Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine

don and Dantzie, must at once see that, buy grain when they reach the neighunder a free-trade system, as large an bourhood of the bursting warehouses. importation of foreign produce, and But then they will be absorbed in the as extensive a contraction of home, great manufacturing districts, where as has taken place this year is to be their labour will be more profitable permanently looked for. The ex- to themselves and others, than in their portation and return of the precious native wilds! Yes, there is a process metals, and contraction of credit now of absorption goes on, on the occurfelt as so distressing, may be expected rence of such a crisis ; but it is not to be permanent. Providence has the absorption of labour by capital, given us a warning of the effects of but of capital by pauperism. Floods our policy, before they have become of starving destitutes inundate every irreparable. We have only to sup- steam-boat, harbour, and road, on pose the present state of commerce the route to the scene of wo; and and manufactures lasting, and we while the interior of the warehouseš have a clear vision of the blessings of in the great commercial cities are free-trade.

groaning beneath the weight of foreign Nor is there any difficulty in un- grain, the streets in their vicinity are derstanding how it happens that the thronged by starving multitudes, substitution of a large portion of who spread typhus fever wherever foreign, for an equal amount of home- they go, and fall as a permanent grown produce, occasions such dis- burden on the poor-rates of the yet astrous effects, and in particular proves solvent portions of the community. 80 injurious to the commercial classes, And the effect of this importation of who in the first instance generally foreign grain, from whatever cause it suppose they are to be benefited by arises, necessarily is to prevent this the change. If two or three millions absorption of rural pauperism by of rural labourers in the poorest manufacturing capital, to which the and worst cultivated districts of the Free-traders so confidently look for island, are thrown out of employment, the adjustment of society after the either by a failure in the vegetable on change has been made. The nations which alone, in their rude state, they who supply us with grain do not want can employ their labour, or by the our manufactures. They will not buy gradual substitution of foreign for them. What they want, is our home produce in the supply of food money. They have not, and will not for the people, it is a poor compensa- have, the artificial wants requisite tion to them to say that an equal for the general purchase of manufacamount of foreign grain has been tures for a century to come. Generabrought into the commercial empo- tions must go to their graves during riums of the empire—that if they will the transition from rustic content to leave Skibbereen or Skye, and come civilised wants. America has sent us to Liverpool or Glasgow, they will some millions of quarters of grain this find warehouses amply stored with year, but there is no increase in her grain, which at the highest current orders for our manufactures. On the prices they will obtain to any extent contrary, they are diminishing. Even they desire.

The plain answer is, theFreeTrade Journals now admit this; that they are starving; that their constrained by the evidence of their employment as well as subsistence is senses to admit the entire failure of gone; that they have neither the all their predictions.* The reason is means of transport, nor any money to

evident. They want our money, and

*“The excessive consumption of these and other articles has, however, only led to a drain of bullion to the extent of three millions and a half, while, upon a moderate computation, they would appear to call for three times that amount. This is to be accounted for by two facts—The first being that we have not imported, and paid for as much as we have consumed, since, conjointly with our importations, we have been steadily eating up former reserves, so that our stock of all kinds—coffee, sugar, rice, &c., are low; and, next, because we have diminished our importations of raw material in a remarkable degree, and hence, while paying for provisions, have lessened our usual payments on this score. Here, too, in like manner, we have been drawing upon

our money they will have; and if they is only five or six shillings a-quarter, find our manufactures are beginning there can be no question that the opento flow in, in enlarged quantities, in ing of the ports will occasion a very consequence of our purchase of their large importation of foreign grain. It grain, they will soon stop the influx may reasonably be expected that, in by a tariff. This is what we did, when the space of a few years, the quantity situated as they are—it is what all imported will amount to four or five mankind will, and must do, in similar millions of quarters annually, for circumstances. It was stinctly per which the price paid by the importers ceived and foretold by the Protection- cannot be supposed to be less, on the ists that this effect would follow from most moderate calculation, than seven free-trade, and that, unless some- or eight millions sterling. The expething was done to enlarge the cur- rience of the year 1839 sufficiently rency to meet it, a commercial crisis tells us what will be the effect of such would ensue.

