Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine – Volume 55, No. 341, March, 1844

But the taxation of the empire, when coupled with the free importation of grain from these distant dependencies, does afford a most satisfactory, and, in truth, the true explanation of the ruin of Italian and Grecian cultivation. It was a fixed principle of Roman taxation, that the duties allotted on a particular district should remain fixed, how much lower the inhabitants or industry of the province might decline. When, therefore, by the constant importation of Egyptian and African grain, raised at half the cost at which they could produce it, the Italian cultivators were deprived of a remunerating return, and the taxes exacted from each district underwent no diminution, it is not surprising that the small farmers and proprietors were ruined; that they took refuge in the industry and crowds of cities, and that the race of freemen disappeared from the country. A similar process is now going on in the Turkish provinces. But without undervaluing—on the contrary, attaching full weight to this circumstance—nothing can be clearer than that it was the ruinous competition of foreign grain, raised cheaper than they could produce it, which rendered the same taxation crushing on the Italian farmers, which was borne with comparative facility in the remoter provinces, where land was more fertile, and labour less expensive. An example, à fortiori, applied to the British empire, where the free traders wish us to admit a free importation of grain from Poland and the Ukraine, where not only is labour cheap but taxation trifling, into the British islands, where not only is labour dear but taxation is five times more burdensome.

And for a decisive proof that it was the superior advantages which Egypt and Lybia enjoyed in the production of grain, and not any other causes, which occasioned the ruin of Italian agriculture, and with it the fall of the Roman empire, we have only to look to the condition of the Italian fields in the last stages of the government of the Caesars. Already, in the time of the elder Pliny, it had become a subject of complaint that the great properties were ruining Italy¹⁶—a sure proof, when the great division of estates in the days of the Republic—when, literally speaking, "every rood had its man"—that some general and irresistible cause, affecting the remuneration of their industry, was exterminating the small proprietors. Erelong, cultivators ceased entirely in the country, and the huge estates of the nobles were cultivated exclusively in pasturage, and by means of slaves. "La classe," says Michelet, "des petits cultivateurs peu à pee a disparu; les grands proprietaires qui leur succedèrent y suppleèrent par des esclaves."¹⁷It is recorded by Ammianus Marcellinus, that when Rome was taken by the Goths, it contained 1,200,000 inhabitants, and was mainly supported by 1780 great families, who cultivated their ample estates in Italy in pasturage, by means of slaves.¹⁸ For centuries before, the threat of blockading the Tiber had been found to be the most effectual way of coercing the Roman populace; and whenever it took place, famine ensued, not only in Rome, but the Italian provinces. The diminution of its agricultural produce had, long before, been stated by Columella at nine-tenths, and by Varro at three-fourths, of what at one period had been raised. Yet such was the wealth of the Roman nobles, derived from pasturage, that some of them had L.160,000 a-year.¹⁹ Agriculture, therefore, was destroyed; grain was no longer raised in Italy; Rome was wholly dependent on foreign supplies—but pasturage was undecayed; and colossal fortunes were enjoyed by a wealthy race of great proprietors, who managed their vast estates by means of slaves, and had bought up and absorbed the properties of the whole free cultivators in the country. Such was the effect—such was the result—of a free trade in grain in ancient times.

The free traders seem not insensible to these inevitable results of their favourite principles; but they meet them by describing such consequences as rather advantageous than injurious. If England, say they, can raise iron and cotton goods cheaper than Poland, and Poland and Russia grain cheaper than England, then the interest of each require tht they should follow out these branches of industry, and it is impolitic to strive against it. Let, then, England admit foreign grain on a nominal duty, and this will in the end induce Russia and Prussia to admit English manufactured goods on equally favourable terms; and thus the real interests of both countries will in the end be promoted.

There are two objections to this system. In the first place, it is impracticable if it were expedient. In the second, it is inexpedient if it were practicable.

