Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub

ted confederacy, the German states, containing twenty-six millions of inhabitants, have been combined in a league, founded on the principle of commercial hostility to England, and that the duties imposed throughout the whole extent of the league, on all goods of British manufacture, are so heavy, being practically from forty to fifty per cent on the prime cost, that they in reality amount to a total prohibition. In like manner, we have made similar concessions to Portugal and Belgium, but met with nothing in return but increased duties on goods of British manufacture, in so much that the exports to Portugal, which, in 1827, were L.1,400,000, fell, till, in 1836, they averaged L.1,085,000; and those to Belgium, which in the same year amounted to above a million, had fallen, in 1836, to L.839,276. While, on the other hand, the trade with Holland, which, in 1827, even including that with Belgium, with whom we have no reciprocity treaty, was only L.2,104,000, had risen, in 1836, with Holland alone to L.2,509,000. In short, to whatever side we turn in Continental Europe, it will be found that our concessions by reciprocity treaties, which have so deeply affected our maritime interests, have been met by nothing in return from the continental nations, but increased duties or restrictive prohibitions, and that we have maintained or encouraged our trade almost exclusively with those nations with whom we have made no such arrangements.

*

The principle on which this increased hostility to British manufactures has every where followed all attempts on our part to establish a more enlarged trade is founded, is very obvious. Foreign nations think, and perhaps with reason, that we have in the old age of our national existence adopted the liberal or reciprocity system, because we thought that we had established such a superiority over other nations by the extent of our capital, and the skill of our manufactures, that we could now without risk throw down the fences of our prohibition, and proclaim an equal trade with all nations. They argue in this manner against our reciprocity advocates: It is very well for you

who have arrived at the summit of manufacturing greatness to commence the throwing down of prohibitions, and proclaim the liberal principle of the freedom of trade. When we have arrived at a similar elevation, and can adopt the change with as much safety, we will with pleasure follow your example. In the mean-time, you must allow us to imitate the restrictive system under which, during 170 years, your manufactures were elevated to greatness. When our capital is as large-our coal-mines as extensive—our skill in machinery and manufactures as great as yours we will be very happy to meet you on terms of equality and a reciprocal trade. Till that period arrives it would be utter madness in us to admit your manufactured goods on the like terms on which you admit ours. The very fact of your now proclaiming the reciprocity system is the most decisive evidence of the immense benefit which you have so long reaped from the restrictive. We are very happy you admit our ships on the same terms as we admit yours, but the fact of your having been driven to such a concession only shows the more clearly how expedient it is that we should follow out, with additional rigour, that prohibitory policy from which you appear to be now willing to recede. Sparta could with safety dispense with walls round its capital city, but wo to the state of Peloponnesus, which, because the Spartan youth were adequate to the defence of their country, should deem the security of walls or ramparts unnecessary for the maintenance of its national independence."

We do not say that this reasoning is well founded, nor do we assert the reverse; we mention it as a fact merely, that this is the reasoning which foreign nations employ, and on which their Governments act, and that, in the present state of the world, it is perfectly chimerical to suppose that our reciprocity concessions will ever be met by any other return, or ever in consequence be any thing else but a gratuitous and uncompensated injury to the most important branches of our national industry.

The reciprocity advocates, however,

Porter, II., 104.

are not without an answer even to this powerful argument, founded on the absence of any return whatever for our maritime concessions in the commercial policy of any other state. They say, although it may be desirable, if possible, to effect diplomatic arrangements, whereby the favourable admission of our manufactures might be secured in return for the favourable concessions made on our side to foreign shipping; yet, whether this advantage is gained or not, a substantial benefit accrues to British industry, by the increased importation of goods from foreign countries. The great thing, they contend, is, to increase our importations. If that can be effected, the growth of our exports must be corresponding; and the vivifying effect to British industry must be felt from one quarter or another. We do not, it is said, get the foreign goods we import for nothing. We must pay for them, either in our own manufactures, or in money, and in either case the benefit is the same, although in the latter it is more circuitous to our domestic industry; for the money which buys foreign goods can be acquired only by us by the sale of our own produce.