These words published an importation of grain, paid for, as a year ago might pass for the history it must be, for the most part in specie, of the time in which we now live :- upon the general monetary concerns “Under the proposed reduced duties and commercial prosperity of the emduring the next three years, and tri- pire. It is well known that it was fling duty after that period on all sorts this condition of things which produced of grain, there can be no doubt that a the commercial crisis in this country, very great impulse will be given to the led to three years of unprecedented corn-trade. It being now ascertained, suffering in the manufacturing disby a comparison of the prices during tricts, and, as is affirmed, destroyed the last twenty years, that there is property in the manufacturing disannually a difference of from twenty tricts of Lancashire, to the amount of to thirty shillings a-quarter between £40,000,000." * the price that wheat bears in the Bri- Lastly, the famine has taught the tish islands and at the shores of the empire an important lesson as to Irish Baltic, while the cost of importation Repeal. For many years past, that

our reseroes. Our manufactures have been carried on with hemp, flax, and cotton, which had been paid for in former years, and we have left ourselves at the present moment short of all these articles, the stock of the latter alone, on the 1st of January last, as compared with the preceding year, being 545,790 against 1,060,560 bales. We are not only poorer, therefore, by all the bullion we have lost, but by all the stock we have thus consumed.

This process cannot go on any longer. We have now no accumulations to eat into, and must, consequently, pay for what we use. Concurrently, therefore, with our importations of corn and other provisions, (which are now going on at a much greater rate, and at much higher prices than in 1846,) and just in proportion as they beget a demand for our manufactures, we must have importations of raw material. Large purchases of hemp and flax are alleged to have been made in the north of Europe, for spring shipment, and cotton from the United States is only delayed by the want of ships. Wool from Spain, and the Mediterranean, saltpetre, oil-seeds, &c., from India, and a host of minor articles, have also been kept back by the same cause, and will pour in upon us to make up our deficiencies directly any relaxation shall take place (if such could be forseeen) of the universal influx of grain. In this way, just as one cause of demand diminishes the other will increase, and the balance will be kept up against us for a period to which at present it is impossible to fix a limit.

“We thus see that no call that can possibly arise for our manufactures can have the effect of preventing a continuous drain of bullion. That a large trade will occur no one can doubt, but at present it is scarcely even in prospect. From India and China each account comes less favourable than before ; from Russia we are told that no great demand can be expected for British goods under the present high duties' in that country; while even from the United States, the point from whence relief will most rapidly come, we hear of a shrewd conviction that we are approaching a period of low prices, and that, consequently, for the present the less they order from us the better." "-Times, March 10, 1847.

* England in 1815 and 1845, pp. v-vii. Preface to third edition, published in June 1846.

country has been convulsed, and the empire harassed by the loud and threatening demand for the Repeal of the Union, and the incessant outcry that the Irish people are perfectly equal to the duties of self-government, and that all their distresses have been owing to the oppression of the Saxon, The wind of adversity has blown, and where are these menaces now? Had Providence punished them by granting their prayer-had England cut the rope, as Mr Roebuck said, and let them go, where would Ireland have been at this moment? Drifting away on the ocean of starvation. Let this teach them their dependence upon their neighbours, and let another fact open their eyes to what those neigh

bours are, England has replied to the senseless clamour, the disgraceful ingratitude, by voting ten millions sterling in a single year to relieve the distresses which the heedlessness and indolence of the Irish had brought upon themselves. We say advisedly, brought upon themselves. For, mark-worthy circumstance! the destruction of the potato crop has been just as complete, and the food of the people has been just as entirely swept away in the West Highlands of Scotland, as in Ireland, but there has been no grant of public money to Scotland. The cruel AngloSaxons have given IT ALL to the discontented, untaxed Gael in the Emerald isle.

Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh.

LETTERS ON THE TRUTHS CONTAINED IN POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS.