the utmost consequences that could follow, have followed upon the importation of silk? Is it pretended that silks have superseded cottons? Have not, on the contrary, cottons increased so much, as to have, with much greater probability, occasioned the losses of the silk-weavers? Will it be said that any one man has been turned out of a cotton-mill, in consequence of the importation of silk? By what process, then, is it assumed by what process is it possible-that the importation of silk has affected manufactures generally?

We do not want an answer in the terms of political economy; we want a plain answer by a man who has never read Adam Smith. When one tells us, by removing prohibition, or reducing duties, you make French silks cheaper than English; and a lady who used to buy gowns made in Spitalfields, now buys gowns made at Lyons; and the Spitalfields people thus lose their employment, and their subsistence, we understand him. We may deny the fact; we may say that there is compensation, in this way or that; we may say that he ought to suffer for the good of the community, but we cannot say that his averment is not intelligible, possible, and probable. But when he tells us that this lady's purchase of the French gown from Messrs. Leaf and Coles, brings distress upon Alderman Thompson's Iron Works at Merthyr-Tydvil, we are puzzled. This gentleman, we say, must be a great theorist, a man of extensive, if not of extravagant, speculation, a professor of some abstruse science, an abstract reasoner, a philosopher.

We contend, that it neither has been shown nor can be shown, that any general declension has taken place in the commerce of the country, still less that any reduction which has occurred in its profits, or in the condition or number of workmen employed, is attributable to the new measures.

It may be admitted that an importation of a foreign commodity much too small to diminish materially the native industry employed upon the same article, may, nevertheless, have a considerable effect upon its price. And we will not, in this place, deny that the price of some, a very few, British commodities, has been lowered in consequence of the actual, or apprehended competition of foreign commodities.

But our present concern is with the alleged reduction of profits and wages, and consequent general distress in all the branches of industry;-many of which are not at all affected by foreign importation. When we see that, on the whole, there is a great augmentation of quantity, indicated by the increased import of the raw article, and an increased export of the manufactures when we see this result evident in the most extensive of all our manufactures, and one of which the material is

exclusively foreign, while there is not the shadow of foreign competition in the manufactured article, how is it possible to ascribe the lowness of profit and wages (which is admitted) to any cause connected with foreign importation?

It is not at all certain, nor indeed is it probable, that those articles which have experienced an extension of quantity, and a diminution of value, would have obtained the one without the other. This is, no doubt, true in regard to home consumption, but it is more undeniably true in respect of exportation. Can it be believed that we should continue to compete successfully with the continental manufacturers, to whom peace has restored so great facilities, without the aid of a great reduction of price?

These are great palliations of the evil, (if it be one,) of low profits and wages; but, whatever may be the extent or intensity of the evil, it cannot be traced to the new measures. It has been said often, but must be repeated here, that the very allegation of universality negatives the partial cause. We have seen already, in how very inconsiderable a proportion, the measures which have faclitated importation, can possibly have affected industry in the aggregate; we have seen, too, how very slightly the importation can have affected the very few particular articles which can have directly felt any effect at all from it. And can we, with the slightest appearance of truth or probability, ascribe to the importation of a few articles, not amounting to one thirty-seventh part of our whole importation, the general effect of a reduction of profits, wages, and prices among all branches of industry; not those alone which have been exposed to increased competition, but those also which date from the same measures, augmented facilities of fabrication and exportation?

We hear, at present, even more of the pauperism of our agricultural labourers, than of the distress of our manufacturers; is this owing to free trade: are the farmers and their labourers, producers of protected corn, poorer because all manufactures are cheaper?

We might add, that it is well known that there is great and similar distress in other countries in those very branches of industry which we allege to be suffering from the competition of those very countries.

The extent, however, or the origin, of the general distress, is not our subject; it is enough for our purpose to have shown that the reduction of duty upon certain articles, which reduction has acquired the name of " Free Trade"-is not the cause of that distress, be it more or less extensive.

The partial evil of which we have admitted the existence, is an almost unavoidable consequence of the transition from restriction

to freedom in our commercial system. Neither capital nor industry is readily transferred from one mode of employment to another; and even though it be true that, on the whole, and eventually, the new system furnishes a more profitable employment of capital, and still more, a more extensive demand for labour, it is possible that these effects will not be felt immediately; nor will the compensation afforded by the new channels be enjoyed by the individuals who suffer through the loss of the old. In considering then the way in which the transition has, in our case, been managed, we hold that no degree of artificial management, no departure from systematic policy, can be reprehensible, which is intended to mitigate the severity of the transition; always provided, that, however slowly, we are moving towards our end.

But our difficulty consists in this; all that we do to avoid a harsh operation of our improvements, operates as a stimulus. While we intend only to let capital be gradually withdrawn, and labour transferred by degrees, we are actually giving a bounty to the more extensive application of both, in the direction from which we desire to divert it.

This, we apprehend, has happened to the silk manufacture. And it is questionable whether a more rapid and effectual withdrawal of protection would not have occasioned less of injury to those engaged in it, than the gradual process which has been adopted.

