Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/792

756 F R E E T R A D E however democratic may be its institutions, the vested interests of manual labour, or allowed that it should be compensated, if events required that a change be made in legislation which might interfere with the continuity of its wagss. But if the project which is in favour with certain schools of socialism in France and Germany, that the state should assist labour (and of course it could assist only special kinds of labour) with Government subventions, the doctrine of vested interests would assuredly be applied to such assisted callings. It was, perhaps still is, a contention with some public men in England that poor-law relief is of the nature of a vested interest to labour, or that it is the indefeasible heritage of the poor. It has been very fairly shown by Mr Fawcett, in his re cently published essay on free trade, that many circum stances assisted towards making the acceptance of this great political change in the United Kingdom, notwithstanding the vehement passions which were excited against those who carried on the struggle for the repeal of all taxes on food. Mr Fawcett has not by any means exhausted all the facts which aidad the advocates of this change, nor has he enu merated all the motives which influenced those who gradu ally becam.3 reconciled to the change, and who even, from being opponents, were converted into partisans of the move ment. For the principles of free trade had been accepted by Lord Liverpool in 1820, and had bsen cautiously tried by Mr Huskisson in certain directions and with marked success. la fact, the first modifications of the tariff were agreeable to tha landowners and the farmers, were acceptable to the manufacturers and small traders, and were objected to, as similar reforms were objected to in Walpole s time, by the great ni3rcantile houses, who were enabled by their capital to retain almost a monopoly of the wholesale trade as against less opulent dealers. But even here a significant law of price?, never indeed formulated, but recognized, effect ively enough reconciled the great houses to the remission of taxation on raw materials and on those foreign products against which no hom.3 production competed. It is that a remission of taxation, in all consumable articles, and notably in those of extended demand, is followed by arise in the price of the untaxed articles. This law is a constant refutation of the policy which imposes taxes on imports, and operates still more emphatically when taxes on exports are imposed, as they sometimes are by ignorant and needy Governments. Hardly a voice, therefore, was raised against the bold moasure.3 which Peel adopted between 1842 and 1846. They could not possibly harm the landowners ; they were a positive boon to the manufacturers and the consumers. So much was this the case that for some time, as has been already stated, the remission of a vast number of small taxss on consumption was made the apology for retaining the income tax. But the case was very different when the taxes on food produced abroad, and in competition with that produced at home, and on sugar imported from other places than the British colonies, were assailed by the logic of the English free-traders. Here it was seen at once that the most power ful interests were imperilled. For very obvious reasons, the landed interest in England has always wielded far more power, political and financial, than any other. During the Middle Ages it controlled the monarchy, deposed kings, alterel the succession, till, up to the beginning of the 17th century, the general appellation which Continental nations gave the English was that of " disloyal." The landed gentry and free-holders fought the wars of the Long Parliament, and subverted the monarchy. The Restoration was a com promise between them and the courtiers, and one of the first results of the Restoration was the enactment of strin gent provisions against the importation of foreign food. For centuries the policy, the legislation, the finance of England had been defined by the interests, real or supposed, of the landed gentry, the yeomanry, and the tenant fanners. They were now threatened with a complete reversal of this traditionary policy, and such a reversal seemed to purpose their ruin. Those who lived through this time will easily recall to mind how violent were the passions which the anti-corn-law movement excited ; how Whigs of the Mel bourne school denounced the free-trade movement as folly ; how such a man as Lord Brougham, who was conceived, ten years or more before, to have carried the reform agitation to the very verge of sedition, now declared, and perhaps with perfect good faith, that the movement in favour of free trade was unconstitutional ; how Sir Robert Peel believed that the opponents of protection were the instigators of a plot against his life ; and how, long after the victory was won, it was a commonplace to accuse the leaders of the movement with the most sinister designs against property. And yet the tax on food was in the last degree invidious. It was avowedly imposed in the interest of the landowners, and with a view to maintaining rents. It was allowed that free trade in the abstract was just, protection in the abstract indefensible. There were of course reasons alleged in favour of protection, analogous to those which are now current in the United States and elsewhere, cs to the wisdom of a nation being self-supporting ; as to the disturb ance of the exchanges in the presence of bad harvests ; as to the incapacity of domestic industry to compete against the low-priced labour of semi-barbarous countries; as to the destruction of national industries, and the extinction of the best and most patriotic of English craftsmen. But these, alarms were either heedless or interested rhetoric, never put forward by really competent critics. Nearly thirty years ago, Mr Gladstone informed the writer of this article that he never had but one objection to the repeal of the corn law, during the early period of his connexion with Peel s Government, and that was the fear that he enter tained as to the consequences which would ensue to an in terest which seemed, and seemed naturally, to be the very centre of English national life. Statesmen may well be excused from venturing on economical changes of a vast and extended character, even though the propriety of the change may be proved to demonstration : for a period of change, however beneficent it may be in the end, is almost invariably accompanied by temporary and severe loss. Already, however, there were far-sighted men who pre dicted that this loss, if loss did ensue from the change, would b3 a minimum. Theydiscovered oranticipated this in pursuance of that other fundamental law of prices already hinted at. When the products of any industry are nume rous, and all arc in demand, such an alteration in the cost of producing one of these products as makes it, from being the most profitable branch of the calling, the least, is followed by an exaltation in the value of the other products. Thus it is constantly the case that the bye -products of a complex industry are found to be the sole source of business profits. Such at least is said to be the fact in the manufac ture of gas and soda ash, and it is alleged that even if a substitute be found for gas as a means of lighting, the value of the bye-products in the manufacture is so great, and the use of them so indispensable in the economy of society, that the manufacture would still be necessary and profitable. But there is no illustration of the law which is so exact and invariable as that supplied by agriculture. During the existence of the corn laws, the profits of the farmer and the reuts of the landowner were estimated in wheat. It was from the probable decline in the value of wheat that all the sinister predictions as to the future of the landed interest were derived. So entirely did grain, especially wheat, form the measure of agricultural values that ten years before the repeal of the corn laws the com-