XLIII. 1848. importation, drives numbers into the cities as the only CHAP. place where they can find the means of earning a livelihood; that is, it drives them from the cradles into the graves of the human race. In the next place, the cultivation of the country is mainly turned to pasturage, as experience now shows that no foreign State can compete with the domestic growers in the production of sheep and cattle. But sheep or cattle farms do not employ a tenth part of the labourers which those devoted to the raising of grain crops do, and thus the prolific power of the country is arrested at once by the migration of a large part of its inhabitants into cities, and the turning the industry of those who remain into pastoral instead of agricultural pursuits, and at the same time the emigration of vast multitudes in quest of that employment in the colonies or distant lands which they can no longer hope to find in their own. 159. these laws Whoever considers these laws of nature with attention cannot fail to see that they render certain and unavoid- Effect of able, in a certain stage of society, the commencement of combined. decline, and that the loud and increasing cry for Free Trade is the first symptom of the arresting cause having come into operation. As the concession of this policy is equivalent to a direct exposure of domestic industry to the competition of foreigners, which, in cereal productions at least, it is unable to withstand, so it never can become successful till the interest of the commercial classes and the consumers has become more powerful than that of the agricultural and producing. But when the victory is gained, and foreign competition fully admitted, national decline ere long is inevitable. It is so because foreign industry, generally speaking, has the advantage in the fields over domestic in such circumstances; because population is driven into unhealthy towns, where it can find branches of industry that can compete with foreigners, instead of healthy fields, where it cannot; because emigration, from the discouragement of rural industry, becomes VOL. VII. > 20 XLIII. 1848. CHAP. So great as first to check the growth, and then cause the decline of inhabitants; and because the preservation of national independence in the long run becomes impossible when a considerable portion of the national subsistence is derived from foreign States. Great Britain, before Free Trade had been established ten years, had come to import from 7,000,000 to 10,000,000 quarters annually, being nearly a half of the national consumption, by human beings, of cereal products; while above two millions of its labourers, chiefly agricultural, had emigrated to foreign lands.* More than half of this immense supply comes from America and Russia, and by their uniting together, and passing a non-intercourse Act, which was an event imminent in 1856, before the Treaty of Paris, subsistence might any day be run up to famine prices in the British Islands. The consciousness of this is what renders the Government timid, and has so often led to the acquiescence in insults which would have been mortally resented in former days. 160. induces at first cheap prices of Food, and then often Although it is by superior cheapness of production in Free Trade poor States that the decline of agriculture is produced in rich ones, under the Free-trade system, it is not to be supposed that this advantage is to be permanently enjoyed by the nation which has adopted this policy. On the contrary, famine prices never are so frequent or disastrous as in the country which has most implicitly embraced that policy. At first, indeed, the free introduction of foreign grain occasions a prodigious fall of prices, and con famine prices. * "According," say the Commissioners, "to the very interesting returns received from the Emigration Commissioners, it would appear that from the 30th of June 1841 to the 31st of March 1851, 1,240,375 persons, and from the 1st April 1851 to the 31st December 1855, 847,119 persons, amounting in all to 2,087,856, who were born in Ireland, are estimated to have emigrated from the ports of the United Kingdom in the time specified, or 14 years. Of these emigrants 76.7 per cent were bound for the United States, 19.7 for British North America, and 3.6 for the Australian colonies. Between the 1st of April 1851 and the 31st of December 1855, the emigration of the Irish to the Australian colonies was 6.5 per cent of the total number of emigrants, the emigra tion to the United States was 81.4 per cent, and that to British North America had fallen to 12 per cent." Emigration from Irish ports is still gradually diminishing. From 190,322 in 1852, it has dwindled to 91,914 in 1855, and will probably become less.-Emigration Commissioners' Report, 1856. XLIII. 