Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 68, No. 417, July, 1850
Such is the state of the agricultural interest throughout the three Kingdoms at this moment, and such are the prospects before us. The evidence, albeit not taken before a committee of either House of Parliament, is too unanimous to admit of a doubt; county after county, district after district, parish after parish throughout England, have testified to their melancholy condition. The Times may talk of mendicity, and the Economist may trump up figures to show that the farmers ought to be making a profit even at present prices; but neither irony nor fiction can avail to discredit or pervert facts so well authenticated as these. Of these facts parliament is fully cognisant – not only from the individual knowledge of members as to what is passing abroad – not only from the sentiments expressed at many hundred meetings, independent of the great demonstrations lately made at London and Liverpool – but from the petitions which have been presented to both Houses, praying for a reversal of that policy which has proved so detrimental to the interests of a large section of her Majesty's subjects. Yet still Parliament is silent, and the first Minister of the Crown refuses to sanction that appeal to the country, which the exigency of the case would seem to require, and which has been resorted to on occasions far less peremptory and pressing than this.
Let us not be misunderstood. Our wish simply is to record the fact of such silence and refusal, – not to be rash in censure. We cannot, and do not forget the peculiar circumstances connected with the last general election – the political tergiversation which preceded it, the hopes and expectations which were then entertained by many, as to the working of the new system, – or the disorganisation of parties. Even the most strenuous opponents of the Free-Trade measures, since these had passed into a law, however iniquitously carried, were desirous that the experiment should have a fair trial, and that it should not be impeded in its progress, so long as, by the most liberal construction, it could be held to justify the anticipations of its authors. Many names of great weight, influence, and authority were found among the roll of those who consented to the new measures; and it was most natural that, throughout the country, a number of persons should be found willing to surrender their own judgment upon a matter yet untried, which had received so creditable a sanction. Therefore it was that the majority of members returned to the present House of Commons were Free-traders, bound to the system by the double ties of previous conviction and of pledge; and though recent elections, as well as the alarming posture of affairs, have contributed materially to alter the position of the two great parties in the House, it would be unreasonable as yet to look for a change, in a body so constituted, at least to that extent which a reversal of the adopted policy must imply.
Neither can we rationally expect, that Lord John Russell will be forward to recognise a failure, where he confidently anticipated a triumph. We believe him to have been, far more than Sir Robert Peel, the dupe of those random assertions and presumptuous calculations which were thrust forward by men utterly unfit, from their previous habits and education, to pronounce an opinion upon subjects of such magnitude and intricacy. We should not be surprised if, even now, his Lordship had some lingering kind of faith in the prophecies of the member for Westbury. Men are slow to believe that the ground is crumbling from below their feet; that the political scaffolding which they assisted to rear has been pitched in a marshy quagmire. Self love, and that kind of pride which is so nearly allied to conceit that it often assumes the form of obstinacy, stand woefully in the way of recantation; and moreover in the present instance to recant is equivalent to resign. We remember well the profound and sagacious remark of Sir Walter Scott, that "the miscarriage of his experiment no more converts the political speculator, than the explosion of a retort undeceives an alchymist." Lord John Russell in all probability is not yet prepared, from conviction, to revise his opinions on a question in which he is so deeply committed. He has a majority in the House of Commons, and, according to the forms of the constitution, so long as he can command that majority, he is entitled to persevere. It is well that our friends, whatever pressing cause they may have for their impatience, should remember these things; and not be too forward in pressing wholesale accusations, either against a Parliament chosen under such peculiar circumstances, or a Minister who is simply adhering to the course long since avowed by himself, and acted on by his immediate predecessor. We may regret, and many of us do unquestionably most bitterly feel, the anomalous position in which we are placed. A more cruel, a more galling thought can hardly be imagined than the conviction which is very general abroad, and which is also ours, that the present Parliament does not represent the feelings or the desires of the people; that it is not consulting their welfare or