It is impracticable if it were expedient. Theoretical writers may coolly discuss in their closets the total destruction of various important branches of industry, the "absorption" of the persons engaged in them in other pursuits, and the transference of national capital and industry from agriculture to manufactures, and vice versà; but it is impossible to effect such changes by the voluntary act of government, even in the most despotic country. We say by the voluntary act of government; because there is no doubt that it may be effected, though at an enormous sacrifice of life, wealth, and happiness, by the silent and unobserved operation of the laws of nature, which are irresistible; as was the case with the transference of industry from agriculture to pasturage, under the effect of free trade in grain in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, in the later stages of the Roman empire; or from manufactures to agriculture, from the consequences of the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope in the Italian republics in modern times. But no government, not even that of the Czar Peter or Sultaun Mahmoud, could succeed in destroying or nipping in the bud brances of national industry, by simple acts of the legislature or sovereign authority, not imposed by external and irresistible authority. The Emperor Paul tried it, and got a sash twisted about his neck, according to the established fashion of that country, for his pains. The Whigs tried it, and were turned out of office in consequence. All the governments of Europe, despotic, constitutional, and democratic, meet our concessions, in favour of free trade, by increased protection to their manufacturers. They dare not destroy their rising commercial wealth any more than we dare destroy our old colossal agricultural investments. The republicans of America even exceed them in the race of tariffs and protection. Sixty-two per cent has lately been laid on our British iron goods in return for Sir Robert Peel's tariff; a similar duty on iron and cotton goods, it is well known, is contemplated in the Prussian leagues in Germany. The British government has at length, through its prime minister, spoken out firmly in support of the existing corn-laws. The feeling of the agricultural counties, as evinced at the late meetings, left them no alternative. All nations, under all varieties of government, situation, race, and political circumstances, concur in rising up to resist the doctrines of free trade. Necessity has enlightened, experience has taught them: a very clear motive urges them on, which is not likely to decline in strength with the progress of time—it is the instinct of self-preservation.

Such a system as the free traders advocate, if practicable, would be to the last degree inexpedient.

What would be the result? Why, that one country would become wholly, or in great part, agricultural, and the other wholly, or in great part, manufacturing. Is this a result desirable to either? Admitting that a city or small state, which has no territory which can furnish any considerable proportion of the subsistence which it requires, like Holland, may do well to attend exclusively to manufactures and commerce; or a country which, by the rigour of nature, or the remoteness of its situation, cannot attain to commercial or manufacturing greatness, would do well to attend exclusively to the cultivation or productions of the earth; the question which here occurs—Is such a system advisable or expedient for a nation which has received from the bounty of nature the means of rising to greatness in both—such as Great Britain, Russia, or Prussia? The free traders would have England sacrifice its agriculture to its manufactures, and Russia sacrifice its manufactures to its agriculture. Would such a system benefit either? Would England be happier or richer, more stable or more moral, if the already colossal amount of its manufactures were trebled; or Russia, if its rising iron and woolen fabrics were destroyed, and its industry confined exclusively to the slow return of agricultural labour? Is it desirable that the zone of tall chimneys, sickly faces, brick houses, and crowded jails, which at present spans across the whole of England and part of Scotland, should be doubled and trebled in breadth; and the fertile fields of Kent, Norfolk, and East Lothian, be reduced to vast unenclosed pastures, such as overspread Italy in the later stages of the Roman empire? Or is it desirable to Russia and Prussia that they should be for ever chained to the labour of boors, serfs, and shepherds, and all the vivifying and unimportant effects of commercial wealth be denied to their exertions? Nature has designed, experience recommends, a very different system. History tells us in all parts of the world, that it is in the intermixture of commerce and agriculture that the best security is to be found for social happiness and advancement, and the most effectual antidote provided to the evils with which either, when existing alone, is so prone. Mr McCulloch has told us, that the commerce and manufactures of Great Britain have now risen to such a prodigious height, that any further extension of them is undesirable, and that no real patriot would have desired them to have become so extensive as they already are. Is it desirable, in such a state of matters, to go on increasing the same splendid but perilous system, and to do so at the expense of the great pillar of national wealth, security, and independence—the land of the state?