1848. sequently great ease and prosperity to the consuming CHAP. classes. But this auspicious state of things cannot be of long duration. Low prices must ere long discourage production; corn-lands come to be thrown into pasture, or abandoned to nature; and in time the home supply is so much reduced that the whole import from abroad makes no material addition to the stock of annual subsistence. This, accordingly, is what took place during the first years after Free Trade was introduced into England; prices of wheat fell to 30s. and 41s. ; and the supply of wheat raised in the British Islands declined about 4,000,000 quarters, being the whole amount, in average years, of the foreign importation of that article. † But as a foreign supply of food * In Ireland the decrease in the production of wheaten crops since 1846 has been ascertained by authentic evidence. From the Government surveys, it appears, that since that time, while the potato and turnip crops have increased, the wheaten crops have declined thus: Proving clearly that the fall in the production of wheat was owing to its low price; for there was a simultaneous rise in the production of potatoes for human subsistence, and green crops for cattle. In 1848, the decrease of cereal crops, as compared with 1847, was 673,488 tons. Increase of potatoes, as compared with 1847, 725,521 tons.-Agricultural Returns, Ireland, 1848, p. v., Introduction; Ibid., 1855, p. xv. WHEAT SOLD IN 169 INSPECTED MARKETS IN ENGLAND. It appears, from Captain Larcom's reports, that between 1846 and 1852, the production of wheat in Ireland had fallen off 1,500,000 quarters, and the export XLIII. 1848. CHAP. is much more precarious than that derived from home agriculture, it is to be expected that when a nation comes to depend for a considerable part of its food upon the former source, the variations of price will proportionally become excessive, and the alternation of ruinously low and famine prices most severely distress the whole community. It was not in the days of the Republic, when every rood had its man," and Italy was an exporting country, that the Roman poet deplored the famine which brought the State to the verge of ruin, but in the days of the Empire, when free trade in grain had been established for two centuries-when Italy was a sheep-walk, and the imperial people were fed by the harvests of Egypt and Libya.* Although, however, it may be evident that Free Trade of that grain to England had declined in a similar proportion. Supposing the The classical scholar will recollect the noble lines of Claudian:- Consul ovans, nostræve premant pharetrata secures Ille diu miles populus, qui præfuit orbi, Qui trabeas et sceptra dabat, quem semper in armis CLAUDIAN, De Bello Gildonico. XLIII. 1848. 161. was forced must be attended with those weakening, and, in the end, CHAP. fatal results, yet it is not to be supposed that they are all to be ascribed as a reproach to Sir R. Peel, or that he is to be charged with having occasioned the ruin of Free Trade his country, because he was the ostensible author of a upon Sir R. system to which future times will perhaps impute it. The Peel. truth rather is, that he was the creature of circumstances throughout, and compelled by the loud national voice to adopt the policy, and that his sagacity led him to perceive that power, however acquired, was to be retained on no other terms. The nation had reached that point which always arrives with a rich State in a certain stage of its progress, when the influence and power of realised. wealth and consumption have become superior to those of industry and production, and when, consequently, the desire to aid both by cheapening everything, becomes the ruling principle in the State. As the adoption of this principle is the indication of the penult state of national progress-and it can only be desired in the last stage of national wealth-so it is unquestionably the first step in national decline. This will appear first in the agricultural districts and the rural population, who, deprived of the chief market for their produce by foreign importation from cheaper States, will flock to cities in quest of subsistence, or emigrate to foreign lands, leaving their own in great part to be traversed by flocks of sheep or herds of cattle, or to return to the domain of the heath-fowl and the plover. To the very last hour of national existence, the great cities will continue to prosper, and commerce will exhibit a flattering aspect, but it will be carried on between the manufacturer of the old and rich and the grain-grower of the new and foreign State; the rural inhabitants of the former will experience little or no benefit from it. Thus population, impelled from the cradles to the graves of mortality, is first retarded, and then arrested, in its progress; the military strength of the nation is lessened by the failure of recruits from the rural districts, |