protecting their interests; and that the duration of that Parliament alone prevents a vigorous and successful effort in the cause of British industry. Yet still, while we feel all this, let us not be unjust to others. We cannot coerce opinion. We cannot force honourable members at once to retrace their steps, or to give the lie to their acknowledged pledges. We cannot complain of open wrong if Ministers decline to accept our voices, in lieu of the voices of those whom we formerly sent as representatives. Their answer and vindication lies in the fact of their Parliamentary majority. Why Parliament should thus be placed in direct antagonism to the country, is a very different question. We need not go far in search of the reason. It is the direct consequence of that policy which Sir Robert Peel thought fit to adopt, not with regard to the abstract measures of Free Trade, but for the carrying of these measures into effect, without an appeal to the country, and by means which proved how closely deceit is allied to tyranny. Upon his head, if not the whole, at least the primary responsibility rests. He has accepted it, and let it abide with him. And let no man affirm that, in saying this, we are prolonging any rancorous feeling, or seeking to rub a sore which by this time should be wellnigh healed. The time for indignation and anger, if injury coupled with perfidy can ever provoke such sentiments, is not yet past; it is now in its fullest force. Had Sir Robert Peel acted as he ought to have done – had he played the part of a British statesman, sincerely desirous that in a matter of such magnitude the will of the country should be respected – the present Parliament, whatever might have been its decision as to Free Trade or Protection, would at least have represented the wishes of the electoral body; and if subsequent events had shown that these wishes were more sanguine than wise, the error would have been a national one, and no weight of individual responsibility would have been incurred. As it is, we are not only justified, but we are performing our duty, in indicating the real and sole originator of our present difficulties; and without wishing in any degree to trench upon his secret sources of consolation, we can hardly imagine that he will derive much comfort from the knowledge, that his tortuous policy has deprived the people in the hour of need of their best constitutional privilege and shield – the sympathy and co-operation of that House which is emphatically their own, and which, to the great detriment of the state, must lose its moral power the moment that it ceases to represent the will, and to protect the interests of the Commons.
We are well aware that such reflections as these can bring but sorry comfort to the farmers. Their situation is one of unparalleled hardship, unrelieved by any consideration which can make the case of other sufferers more tolerable. We fully admit the vast extent of the powers which, since the Great Revolution, are held to be vested in Parliaments. We cannot gainsay the doctrine that these powers may, on occasion, be exerted to the uttermost; but we say, after the most careful and thoughtful deliberation, that the proceedings of the legislature with regard to the farmers of Great Britain are irreconcilable with the principles of justice, with the sacred laws of morality, which no legislative resolutions can abrogate or annul. The farmers are entitled to maintain that, in so far as regards them, the public faith has been broken. Such of them as hold leases had a distinct and unqualified guarantee given to them by the protective laws; and the allegation that the substitution of the sliding-scale for a fixed duty acted as a release for all former Parliamentary engagements, is a quibble so mean and wretched that the basest attorney would be ashamed to use it as a plea. The whole of the farmers' fixed and floating capital, estimated at the enormous sum of five hundred millions sterling, has been laid out on the faith of Protection; and yet when that Protection was furtively and treacherously withdrawn, no measure was introduced for the purpose of relieving them from engagements contracted under the older system, which were obviously incompatible with the lowered prices established by the formidable change. The public, we are afraid, are not aware of the extent of that depreciation which is still going on, and which already exceeds the whole annual value of the manufacturing productions of Great Britain. We borrow the following table from a late pamphlet by Mr Macqueen entitled, "Statistics of Agriculture, Manufactures, and Commerce, drawn up from Official and Authentic Documents;" and having tested it by every means in our power, we have no hesitation in adopting it. It is, in truth, a fearful commentary on the rashness and folly of our rulers.
COMPARATIVE VALUES OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCE.
But this is not all. We have still to deal with the depreciation or diminished value of the farmers' fixed capital, invested in live stock, &c., which at the rate of 25 per cent, (a most moderate calculation, and below the mark in so far as Scotland is concerned,) shows a loss on £504,833,730 of £126,208,432 additional!
We put forward the case of the farmers thus prominently, because, in addition to the great public wrong which has been done to them, they have serious reason to complain of the general apathy of the landlords. We do not allude to the part which the landowners took in 1846. We believe that the majority of them were sincerely disgusted by the conduct of the men who had climbed into office on their shoulders; and that they loathed and despised in their hearts the treachery of which they were made the tools. We know, moreover, that a great many of them abstained from taking part in the election of 1847, not being able to see their way through the political chaos in which we were then involved, and having, naturally enough, lost confidence in the probity of public men, and despairing of the remodelment of a strong constitutional party. Such things were, perhaps, inevitable; and it may be argued with much show of reason, that no better line of conduct was open to the landlords, and that they did wisely in reserving themselves for a more favourable opportunity, when experience, that stern and unfailing monitor, should have exposed to the Free-traders the falsity of their wild expectations. But it is impossible for them now to plead that the opportunity has not arrived. The experiment has been made, and has failed – failed utterly and entirely, if the practical refutation of the views advanced by all its leading advocates is to be considered as equivalent to failure. The current of reaction has set in strong and steady, not only in the counties, but in the towns; not only among those who, from their position, must be the earliest sufferers, but among those who are connected with the trade and general commerce of Britain. The disorganised party has rallied and is reformed under leaders of great talent, tried skill, and most assured loyalty and honour. How is it that, in this posture of affairs, any considerable section of the landlords is still hanging back? Why is it that they do not place themselves, as is their duty, at the head of their tenantry, and enforce and encourage those appeals to public justice, and to public policy, which are now making themselves heard in every quarter of the kingdom? We confess that we are at a loss to know why any apathy should be shown. The conduct of the tenantry towards the landlords has been generous and considerate in the extreme. They were invited, in no equivocal terms, to join their cause with that of the Free-traders and financial reformers; and they were promised, in that event, the cordial assistance of the latter towards the adjustment of their rents, and the equalisation of their public burdens. We venture not an opinion whether such promise was ever intended to be kept. Still it was made; and no effort was left untried to convince the farmers that their cause was separate and apart from that of the owners of the land. Their refusal to enter into that unholy alliance was most honourable to the body of the tenantry, and entitles them, at the hands of the proprietors, to look not only for consideration and sympathy, but for the most active and energetic support. Very ill indeed shall we augur of the spirit and patriotism of the gentlemen of England, if they longer abstain from identifying themselves universally with a movement which is not only a national one, in the strictest sense of the word, but upon which depends the maintenance of their own interests and order. Surely they cannot have been so dull or so deaf to what is passing around them, as not to be aware that they were especially marked out as the victims of the Manchester confederacy! These are not times in which any man can afford to be apathetic, nor will any trivial excuse for languor or indifference be accepted. Exalted position, high character, the reputation for princely generosity, and the best of private reputations, will be no apology for inactivity in a crisis so momentous as this. Organisation, union, and energy are at all times the chief means for insuring success; and we trust that, henceforward, there may be less timidity shown by those who ought to take the foremost rank in a contest of such importance, and who cannot abstain longer from doing so without forfeiting their claim to that regard which has hitherto been readily accorded them.
It will be observed that, as yet, we have put the case for Protection upon very narrow grounds. We have shown that, so far as the agricultural body is concerned, Free Trade has proved most injurious, and that it cannot be persisted in without bringing downright ruin to that section of the community. If we had nothing more to advance than this, still we should be entitled to maintain that enough has been adduced to show the necessity of retracing our steps. The annihilation of such an important body as the agriculturists of Britain, implies of itself a revolution as great as ever was effected in the world; and to that, assuredly, if the agriculturists stood alone, they would not tamely submit. When Mr Cobden or his satellites addressed the people of Manchester, through their League circulars, to the following effect, "If the Americans will only put down their monopolising manufacturers, and we put down our monopolising landowners here, when our election time comes, we will lay the Mississippi valley alongside of Manchester, and we will have a glorious trade then!" – and again, "Our doctrine is, let the working man ply his hammer, or his spindle, or his shuttle, and let the Kentucky or the Illinois farmer, by driving his plough in the richest land on the surface of the earth, feed this mechanic or this weaver, and let him send home his produce in exchange for the products of our operatives and artisans" – they seem to have forgotten the temper and mould of the men with whom they proposed to deal so summarily. It is not quite so easy to expatriate three millions of able-bodied men; nor do we opine that a power morally or physically adequate to the task of such removal exists in the manufacturing districts. But, in reality, of all idle talk that ever issued from the lips or the pen of an inflated demagogue, this is the silliest and the worst. It presupposes an amount of ignorance on the part of his audience anything but flattering to the calibre of the Manchester intellect: indeed we hardly know which is most to be admired – its intense and transparent folly or its astounding audacity. The home trade is a thing altogether kept out of account in the foregoing splendid vision of a calico millennium. Mr Cobden, it will be seen, contemplates no home consumption, except in so far as the operative may provide himself with his own shirtings. The whole production of Britain is to be limited to manufactures; the whole supplies are to be derived from the hands of the reciprocating foreigner!