Further, the proposed system is pernicious even with reference to the national wealth and interests of the manufacturers themselves, as tending to undermine the main branches of our national resources, and substitute encouragement to an inferior, to upholding of the superior market for our manufacturing industry.

Although in the meetings where they address the agricultural constituencies, the free traders hold out that their measures would benefit the manufacturers, and not injure the agriculturists; yet nothing can be clearer than that this is a mere shallow pretext, put forth to conceal their real objects and the effect of their measures, and that the result they really anticipate is as different from that as the poles are asunder. What is the benefit they hold out to the community as an inducement to go into their measures? Cheap grain. What is the motive which stimulates all their efforts, and which, among themselves and in private conversation with all men of sense, they at once admit is their ruling object? Reduced wages; the hope of extending our export in foreign countries by taking an additional quantity of their rude produce; and diminishing the cost of production to our manufacturers by lowering the price of food, and with it the wages of labour. The whole strength of their case rests in these propositions. Their influence over the urban multitudes arises solely from the continual reiteration of these alluring hopes. If these effects are not to follow free trade and the efforts of the League, in the name of Heaven, what good are they to do, and why do they agitate the country and subscribe to the League fund? Sensible men do not throw away £100,000 for nothing, for no benefit to themselves or others. But these prospects are as fallacious as they are alluring, and so a very few observations will demonstrate.

Considered in a national point of view, if the matter is brought to this issue, the great question is—Whether agriculture or manufactures are the superior interests in the production of national wealth. Admitting that the true policy for government is to protect all the branches of national industry, and stoutly contending, as we do, and ever shall do, that the real and ultimate interests of all is the same, and cannot be separated—the question comes to be, if one fiercely demands the sacrifice of the other, and insists that its interests are so weighty and momentous that all others must be sacrificed to them, which of the two thus placed in jeopardy is the most momentous? which brings in most to the national treasury? Now, on this point the facts are as adverse to the arguments of the League, as on all other branches of their case.

Take the sum total of manufactures in Great Britain and Ireland, accompanied with the sum total of agricultural production, in order to discover which of the two is the more valuable interest—in order that it may be discovered, if matters are brought to that issue that one or other must be abandoned, which is to be sacrificed. The choice of a wise government could not be doubtful, if it were necessary to make the selection. The agricultural productions of the British islands amount to L.300,000,000 a-year, while the sum total of manufactures of every description is only L.180,000,000. Nor can it be said, with any degree of truth, that the agriculture of the country is dependent for its existence on its manufactures, and would decline if they were materially injured; for the example of modern Italy and Flanders proves, that three centuries after a country has ceased to be the chief in manufacturing or commercial industry, it may advance with undiminished vigour and success in the production of agricultural riches.

But this is not all. The statistical documents which have now been prepared with so much care by Parliament, and published by the accurate and indefatigable Mr Porter, himself a decided free trader, demonstrate that, of the manufacturing productions, nearly three-fourths are taken off by the home market, and four-fifths by the home and colonial market taken together, leaving only ONE-FIFTH for the whole foreign markets of the world put together—

"The total amount of British manufactures annually produced is about £180,000,000 worth, of which only £47,000,000 is taken off by the whole external trade of the world put together, while no less than £133,000, 000 is consumed in the home market; and of the foreign consumption, fully a third is absorbed by the British Colonies, in different parts of the world. So that the home and colonial trade is to the whole foreign put together as 5 to 1. And, whle the total produce of manufactures is £180,000,000 annually, and of mines and minerals £13,776,000, the amount of agricultural produce annually extracted from the soil is not less than £300,000,000; or a half more than the whole manufactures and mines put together."

