Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 70, No. 433, November 1851
We are curious to know if, with such facts before them as those admitted in the Times, Ministers will have the temerity next year to assure us that the country generally is in prosperous circumstances. Do men emigrate wholesale from prosperous countries? Are they ever ready to leave comfort behind them, and recommence the struggle of life on a more unpromising field? If we are forced to reject that conclusion, then we defy any one to arrive at another save this – that our recent legislation has so narrowed the sphere of labour, and so depressed its prospects, that the population are driven per force from their native country, to seek elsewhere the means of existence which they cannot procure at home.
To talk of Protection as hopeless, is to acquiesce in the national doom. All classes of the community, from the fundholder and capitalist down to the meanest labourer, have a stake in this great question. Let not the former deceive themselves. Without the labour of the people their securities are as valueless as the mere paper on which they are written. Therefore, it is their part to see that no line of policy shall be allowed to continue if it has the effect of drying up the springs of our national prosperity. If they will not listen to the remonstrances of the distressed, let them at all events view their own position dispassionately. We may be on the verge of a great crisis, and a great struggle may be approaching, but we have not the slightest doubt that the cause which must ultimately prevail is that which is essentially the cause of the people. Prosperity will only return to the nation when Native Industry is protected.