There does not exist in this great and populous country any one class the labour of which can be restricted, or the profits curtailed, without an injurious result to the interests of the whole community. This is not simply a maxim of political economy; it is a distinct physical fact, which no ingenuity can controvert. Yet, strange to say, our rulers have acted, and are acting, with regard to by far the most important class of the country, as if no such fact were known; and they now profess to be amazed at its speedy and inevitable consequence. That agricultural distress must react upon the manufacturer, the trader, shopkeeper, and artisan, is as necessary a consequence as is a failure in the supply of water after a long-continued drought. If our taxation is artificial, and our national establishments costly, it must not be forgotten that our private expenditure is generally on the same scale. We consume within the country a far greater amount of manufactures than we can ever hope to export, and the only limit to that consumption is the power of purchase. The profits of the landowner, which depend upon the value of produce, do not constitute a fund which is removed from public circulation. On the contrary, these profits furnish the means of labour and employment to the greater portion of the industrious classes, who otherwise would have no resource; and if they are violently curtailed, it must needs follow that a large amount of employment is withdrawn. That is precisely our case at the present moment. By the admission of foreign produce, which is in fact foreign labour, the value of agricultural production in this country has fallen very nearly thirty per cent, and the consequence is a greatly diminished expenditure, and a slackening of employment grievously felt by those who are supported by manual labour. How, indeed, is it possible that it can be otherwise? A very little thought must convince every one that all incomes in Britain must depend upon the amount and value of the national production, and that, by reducing and lowering that, a direct attack is made upon the profits of every kind of labour. It is singular that consequence so plain should ever have been overlooked; still more singular that statesmen should have been found to maintain an opposite theory. The only explanation we can suggest as to this singular departure from the leading principles of economical science is, that of late years Ministers have habitually consulted the interests of the capitalists rather than those of the people. Sir Robert Peel has invariably shown himself a capitalist legislator. At the outset of his career, and while under the Israelitish guidance of Ricardo, he succeeded in carrying those Currency measures which increased by nearly one-third the weight of the national obligations. Later in life we find him engaged in measures of arbitrary bank restriction, thereby occasioning commercial panics, and securing another rich harvest for the moneyed class. His tariffs and Free-trade measures exhibit precisely the same tendency. They are all constructed with a view to cheapness, or, what is the same thing, to the diminution of the value of labour, so that the fortune of the capitalist or fundholder is now virtually doubled: while the industrious classes, with a lowered rate of wage, are compelled to undergo the additional evil of unrestricted foreign competition.
Let us now, for a brief space, proceed to consider the internal adjustment of the strength and industry of Britain. It is a subject well worthy of study, especially at the present moment, when a general feeling of perplexity prevails, and when those who unfortunately gave ear to the specious representations of the Free-traders are convinced of their error, but are yet in doubt whether it be possible to retrace our steps. It is a subject, moreover, upon which we are bound to enter, seeing that official cunning has been used to conceal the real posture of affairs in this country, and, by undervaluing the magnitude of some interests, to give a factitious and altogether imaginary importance to others. We trust that we shall be able to show, to the satisfaction of our readers, the gross extent to which this kind of delusion and imposture has been carried.
