods; and from great numbers of manufacturers and traders you will take nearly all their capital. By destroying the master's means of doing business, you will necessarily destroy the employment of his workmen. This potent means will, therefore, of itself, enable you to produce an im

mense portion of loss, ruin, and distress, in every business throughout your population.

After having applied the truths as far as practicability will permit at home, apply them to your Colonies. Admit into your market the produce of foreign nations, at such prices as your colonial growers of like produce cannot afford to take; and this, by narrowing the market of the latter, and reducing their prices, must bind them, masters and servants, to constant loss and suffering. Your measures for distressing your population at home will injure grievously your colonial population; and those for distressing the latter will injure grievously the former.

When you have, as far as possible, bound every individual of your population, at home and in your colonies, to bankruptcy prices and famine wages -to constant loss and suffering-you may employ various means for hastening the ruin of your empire. The universal distress will be a prolific source of discontent, disaffection, ignorance, vice, and crime. To make it produce the greatest possible amount of these, teach your population that all its laws and institutions are faulty, and fill the land with intolerable evils; -excite its hatred by this, on the one hand, and continual new legislation on the other, against all established things;-instruct it to despise the wisdom of past ages, and to reject, as error, whatever bears the stamp of experience; under the pretence of benefiting science, inspire it with contempt of those feelings and usages which humanize man's nature and bind him to bis species;-array against each other servants and masters, inferiors and superiors; by precept and example, cause religion and morals to be derided as bigotry and prejudice ;-goad the loyal and orderly into disaffection by insult and coercion-and cherish and reward the rebellious and ungovernable. In a word, root out the feelings and regulations which give being and weal to society, and replace them with those which brutalize and destroy it.

It is demonstrable, that this is the very best plan which human ability could devise that it is an infallible plan-for enabling any body of rulers to ruin an empire completely in the

shortest possible time.. You cannot be so blind as to assert the contrary.

And now, how have you in late years governed, and how are you at present governing, the British empire? Precisely on this plan. You have adhered, and are adhering, to it in every particular. With your intentions we have nothing to do; it makes not the least difference whether your object be the ruin or the benefit of the empire; it is sufficient for us to know that your conduct and measures are the most efficacious you could possibly adopt for accomplishing its ruin.

You are compelled to own that your population is in bitter distress-what are the causes? It is only a passing cloud, says your Chancellor of the Exchequer, arising from overtrading. Your Prime Minister, in such a selfdestroying speech as scarcely any other official man ever ventured on, has ascribed it to the issues of the country banks, the loss of loans made to fo reign countries, &c.-to causes which ceased to operate some years ago. One minister thus, in reality, charges it upon excess of capital, and the other upon deficiency. Your omniscient and infallible guides, the Economists and Philosophers, generalize on the matter in a manner perfectly astonishing. One affiliates the distress on overtrading, another casts the blame on the existence of the corn laws; the causes are, according to this party, excess of currency, taxation, or the poor laws; according to that, bad harvests, the suppression of the small notes, or the increase of machinery. They can utter nothing but vague generalities; their magnificent powers cannot stoop to the drudgery of looking at parts, or to the vulgarity of believing in the facts and figures of real business.

Undertaking the humble toil which they disdain, we will look at the divisions of your population severally, and trace the distress of each to its cause, by means of the ignoble evidence of common-place demonstration. In the first place, why are your farmers distressed? Because they cannot obtain for their produce what will cover their outgoings. The last harvest was not a deficient one to any material extent except in wheat; and if wheat had been a full crop, they would still have been distressed, as was proved in the last year, by its

cheapness. If your farmers could procure a certain addition to the prices of their various kinds of produce, they would enjoy prosperity. This is a fact which you cannot controvert.

Now, why cannot they obtain the prices requisite for making them prosperous? Are machinery, the currency, the corn law, overtrading, and taxation, the causes which make wool unsalable at ruinous prices-which make skins, tallow, &c. &c. so cheap -which will not suffer the prices of barley, oats, beans, pease, and wheat, to rise to remunerating ones? You know them to be perfectly guiltless. Wool is ruinously low and unsaleable, because foreign wool is used in lieu of it; skins, tallow, &c. are rendered so cheap by the import of them from other countries; and if a few shillings per quarter were added to the price of corn, it would give birth to a destructive glut of all kinds by importation. It matters not what your currency, your harvests, or the prosperity of your manufacturing and trading classes may be, your farmers cannot, under your laws for the admission of foreign produce, obtain adequate prices. They are distressed by bad prices, and your laws prohibit them from gaining higher ones. You must admit that this is established fact, and not speculation.

The distress of the farmer must always be shared by his servants. It at once compels him to employ much less labour, and to reduce wages. The loss of profits and capital to the employer must for ever be the loss of competence and bread to the employed. The sufferings of your farmers have taken an enormous portion of employment from your husbandry labourers, and reduced their earnings until they cannot procure a sufficiency of necessaries.

To the landowners, rents have fallen, and are falling, greatly; you know the cause is to be found in the low prices of agricultural produce.

