Page:The Economist 1843-08- Vol 1 Preliminary Number (IA sim economist 1843-08 1 preliminary-number).pdf/4

 each country inflicting on itself as much mischief and injury as England had done by similar policy.

It was thus while Art, Science, Capital, Commercial Enterprise, and Labour were eagerly demanding a greater arena to multiply and extend their benefits to, that legislation, ignorance, and prejudice associated with short-sighted selfishness, were actively engaged frustrating all these nobler efforts and designs. And so far had they succeeded in creating a war among the material interests of the world, that in 1819 the collision occasioned thereby threatened the most serious consequences to our Social and Commercial existence. This crisis caused reflecting men to turn their attention to the hitherto neglected science of Political and Commercial Economy. The philosophy of Adam Smith found a clear and able enunciator in Ricardo. The political and legislative application of these great principles, so eloquently put forth to a wondering but ignorant audience by Burke, found an ardent, warm, and able echo in Huskisson. The philosopher wrote, and was not refuted. The legislator debated, and by his earnestness, industry, and eloquence, aided no doubt by the pressing exigencies of the time, gained a partial triumph over the ignorance and prejudice which ruled; and shadowed out for the first time the principles of Political Economy into the embodyment of as their practical result. He saw that our interests and commerce had far out-grown the narrow limits which ignorant legislation bad assigned them; that all the up-heavings and convulsions in the country were but the external symptoms of the fieree struggle which was going forward between our rapidly-advancing productive power, earnestly demanding a larger field of exchange, and the principles of restriction and monopoly, blindly and vainly attempting to confine them to their ancient and narrow limit: that it was a severe contest between intelligence, which pressed forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress.

He commenced his commercial reform by revising our truly Anti-Commercial Navigation laws; he followed that effort by revising the import duties on the raw materials of manufactures, of silk, wool, flax, &c.; he reduced the differential duty on coffee and wine, and by these and various other changes, but far more by the broad, intelligent, and enlightened arguments by which he supported his policy, gave great and cheering hopes that the emancipation of industry and commerce was at hand. Under the salutary influence of these reforms the country recovered, and with returning prosperity, discontent was dispelled,—peace was restored. Every measure was attended with eminent success. With reduction of duties he increased the revenue; with protection, removed or lowered, he increased the competition and import, without injury to the producer at home. Increased supply only tended to stimulate demand. The Minister and his principles became equally popular. The silk weavers in Macclesfield, who declared themselves ruined by his policy in 1825, drew his carriage triumphantly into the town in 1830, on his last and fatal journey to Liverpool. The Free-Trade Minister died, and left no successor. The progress of his policy was thus arrested at its outset, and was soon forgot in the stormy political events of 1830.

In 1831 commenced the great Reform struggle: fascinated with the excitement, intoxicated with the success, the country totally forgot the ends of good government in in the struggle for its means:—its means were obtained, its ends were neglected. The Corn Laws and Commercial restrictions were denounced on the hustings, but unheard of in Parliament; and it is a serious reflection on the intelligence and wisdom of the times, that the greatest popular political influence which ever existed in this country, scarcely achieved one important act of liberation to commerce and industry; that it left the Corn Laws and all the great glaring monopolies and restrictions as it found them: it spent its whole strength in things good, but good only as a means to an end. A succession of a few good harvests, and the development of Huskisson's then neglected principles, sustained our onward progress for some years,—until we reached the end of 1838, when the occurrence of a single bad harvest, proved to all thinking men the critical point at which we had arrived. Wealth abounded, useful productions were multiplied beyond all precedent, but the field of exchange had become so narrowed, that the most serious national sacrifices were required to supply the deficiency of the first necessary of life during the three following years. Twenty years had passed away: six millions had been added to our population: art, science, ingenuity, and industry had been working their miracles—but legislation still sought to confine the country in the same swaddling clothes in which it had been wrapt a quarter of a century before; and, with the exception of the few acts of Huskisson, no means had been taken to afford a wider field for our increasing numbers and powers. The fierce struggle for more room, for wider markets, for freer exchange, visible in 1819, was now again, as before, exhibited by new upheavings and convulsions—productive energy and intelligence were again in keen antagonism with monopoly and restriction. The great manufacturing population was the first to suffer, but that sympathy between all the different parts of the state, the existence of which has always been overlooked in framing restrictive and protecting laws, gradually extended the mischief, until it reached every interest in the country: the lessened means of consumption on the part of the artisans of one class reacted generally on the demand for the produce of their fellow artisans of other classes; which again reacted more strongly on the shopkeepers and small dealers; again affecting the wholesale dealer and importer;—the consumption of articles of foreign growth being thus curtailed in quantity and price, the power of our foreign customers to consume our manufactures was again, in their turn, lessened; and thus reacted once more on the producing classes at home; trade had a constant tendency to contraction; the shipping interest became deeply depressed; capital became profitless; the revenue suffered; new taxes became needful; consumption was thus once more les-