Upon no subject whatever are more erroneous impressions entertained, than upon the relative importance and strength of the two great classes of the country. Of late it has been quietly assumed that the manufacturers are infinitely superior to the agriculturists, not only in point of numbers, but in respect of capital employed or available; and many people have been puzzled to understand why, if this should be the case, such vehement opposition should be made to any proposal for readjusting the direct and local taxation, which confessedly weighs most heavily upon the proprietors and occupiers of the land. We have been told, in as many words, that henceforward the voice of the towns is to dictate the policy of Britain – that the agriculturists are a worn-out class, scarce worth preserving – and the most influential of the Free-trade journals has not hesitated to recommend a wholesale emigration to the Antipodes, or any portion of the surface of the globe where corn can be cultivated cheaper than in England. We have been not only taunted, but threatened, whenever we presumed to expostulate. Reference was made to certain "masses," who were ready to rise in defence of perennial cheapness; and Mr Cobden has warned us not to provoke the exercise of that power which is vested in himself, as dictator of the democracy. In short, we have been given to understand that, if protection to native industry, in any shape, should be re-introduced – which only can be done by the will and legitimate sanction of Parliament – physical force shall not be wanting on the other side.
The use of such language argues great ignorance of the national temper. We have heard a good deal lately of what is termed the dogged Anglo-Saxon spirit, the main characteristic of which we take to be its decided antagonism to bullying, and its inveterate hatred of coercion. It is too much to expect that a controversy such as this should be conducted without some asperity of language, and therefore we make no clamorous complaint when Mr Cobden, or his friends, think proper to designate the British agriculturists as "ignorant clodpoles" and "horse-shoe idiots," or the landed proprietors as "a selfish and degraded faction," or the Protectionist press as the "hireling tools of oppression." These are very old and very harmless terms of rhetoric, and we are not sure that we can claim entire vindication from the charge of having retorted with tolerable energy. The real danger begins when men step beyond constitutional limits, and advocate resistance to the legislature by appealing to the passions, as they have pandered to the prejudices, of the mob.
Having premised so much, we think no one can misinterpret our motives, if we set ourselves seriously to the task of refuting a great fallacy which has been hatched and propagated by the Free-traders. It is one so monstrous in itself that we hardly could have supposed that any man, who had reflected for a moment on the subject, could have yielded to the delusion: nevertheless, we believe it to be most common, and it has been over and over again repeated at public meetings, until it has lost its quality as an assertion, and been treated as a recognised fact. It is within the recollection of all of us, that, both within the walls of Parliament and at the great outward gatherings of the League, the superiority of the manufacturing over the agricultural interest of Great Britain was broadly asserted, and assumed as the basis of the leading argument of the Free-traders. Sir Robert Peel expressly adopted this view in 1846, while advocating the repeal of the policy, which he had hitherto professed to support; we say, professed, because no man now doubts – indeed, it is fairly admitted by himself, with something like a sneer of triumph – that for many years he had been practising a deliberate imposture on the public. This view necessarily must have had some foundation on authority, if not on fact; and we can trace that authority to a statistical writer, Mr Porter, on whose accuracy, and method of dealing with figures, far too much reliance has been placed by statesmen high in office.
In dealing with the census of 1841, and compiling his tables with a view to show the relative occupations of the people, Mr Porter has adopted the ingenious plan of massing commerce, trade, and manufactures together, and exhibiting the aggregate of these in contradistinction to the purely agricultural interest! At page 55 of the last edition of his Progress of the Nation we find this statement – "The following more elaborate table of the occupations of the population of Great Britain, as ascertained in 1841, his been compiled from the Reports of the Census Commissioners. It affords the best abstract that has hitherto been attainable upon this important branch of political arithmetic."
We turn to the table indicated in this modest passage, and we find the following results for Great Britain alone: —
This, of course, is exclusive of the army, navy, learned professions, domestic servants, and various other employments, besides women and children. In another table, Mr Porter, estimating the male population of Great Britain, (excluding Ireland,) who were then upwards of twenty years of age, at 4,761,091, divides them thus: —
If, as Mr Spackman most properly observes in his excellent work, the Analysis of the Occupations of the People, one of the principal objects of taking the census is to trace the relative degree of dependence of one class upon another, how can this be done if all the trade and commerce of the country is to be mixed up with manufactures? "Mr Porter would have us to consider trade and commerce, and manufactures as synonymous terms, and that together they only form one class; and he seems to be so thoroughly haunted with the numerical weakness of the manufacturing interest, that his fear of its being discovered peeps out in every paragraph; and, by mixing them up in every table in which they are mentioned in his book, with those engaged in trade and commerce, he has effectually succeeded in his object."