In the next place, why are your shipowners distressed? Are overtrading, the currency, machinery, &c. the causes here? If the question be ridiculous, you compel us to put it. Your shipowners are distressed because they cannot obtain remuncra

ting freights, and they cannot obtain such freights because you have placed them by law in these circumstances in a considerable part of their trade, they must either accept losing freights, or incur the greater loss of abandoning it to foreigners, and suffering their ships to rot in port; the rate of freight fixed by law in this part of their trade must of necessity be the rate in their trade generally.

And now why are your silk, glove, and lace manufacturers distressed? They cannot obtain prices which will yield profits to the master and necessaries to the workman. Why are their prices so bad? Because they cannot raise them to remunerating ones, without having their trade taken from them by foreigners. If the prices of the silk manufacturers were raised sixpence per yard, and those of the glove manufacturers were raised in the same proportion, you are well aware that foreigners would destroy the trade of both. As to the lace manufacturers, foreign blond lace has destroyed their trade to a large extent already. Here is one cause of the distress; another is to be found in the fact which you cannot question, that the large import of foreign silks, gloves, and lace, destroys a vast mass of employment, and keeps the market constantly glutted. Your laws demonstrably prohibit these three manufactures from obtaining adequate prices, and take from them much of their trade.

Several other interests are placed by your laws in similar circumstances. Looking at all who are dependent solely or principally on agriculture in the United Kingdom, including the landowners and their dependents, as well as the farmers and their servants, they must comprehend onehalf the population. The Shipping Interest, Silk Trade, and other Inte rests, circumstanced as we have stated, cannot have less than two millions of souls dependent on them. Here, then, is the majority of your population ;here are twelve or fourteen millions of people, strictly bound by your laws to constant loss and suffering. These millions have had one-fourth, one-third, and, in very many cases, the whole of their property destroyed by your laws;*

When the Prime Minister spoke of the loss of the money lent to the South American republics, as a source of public distress, he ought not to have been silent

and they are prohibited by them from obtaining higher-taking into account the losses which bad seasons, &c. must for ever entail on the farmer and trader-than distress-prices. To ascribe their distress to over-trading, the corn law, and the thousand-and-one other causes which you plead, is an absurdity too gross for other ears than those of lunacy. It is not theory or speculative opinion, but it is a matter of arithmetical demonstration and a fact established by conclusive experiments, that your laws render it impossible for these millions to obtain prices and hold employment which will protect them from constant loss and suffering. In addition, this gigantic part of your population has been seriously injured by the destruction of capital effected by your suppression of the small notes of country banks. Through these twelve or fourteen millions, you have applied the principle of compelling the individual to employ his capital without profit, or at a loss, or to labour for inadequate wages.

Passing from them, ask the middling and small manufacturers and traders, in almost all parts of the country, if their distress do not arise from over-trading, the corn law, and your grand string of causes, and they will deride your ignorance. They will thus answer you: When the banks issued small notes, they discounted our bills and made us occasional advances; this enabled us to carry on a comfortable and prosperous business. The notes are suppressed, and, in consequence, the greater part of our resources is cut off; we cannot raise money to meet our payments and carry on trade with: and this is the case, not because trade is bad, but because our capital has been taken from us. Matters are made much worse, by the circumstance that the farmers have now no money to expend.

These people and their workmen form another very large part of your population which your laws have reduced to distress. Their distress must

be permanent, for your laws have ta◄ ken their capital now, and for ever.

It is thus a truth wholly above question, that you have by law bound the great majority of your population to constant loss and suffering, and destroyed much of its property. The many millions of those who compose it, are to most of your manufacturers and merchants customers, without being rivals. To ascertain the effects of this on the minority, apply, not to the economist for speculations, but to the man in trade for the facts of real life. You want in this case facts only, and not opinions. Go in the first place to the respectable tradesman, and he will say, When my customers, farmers and others, obtain good prices, they buy almost one-third more goods of me than they do when distressed; they give me what I ask, pay me much ready money, and discharge their bills at the proper time. But now, in their distress, they not only buy so much less of me, but they will not buy, except at the cheapest rate; they beat me down in price, they go on credit, my bad debts among them are very heavy, and I cannot get my money of those who are solvent. Then go to the small tradesman, and he will give a similar account touching the working classes. He will tell you that the difference between the prosperity and distress of these classes is to him not only a difference of almost half his trade, but the difference between the sale of good commodities at a full profit, and that of bad ones at the smallest profit-between selling for ready money at no risk, and selling on indefinite credit with great losses. Then calculate from the individual to the body. If the distress have compelled, on the average, each individual of the majority of fifteen millions, to expend two pounds per annum less with the minority, it has compelled the aggregate majority to expend with it thirty millions less. To this enormous loss of trade, must be added the loss caused by the sub

touching the capital which has been destroyed at home by the new system of trade. How many millions have been lost in the last four years by the landowners and farmers in the value of land and farming stock, and by the shipowners, silk manufacturers, &c. in the value of ships and fixed capital; and by the whole, in the destruction of profits, and insolvency? Several hundreds of millions. Speak of the foreign loans, and overlook all this! Oh, fie, go to the "schoolmaster!"

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