Further, if we compare the proportion purchased of our manufactures, which is taken off by foreign nations, for the export to whom we are required to make the sacrifice of our domestic agriculture, with what is consumed by our own native population, whether in the British islands or in our colonies of British descent, the difference is prodigious, and such as might well, even for their own sake, make the Anti-corn-law League pause in their career of violence. From the tables compiled from Porter's Parliamentary Tables, and the population of the different states to whom we export, taken from Malte Brun and Balbi, it appears, that while the British population, whether at home or abroad, consume from £3 to £5 a-head worth of our manufactures, the foreign nations to whom we are willing to sacrifice the British agriculturists, take off per head ONLY AS MANY PENCE. In preferring the one to the other, therefore, we are, literally speaking, penny wise and pound foolish.

We have shown how agriculture was ruined in the Roman empire in Italy, by the free importation of grain from the Lybian and Egyptian provinces of the empire. As a contrast to that woful progress, the main cause of the destruction of the empire of the Caesars, we request the attention of our readers to the progress of British exports in official value, which indicates their amount from 1790 to 1840, premising that the whole of that period was one of protection to the British agriculturist; during the first twenty years of the period, by the effects of the war—during the last twenty-five, by the operation of the corn law and sliding scale, introduced in 1814. We recommend the advocates of free trade to search the annals of the world for a similar instance of progress and prosperity flowing from, or co-existent with, the practical adoption of their principles.

These facts, which, in truth, are altogether decisive of the present question, point to the great source from which the errors of the free trade party are derived, and which appears, in an especial manner, their favourite position, that cheap prices is an unmitigated blessing, and that the great thing to attend to is to increase our imports. Cheap prices of grain are like the Amreeta cap in Kehama; the greatest of all blessings is the greatest of all curses, according as they arise from magnitude of domestic production, or magnitude of foreign importation. Of the first we had an example during the five fine years in succession, from 1830 to 1835, during which the foreign importation was practically abolished by the abundant harvests, and consequent high duty on grain under the sliding scale. This was a period, as all the world knows, of universal and unexampled commercial prosperity. Of the second we had a memorable example during the five bad years in succession, which elapsed fiom 1836 to 1840, in the course of which the corn laws, from the effect of the same sliding scale, and the continued low prices, were practically abolished; and importations, at the close of the period, amounted to 2,500,000 quarters, and, on an average of the whole, was little short of 2,000,000 of quarters. And what was the result? The exportation of 6,000,000 of sovereigns in a single year to buy grain; an unexampled pressure on the money market; commercial embarrassments, long-continued, and severe beyond all former precedent; the contraction of ten millions of additional debt in four years, and the creation of a deficit which at length rose to the formidable amount, in 1842, of L.4,000,000 sterling! And what first dispelled this distress, and arrested this downward and disastrous progress? The fine harvests of 1842—the blessed sun of its long summer, followed by the more checkered, but also fine summer of 1843, which again gave us plenty, derived from domestic production, and consequent general and increasing manufacturing as well as rural prosperity.

It is in vain, therefore, to say, cheap prices are a blessing in themselves, and the consumers at least are ever benefited by a fall in the cost of grain. Cheap prices are a real blessing if that effect consists with prosperity to the producer, as by improved methods of cultivation or manufacture, or the benignity of nature in giving fine seasons. But cheap prices are the greatest of all evils, and to none more shall the consumers, if they are the result, not of the magnitude of domestic production, but of the magnitude of foreign importation. It was that sort of cheap prices which ruined the Roman empire, from the destruction of the agriculture of Italy; it is that sort of cheap prices which has ruined the Indian weavers, from the disastrous competition of the British steam-engine; it is that sort of low prices which has so grievously depressed British shipping, from the disastrous competition of the Baltic vessels under the reciprocity system. It is in vain for the consumers to say, we will separate our case from that of the producers, and care not, so as we get low prices, what comes of them. Where will the consumers be, and that erelong, if the producers are destroyed? What will be the condition of the landlords if their farmers are ruined? or of bondholders if their debtors are bankrupt? or of railway proprietors if traffic ceases? or of owners of bank stock if bills are no longer presented for discount? or of the 3 per cents if Government, by the failure of the productive industry of the country, is rendered bankrupt? The consumers all rest on the producers, and must sink or swim with them.