As we propose to lay before our readers the results of Mr Spackman, it may be proper shortly to state the principles which have guided him in his classification of the official returns. He recognises but two great classes of the community engaged in the production of wealth, and upon these he justly considers the whole of the remainder to be dependent. The following extract from his preface will sufficiently explain his view: —
"Of the number of persons actually employed by the agriculturists and manufacturers, no difference of opinion can exist, as we have adopted the Government classification in every instance, and copied the figures given in the returns. We believe this classification to be correct in principle, and but slightly erroneous in details.
"Political economists may exercise their ingenuity by calling in question this classification, but we believe it is the only one that accurately traces the dependence of an individual on the one or the other interest; and, as this is the primary object of all such matters, if it attains this end, it is sufficient for all purposes. By the landed interest we mean not only the proprietors of the soil, but all that are engaged in its cultivation, and all the interests that are dependent on and supported by both landlord and tenant. An agriculturist is one who grows the raw material. The manufacturer changes the fabric from cotton into calico, flax into linen, wool into cloth, raw into manufactured silk, mineral ores into various combinations of metals, and the skin of an animal into leather.
"All besides the agriculturists and the manufacturers are auxiliaries, not principals. Thus the handicraftsman alters the form, but not the substance, and adapts the article to the use of the consumer, – so the miller, baker, and butcher; the tailor, milliner, and shoemaker.
"There is also a very numerous class, who neither produce, manufacture, nor alter the shape or substance of an article, and these are called merchants, if they buy and sell in a wholesale manner, or shopkeepers and retail dealers if they sell by retail. The business of these is to distribute all articles imported from abroad or produced at home, through every city, town, and village, in the United Kingdom; and the Government definition of all these auxiliaries is 'engaged in trade and commerce.'
"The dependence of any particular class engaged in trade and commerce, or in handicraft, is not upon the party who produces, alters, or supplies the article, but on the individual who consumes it; and if there is any tax whatever on the raw material, or on anything used in its manufacture, adaptation, or distribution, it is on him that all and every item of such tax, together with all profits and charges, must ultimately fall.
"Inasmuch, however, as there is no wealth in this country of any amount, but what has been derived either from agriculture or manufactures, nor any of which the value is not determined by the success of these, so again this consumer, whatever his rank or position in society may be, is mainly dependent on them. The rental of land, the income from houses, or investments in the public funds, are merely the representatives of so much labour; and the means necessary to pay them are principally drawn from either agriculture or manufactures.
"Our annual creation of wealth may be thus stated: —
And from one or other of these does every individual in the land derive his income or means of support. The Peer of the realm, the landed proprietor, the Government annuitant, the clergyman, the medical and the legal adviser, with the banker, merchant, dealer, and handicraftsman of every class and kind, – derive what is necessary to support their state and condition, and their daily sustenance, from these spring-heads of national wealth. This is the substance of the nation, and what we call money consists merely of the counters we use to denote and measure the value of this substance as it passes from one to another.
"To do equal justice to all classes, the legislation of a country ought, therefore, to keep steadily in view their relative importance, not only as regards numbers, but also their powers of production, and the proportion which they severally bear of the national burdens. Unless this is the governing principle, it strikes at the root of their prosperity, and the injury inflicted on a class is evinced in the gradual decay of the whole community."
Acting upon these distinct, and, we submit, perfectly sound principles, Mr Spackman has compiled his tables in the following manner. The Government returns are quite explicit as to the number of those engaged directly in agriculture and in manufactures. Mr Spackman takes each county separately; and having set down the relative numbers of each class, he divides the remainder of the population between these according to their proportion. For example, let us instance his table of the county of Lanark, which is the great seat of Scottish manufactures. We find, from the official returns, that the following numbers are directly engaged: —