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think of the trustworthiness of an historian who can boldly affirm that a burden has been doubled, which two high financial authorities had already proved to have been reduced fifty-three per cent.?

Patriotically bent upon proving the ruin of his country, and upon tracing that ruin to the adoption of a policy which he has wasted so many years in denouncing, Sir A. Alison points with a gloomy triumph to the nearly stationary amount of our population during the last decennial period, and to the vast emigration which is now in progress from our shores, and attributes them, as he attributes everything which he regards as a misfortune, to Free Trade and a contracted currency. Forgetting that, at p. ix. of the Preface, he had, truly enough, referred this modern exodus' to the combined influence of 'the aroused energies and ambition of civilised man, to the 'discoveries of science, and to the treasures of the wilderness;' and that at p. viii. of the Preface, and again at p. 65. of chap. i., he had spoken of the gold discoveries in California and Australia as the cause which had given the last irresistible stimulus to the mighty movement,-he in three several passages lays the whole burden of this evil (as he considers it) at the door of that system of commercial policy which, after some years of trial, has just been solemnly adopted and ratified by the common consent of all political parties.

The effect of these all-important measures [the change in the commercial policy, and the increased stringency of the monetary laws of Great Britain],-from which so much was expected, and so little save suffering received, was to augment to an unparalleled and extraordinary degree the outward tendency of the British people.' (Chap. i. § 10.)

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The moment this [free importation of corn] takes place, the limits of national progress have been reached, population declines, emigration increases, and the sinews of the State are transferred to other lands. How clearly is the operation of this law of nature exemplified in the recent history of Great Britain, where the nation has been convulsed by the fierce demand for free trade in corn, first raised in the manufacturing towns; and, as a consequence of its concession, it now finds ten millions of quarters of grain annually imported, three hundred thousand cultivators annually exported, and

according to the best information obtainable, even agricultural wages have not fallen much -in some districts not at all-since 1815; and that where they have fallen, the fall has been by no means equivalent to that which has taken place in every article of consumption. See Porter's Progress,' 3rd ed. p. 442., where all the information extant has been collected into one table.

the chief market for its manufactures in the inhabitants of its own fields daily declining.' (Chap. i. § 45.)

'Certain it is, that the ruin of industry and destruction of property effected in Great Britain since the manufacturing school obtained the ascendancy in Parliament, much exceeds anything recorded in the history of pacific legislation, or that could have been effected by the most violent exertions of despotic power [!]; and the melancholy fact stands proved by the records of the census, that the population of the Empire, which had advanced without intermission during five centuries, for the first time declined during the first five years of freetrade legislation.' (Chap. i. § 58.)

We have quoted all three passages, partly to guard ourselves against any suspicion of having misrepresented Sir Archibald's statement, and partly to show that his assertion as to the cause of the exodus' is not a hasty one, but is wilful, deliberate, and reiterated. Yet if any social fact can be considered certain and proved, it is certain that free trade has had nothing whatever to do with emigration, unless to check it, and render it less needful and attractive;-that the recent startling 'exportation 'of cultivators' from our shores is distinctly traceable to two events, the failure of the potato, and the discovery of Australian gold; and that this truth is clearly proved by documents to which Sir A. Alison not only might have had, but actually had, access-for he quotes them. In the first place, we presume that one of the greatest possible stimuli to emigration is a deficiency of employment or of food at home, and that whatever promotes employment and cheapens food, must, pro tanto, diminish the motives to expatriation. Now, it is notorious and indisputable that free trade has done both (indeed its having done the latter is Sir A. Alison's chief indictment against it); — that, since we recovered from the fearful famine of 1846 and 1847, which free trade in corn did so much to mitigate, the people of Great Britain have never been so well employed or so well fed as in the last three years; that the price of every species of food (whether articles of luxury or of necessity) has never been so low; that our manufacturing production has been steadily increasing; that the excise revenue-the great criterion: of popular comfort-has been wonderfully prosperous; that the wages of artisans have been rather on the increase, while the articles they had to purchase were falling in price; and that the deposits in savings' banks have augmented. Sir A. Alison, doubtless, means us to infer as a set-off to all this, that the wages of agricultural labourers (the chief class of emigrants) have been lowered in consequence of the fall in the price of

VOL. XCVII. NO. CXCVIII.

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corn, and that the employment for them has diminished. But if wages have in a few counties been reduced, that reduction, it is well known, has borne no proportion to the reduction in the cost of the necessaries of life; and if some labourers have been dismissed, more must have been taken on, and the aggregate of agricultural employment been increased. For on consulting the records of the poor law, we find the following results. The sums spent in relief of the poor in England in the half-years ending Michaelmas were as follows:

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The number of adult able-bodied paupers, widows, and others in receipt of relief, was, in England and Wales, in January

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The number of adult males receiving out-door relief on account of want of work, was in January—

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And these are precisely the years during which the emigration movement has been most active. No one but Sir A. Alison would have ventured on the paradox that increase of food at home stimulates the population to go abroad.