We admit that this argument is plausible, and seemingly satisfactory, but, upon a closer examination, its fallacy is very apparent. It is quite true that we must purchase the money with which we pay for our foreign imports, by the disposal, some way, of our British manufactures; but it is not the less true, that if a real reciprocity system was entered into with the European states; that is to say, if we compelled them, in return for the advantages we held out to their ship ping and industry, to give corresponding advantages to our branches of industry, in which they stand at a disadvantage to us, the export of our manufactures, and the consequent encouragement to our industry would be far greater than it now is; for this plain reason, that we would ship our exports, and the produce of our industry, not only to the countries from which we buy our money, but to the countries also from whom we purchase our imports. For example, if at present we send 5,000,000 of our manufactures to South America, with which we purchase dollars to a similar amount, and then send these dollars

VOL. XLIV. NO. CCLXXV.

to France, Prussia, and the other reciprocity countries with a view to purchase their industry, we gain in return for the purchase of 10,000,000 worth of their produce; that is, of 5,000,000 worth of dollars from South America, and 5,000,000 worth of produce from Europe, only five millions worth of our own manufactures off our hands; whereas, if we had stipulated for similar advantages to our cotton goods, in return for the advantages conferred by us upon foreign shipping, we would have been enabled to sell ten millions worth of our manufactures, viz. 5,000,000 to South America, in exchange for the bullion, and 5,000,000 worth to Prussia and the other reciprocity countries, in exchange for their goods. The difference, therefore, in this case would be nothing short of 5,000,000 lost to our manufactures in the foreign markets. In the one case, we would engage in a real interchange of commodities, both with South America and Europe; in the other, the intercourse is real only with South America; and in the intercourse with Europe we are nothing more than carriers, who effect a commercial intercourse, not with themselves, but with the South American and the German states.

This argument appears to us perfectly decisive. It is quite evident that, to justify commercial arrangements with any particular country, we must be able to show that under those arrangements, standing by themselves, a reciprocal benefit flows to the inhabitants of both. It is no answer to the objection, that these advantages, so far as domestic industry is concerned, are wholly on one side, to say that, with the other countries, at the same time commercial intercourse is carried on in which real reciprocal advantages are obtained, and that we carry the goods of the one foreign country to the other. There is, no doubt, some return for such a transaction, because the carrying trade is attended with certain advantages; but there is not nearly so great an advantage as there would be, if our own goods were exported to both countries, and we gained in the intercourse with both, not only the profit of carriers, but also that of producers. If I ask Lord John to dinner, and he asks me in return, there is a real reciprocity of acts of hospitality; but if I ask him, and he never

Y

asks me in return, it is quite illusory to say that I gain an equal advantage, because I frequently dine with Mr Thomas, as well as he with me. The answer is obvious. It is, no doubt, an advantage to have the honour of his lordship's company at dinner at your own house, and to dine as often with Mr Thomas as he dines with you; but it would be much better, if you could so arrange matters, that, in addition to your equal social intercourse with Mr Thomas, you had the benefit, at the same time, of as many dinners from Lord John as you give to him. And this is precisely the state of the case with the reciprocity system.

Although, however, we think it perfectly clear that the reciprocity system has had the most pernicious effects upon our maritime interests, and that experience has now demonstrated that in its leading principle of giving gratuitous concessions to the shipping interests of the European states, without stipulating for any corresponding advantages to our com. mercial industry, it is proved to have been founded upon entirely erroneous principles, yet we neither assert that Mr Huskisson's principles were entirely erroneous, nor advocate a return, even in the particulars in which we had gone astray, to the whole extent of the restrictive system.

There were two points on which Mr Huskisson's principles were clearly well founded. The first was that of lowering or taking off altogether the duties on foreign raw produce, such as silk, on which important British manufacture was to be exerted. The second was that of opening up a free commercial intercourse between our colonies and the commercial colonies of other states, reserving only the home trade to the mother country to its own shipping. The first of these was essential to the growth of our domestic manufactures on those articles of foreign produce which we could not raise for ourselves; and the second was equally indispensable to promote the growth of our colonies in the distant parts of our empire with which not only our national wealth, but existence, is inseparably wound up. The real error in Mr Huskisson's principles, and which has been attended with such disastrous effect, was the

departure from our navigation laws, and, above all, the deceitful principle of admitting foreign shipping into our harbours for the same duties as they admit ours, without stipulating for a corresponding advantage to some of the staple articles of our industry in return.