Perhaps, where there has been a prohibition, the fairest course to take in the first instance, is, to impose the highest duty which can be collected; that is, generally, a duty exceeding by a little, (perhaps five per cent) the rate at which the goods can be imported in contraband trade. But it is obvious, that if the article so taxed be one also produced in this country, perhaps, if there be here an article which may be substituted for it,—and that article is not subject to a corresponding tax,-we must not retain this tax permanently; if we do not lower the duty it still remains a protective duty, obnoxious to the objections urged against the restrictive system. And if the article be one, as many are, which from its form, or fabric, is not liable to be smuggled, our duty, kept at the highest rate, will be prohibitory, and equal in its effects to an absolute prohibition.

On such articles, therefore, and indeed, on all articles, looking to considerations of revenue merely, we should impose, not the highest rate of duty which can be collected, but the rate of duty which will produce the largest amount of revenue; which is often, as we very well know, increased more by a moderate than by a high duty. If we thus regulate our tariff by considerations of revenue, our imposts upon foreign articles, will, or will not, be

protective of our native industry, according to a variety of incidental circumstances. Suppose the foreign article to be one whereof the consumption here can be greatly extended, and which is made better and cheaper than our native production; financial motives will induce us to fix the duty at the point of greatest productiveness: which point may, probably, be too low for protection against the superior cheapness of the foreign article.

On the other hand, if the commodity be one which, from whatever causes, can be more cheaply produced in England, the lowest duty will be a protection; or rather, the article will protect itself, without any duty.

And, according to the principles which we have endeavoured to maintain, there is in this state of the matter, and in these various effects of the same revenue system, nothing inconsistent with sound policy; or with the principles and prayer of the merchants' petition.

But, in effecting the transition to this policy, from a system of prohibition and restriction, it may be allowable, not at once to reduce the duties to the point at which they will be most productive. To the point at which they will destroy the profits of the smuggler, they must be reduced, in regard as well to the interests of the domestic producer, as to the revenue. This was the principle upon which the silk duties were lowered in 1829, when Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald and Mr. Courtenay were at the Board of Trade. But we may fairly pause, and proceed gradually, in reducing the duties to that lower point at which the enlarged consumption will produce a greater revenue. This gradual abatement of duty is all that we can do, by way of lightening the harshness of the operation, upon domestic producers, of the transition from the one system to the other. The main point to be attended to, in the management of this gradual process is, to make it clearly understood that the regard which we pay to the principle of protection is only temporary, and that any more lasting effect which our financial measures may have in protecting domestic productions, is accidental, and furnishes no claim for the continuance of protection.

But here is another difficulty! so far as the profits of the capitalists are concerned, we may fairly say, you knew what you were about; you had fair warning; if our measures diminish your profits you have no more right to complain than have other merchants, or manufacturers, on any other of the numerous occasions in which they suffer from change of circumstances. But the situation of the artizans and labourers who may be thrown out of employ is not exactly the same with that of their masters. These poor persons could not be expected to calculate, for themselves, the effects of political measures; and moreover,

if, as is probable, there is not merely a tolerable diminution, but an entire loss of wages, they are involved in misery, and become, by our law technically and avowedly, but really and in truth by the law of every state, and by the nature of things, burthensome upon the community at large. Our feelings of humanity, and a consideration of our own interests and of the public peace, would therefore deter us from reducing them to this extremity.

We do not mention this consideration as justifying a departure from the rule of proceeding gradually, but still proceeding, from the restrictive to the free system; but it assuredly increases greatly the difficulty of the transition; because it displays a manifest and a palpable evil, to be balanced against a speculative and less apparent good. This is what the opponents of free trade mean, when they insist upon practice as opposed to theory.

We are not prepared to say that the transition can be effected, without producing an actual increase of distress somewhere; or even, that there will not be, for a time, an increase on the whole: but we have shown that in the present case, the distress occasioned by the change of system, cannot have extended beyond a number of persons comparatively small, relative to those from whom the general extension of employment which has followed that change must have averted it.

When to these considerations is added the conviction, that the free system is, on the whole, beneficial to the people, that every individual partakes, in his degree, of that general benefit, and that, although each man's share of each separate benefit is scarcely perceptible, his share of the whole is considerable, we cannot doubt of the propriety of extending the system cautiously, and by degrees, to all commodities not connected with subsistence or security, notwithstanding the local and temporary pressure which even the most gradual application of it may possibly occasion.

It may be remarked here, that embarrassments similar to those which attend the transition from a restricted to a free system are liable to arise in every case in which duties operate, though unintentionally and inadvertently, as a protection to native industry.

The opposers of free trade, as well as its advocates, are apt to object to our present system, that it is not perfectly free trade. There are still protecting duties not only upon corn, but upon manufactures. Corn, we repeat, stands, and ought to stand, by itself; but so much of the duty upon foreign manufactures as is collected for any other purpose than revenue, we admit to be

It will be seen, that these exceptions are made, because corn and shipping have been put aside from the present discussion.