A certain amount of emigration from our shores, and especially from Ireland, has taken place every year for the last half century that its vast increase has been caused by the failure of the potato in the sister island, and not by free trade, Sir A. Alison might have learned by examining the table given in the Twelfth Report of the Emigration Commissioners, App. No. III. It there appears that, from 1832 to 1842 inclusive, the year when the first timid commencement of free trade was inaugurated by Sir Robert Peel, the number of emigrants from the United Kingdom averaged 78,800; that in the three years ending 1842 (previous to free trade), it averaged 112,500; that in the three following years it had fallen to 73,800; that after the potato rot had fairly shown itself, it sprung up to 129,800 in 1846, and to 258,270 in 1847; and that since that date it has averaged nearly 300,000 a year. If we separate the emigration from Ireland, where the potato failure was chiefly felt, from the general amount, the same connexion between cause and effect is still more strongly brought out.

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The effect of the discovery of Australian gold as stimulating emigration to those colonies may be judged of by the following figures.

Emigration from the United Kingdom to Australian Colonies.

From 1838-1841 (before free trade was heard of)
1842-1846 (while it was in process of adoption)
1847-1850 (before gold was discovered)
1851- (year of its discovery)

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1852

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If any further refutation were needed of Sir A. Alison's theory that emigration is attributable to the adoption of a free commercial policy, we might find it in the fact that, whereas the average number of emigrants from Great Britain (independently of Ireland) during 1851 and 1852, did not exceed 110,000, the emigrants from Germany, which certainly has not sinned in the direction of free trade, had reached last year 103,313.†

It was of course to be expected that a zealous Tory of the straitest sect, like Sir A. Alison, should regard the Reform Act as a fatal and lamentable measure, which struck a deathblow at the greatness of England. But few, we think, will be prepared to find that long before the date of that great innovation he considered that the ascendancy had passed away from the landed interest and, with that ascendancy, the glory of the House of Commons. Even as far back as the termination of the war, his complaint against the Legislature is, that the territorial aristocracy had ceased to be predominant in its composition. Plus royaliste que le roi, even the unreformed House of Commons was too liberal, too commercial, too manufacturing for his approval; and the very Parliament which passed the Corn

The emigrants from Ireland are found, according to the calculation of the Commissioners, by adding to the number who sail from Irish ports, nine-tenths of those sailing from Liverpool; and latterly one-third of those sailing from the Clyde. The figures, however, cannot be given as absolutely accurate.

Last Report of the Central Emigration Society of Germany.

Laws in 1815 (the most flagrant piece of class legislation on record), he actually deplores over as suffering under the undue ascendancy of the mercantile interest' [!] It was a mixed body composed of merchants, manufacturers, bankers, colonial proprietors, shipowners and shopkeepers, even more than landholders.' (P. 119., also pp. 36. and 56.) How a man who thinks as Sir A. Alison does, as to the impropriety and danger of the Reform Act, and the mischief, iniquity, and cruelty of allowing the free importation of corn, could have penned the following just remark, we are at a loss to imagine :

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The first successful stand against the deluge of revolution [in 1848] was made in Great Britain; and there it was withstood, not by the bayonets of the soldiers, but by the batons of the citizens. The 10th of April was the Waterloo of Chartist rebellion in England;-a memorable proof that the institutions of a free people, suited to their wants and in harmony with their dispositions, can, in such felicitous circumstances, oppose a more successful barrier to social dangers than the most powerful military force at the command of a despotic chief.' (P. 19.)

No observation could be more just or pertinent: but did it never occur to the writer that if a reformed representation and a free trade in food are suited to our wants and in harmony with our dispositions,' and therefore produced such admirable results, an unreformed Parliament and a prohibitive tariff must be wholly unsuitable and out of harmony with us, and would have brought about a very different termination of that memorcitizens able crisis? Does Sir A. Alison really believe that of all classes would have come forward as they did to maintain order and defend their institutions, if the Act of 1832 had never been passed and if the Act of 1815 had never been repealed? Does he believe that if fettered commerce, a restricted supply of corn, and a landed House of Commons had then been among our institutions,' the middle and lower classes would have been found ready and zealous to uphold them? Does he not know-did not every Tory then feel, with a thrill of self-gratulation-that, if corn laws and rotten boroughs had still existed on that day, no power on earth could have saved England from an unsparing revolution? If Sir A. Alison's policy had been adhered to up to the 10th of April 1848, he would have had to draw a very different moral from the scenes of that eventful and honourable day.

In § 44. of his first chapter Sir A. Alison ventures on an assertion which we cannot pass over without comment, and which may serve as a specimen of the liberties which, under the temptation of silly and outrageous prejudices and by the

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