Nothing seems clearer than that it would be perfectly reasonable and just that we should now say to the reci procity countries with whom we have concluded reciprocity treaties—

"Fifteen year go we made great concessions in you favour on foreign shipping, which have had the effect of quadrupling your tonnage in the British trade, and reducing our own to nearly a fourth-part of its amount before that period. We did so in the firm belief that our concession in an article so indispensable to our national security as our shipping interest would be immediately followed by a corresponding concession on your part to some of the staple branches of our industry. Have you made any similar concession to us in return for this great advantage? On the contrary, you have gone on loading our manufactures with additional burdens to protect your own, until at length you have reduced our exports to your states to a perfect trifle. We cannot submit any longer to such a state of matters. Let us understand each other. We must have either commercial war, or commercial peace. have no right to reproach us for the corn laws any more than we have right to reproach you for your standing army. The one is as indispensable to our national independence as the other is to yours. We insist, then, upon a real reciprocal advantage in return for our repeal of the navigation laws. Select the article of our staple manufactures which you are willing to admit into your ports upon favourable terms, in return for the concession we have granted to your shipping. If you do not, we will reenact the navigation laws, and you will soon find that your shipping will dwindle away to a half of its present amount. We are quite willing to have either war or peace, but not such a mongrel system as gives you all the advantages of peace, and throws upon us all the evils of war."

You

LEGENDARY LORE, BY ARCHEUS,

No. IV.

LAND AND SEA.

CHAPTER I.

JANE MARTIN was the only daughter of a yeoman living in the village of Meadham, not far from the southern coast of England. The place was divided from the sea by a low range of hills, and the fields of pasture and of corn wo surrounded by extensive woods. These, together with the small collection of cottages and the village church, presented a prospect of tranquillity and beauty.

Jane was the heiress of a cottage and a few fields, and, without these advantages, had beauty enough to attract more than one rustic lover. But none of them could win her affections. Her mother had died early, but had left on her daughter's mind a tinge of her own imaginative character. Her father was possessed of some books, which he was fond of reading, and delighted to put in her hands. But he saw that there was mixed up in her disposition a strong portion of the irregular and fantastic strain, which the old man used to say she must have had from her mother, who always, he would add, had been a sort of fairy body, rather than of common flesh and blood like himself. Whatever touch of superstition Jane could light on in his books of history or travels, or in the belief and stories of her neighbours, had for her a powerful charm. Dreams, and prophecies, and accounts of ghosts and visions, filled her with awe. When she was about fifteen, and was taken by her father to hear the preaching of a wandering Methodist, a man of coarse but fervid eloquence, the descriptions in which he rioted of the bodily torments of the lost, and the never-ending delights of heaven, were for her an exquisite, unimagined contrast to the calm morality and grave devotion of the parish church. The effect of this evening, for the sermon was delivered after nightfall in a dimly-lighted barn, was so overpowering, that she seemed for some days in a restless fever, and at last was actually seized with illness. She rose, how

ever, from her bed apparently strong. and fresh as before. Her beauty had lost nothing of its attractiveness, and had gained something in expression. But she did not look formed for happiness. The sensitive and excitable movement of her face, and the quick and striking dilation of the pupils in her large light eyes, conveyed the notion of a mind too early disturbed, and too little under the government of any settled principles of action, fo he hope of usefulness and peace. But, surrounded as was this countenance with pale brown hair, and supported by a figure of healthy, youthful elasticity, the whole picture of the girl had an affecting sweetness.

Her favourite reading was an old collection of voyages and travels, filled with records of gainful and warlike adventurers, their intercourse with foreign cities and savage tribes, crimes, sufferings, wonders, and superstitions

on these she mused at every moment which she could save from the care of her household affairs and of the dairy and garden. She knew nothing of the world except within a circle of four or five miles around her father's house, and all beyond presented itself to her mind as made up of sparkling seas and spicy islands, gorgeous towns, and beautiful and heroic men-ships so light and gay as might sail among the clouds, and cargoes of gold and fruits as glittering as those summer clouds themselves. But, alas! though within seven miles of the coast, she had never seen the sea; and the wish to behold that unknown, boundless miracle of nature, became, when she had grown out of childhood, the strongest feeling of her mind. Her mother, she knew, was the daughter of a seaman, and had spent her unmarried life at Southport, a town and harbour distant some twenty miles from Meadham, where her father had found his future bride. Now the longburied mother, whose grave was in the churchyard, and met her eyes

every Sunday, appeared to her in her dreams as wearing some indistinct sea shape, as treading lightly on the waves, and beckoning her to come to that new and delightful region. The thought was too precious to be spoken of to her father, and the girl cherished it till she half persuaded herself that something more than fancy had shaped the image. For months she turned the wish over and over till it grew into a project. The notion of some unaccountable good to be derived from looking on the sea-of some magical beauty clothing the great element and of some mystery connected with the moment of her success in the enterprise, fastened on her imagination with no less strength than would on many minds the hope of mounting from earth to one of the heavenly bodies. The plan, however, seemed almost impracticable. Her father was growing old, a little peevish at any opposition to his will, and more and more settled in his daily round of habits. He was impatient at his daughter's absence, except when he visited his fields and gave directions to his one labourer, a business which seldom occupied more than an hour at a time. The old man was kind and sagacious. His slightest peculiarities were dear to her, and no image she had ever seen with her bodily eyes was to her so agreeable as that of the grey-headed and weather-beaten face; but often while she sat beside him and supplied his little wants, or answered his few and simple observations, her thoughts would wander away to the restless boundless sea, with all its shores and ships; and the little world around her, for which alone she had outwardly lived, and which alone she knew, seemed poor and small, compared with the dazzling and amazing world of which she knew nothing. She naturally avoided to express her feelings, which she was aware were stronger and more unusual than her father, or indeed any of her acquaintance, could understand or would approve. But the books which he found her reading, and the questions which she sometimes ventured to ask as to the scaport town which he had visited in his earlier life, in part betrayed her. One day during such a conversation he suddenly exclaimed," Heaven help thee! the sea seems always running in thy head! I should not wonder if the first idle

sailor that comes wandering here catches thy foolish fancy, and carries thee off from all our honest country fellows. But take care, Jane-they are an unsteady, spendthrift, drunken set. At best, their trade keeps them many a long month in every year away from their wives and children. Don't marry a sailor, Jane, don't marry a sailor, or thy old father will break his heart."

This advice was not very likely to change the current of Jane's thoughts. Her longing to look upon the sea grew rather the stronger; but to gratify it was not easy. The summit, indeed, of the hills which bounded that inland country was not further off than two hours' walking; but this was through unfrequented paths and lonely sheep. tracks up the downs. The village lay on no line of traffic with the coast, and to undertake an expedition to the shore without some purpose of business would have sounded among her neighbours like setting off on a crusade or a pilgrimage. She shrank from owning her beloved secret even to her father, and nothing, therefore, remained but to plan a clandestine excursion. This was possible only at night. A ramble of the kind, however, had nothing very alarming for a country girl. The imaginative apprehensions, which alone presented themselves to the mind of Jane, added to the charm, by enhancing the dignity of her enterprise. Spirits, she thought, must needs be peculiarly her attendants on the most momentous occasion of her whole life, which had now reached the mature age of eighteen.

The moon was shining in the summer sky when she crept through her chamber-window and sprang lightly on the ground. Had any one seen her, it must have seemed, from the excitement of her look and manner under the homeliness of her dark dress, that she was bent on a different kind of meeting from that which she really meditated. She traversed the little garden, and went on by wellknown paths which led her away from the village, and under the shade of hedges and coppices. Rapidly and with beating heart she walked through quiet fields of corn, and began to think that she was now escaping all danger of interruption. In an hour she reached the less cultivated and less populous tract that divided the plain from the

« AnteriorContinuar »