FREE-TRADE REFORM AND FINANCE

[BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, APRIL AND MAY 1850]

AT length signal-guns of distress have been fired from the Liberal fleet. Albeit stoutly denying the existence of any extraordinary suffering in Ireland, Ministers have brought forward a measure, based upon the admission of a distress there much exceeding anything which their opponents have alleged. Concealing or evading the loud cries of Colonial discontent, they have announced a policy implying a total revolution in Colonial government, and which never could have been conceded but from the consciousness of a vast amount of former maladministration. The Irish Reform Bill, the New System of Colonial Government, and the Financial Proposals, are par excellence the measures of the session. We are not surprised they are so. They are the natural complement and unavoidable consequence of three preceding years of Free Trade and a fettered Currency,

The policy of Government since 1846 having been entirely founded upon the interests of the towns against the country, of the consumers against the producers, of those who had a majority in the House of Commons over those who were still in a minority, it might naturally be expected that the consequent suffering would be most acutely felt in the producing parts of the empire-in those places where agriculture was the staple of life, where producers were many and consumers few, and where, necessarily, the measures of the British urban majority acted with unmitigated severity. Ireland and the Colonies were the places in which these circumstances combined, because they were both provinces in which rural districts were of

boundless extent, and towns few and of inconsiderable importance; in which wealth was in a great measure unknown, civilisation as yet, comparatively speaking, in its infancy; and mankind, yet occupied in the labours of the field, in felling the forest and draining the morass, were not congregated in the huge Babylons or Ninevehs, which are at once the distinctive mark and ineradicable curse of long-established civilisation. Ireland and the Colonies, therefore, were the places which suffered most, and in which discontent might be expected to be most formidable from the new system; and, accordingly, the first announcements of the Session of 1850 were of measures calculated, as Government supposed, to assuage the irritations and conciliate the affections of these important and avowedly discontented or suffering parts of the empire.

Ten years have not elapsed since Lord John Russell declared that we could not afford to have a Revolution every year, and that the Reform Bill had fixed the Constitution upon a basis which must not again be shaken. There can be no doubt of the justice of the observation; but the Liberals have now proved that their own measures have destroyed any stability or permanent system in government. That declaration was made before the grand and distinctive features of Liberal government had developed themselves: before Free Trade had crushed Agricultural Industry, and sapped the foundations of Colonial loyalty; and when no overbearing pressure from without reminded Ministers that the time had arrived when they must eat in their pledges. That time has now, however, come. Distress, all but universal, has spread among all the rural producers of the empire; Ireland, the West Indies, and Canada, as the most entirely agricultural districts, have been the first to suffer in consequence. Measures calculated, as they conceive, to allay the prevailing discontent, have been brought forward by Government at the very time when they themselves, and their organs in the press, were most strenuously denying that the new measures had produced anything but universal contentment and satisfaction throughout the empire.

The so-called Liberals have a very easy, and, as they deem it, efficacious mode of stifling or appeasing public

This

discontent, when it arrives at a formidable height. consists in extending the suffrage among the querulous and suffering part of the people. They think that by so doing they will at once demonstrate their sympathy with the middle and lower classes, and secure, at least for some elections to come, a majority of electors for their support, from a natural feeling of gratitude towards the Government which has conceded to them the suffrage. This system has been acted upon now for above a quarter of a century. No sooner had the contraction of the Currency, by the bills of 1819 and 1826, rendered it wholly inadequate for the industry of the empire, and produced the dreadful distress from 1826 to 1830 among the manufacturing and commercial classes, than they brought forward the Reform Bill in March 1831, and gave a decided majority in the House of Commons to these suffering and discontented urban electors. They have existed ever since on the gratitude of these newly enfranchised city voters. And now, when the measures adopted, at the instigation of these urban constituencies, who compose three-fifths of the House of Commons, have totally ruined the West Indies, all but severed Canada from the empire, and spread unheard-of distress throughout Ireland, they have a remedy, as they conceive, ready, in the extension of the suffrage to the suffering population. In this way the successive stages of general suffering, induced by Free Trade and a fettered Currencyin other words, a system of general cheapening of everything-issue in successive degradations of the franchise. The monetary crisis of 1825 led, after five years of suffering, to the Reform Bill for Great Britain; and the FreeTrade crash of 1847 has issued, after three years of mortal agony, in the new Irish Reform Bill, and the announcement of provincial assemblies for the Colonies. If this system is continued for half a century more, it may reasonably be expected to lead, as it has done in France, to the introduction of universal suffrage. When everything is so cheapened that one-half of the population is landed in the workhouses, it is thought everything will be righted, wisdom at once imprinted on the measures of Government, and contentment diffused through the country by the paupers rising from

their straw mattresses to vote for the Liberal candidates in ballot-boxes put up at the corners of every street.

It must be confessed that this system of appeasing discontent by extending the suffrage has several things to recommend it. In the first place and this is a most important consideration with Governments which behold the national resources wasting away under the influence of monetary and commercial measures, introduced by the dominant class-it costs nothing. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is sure to give it his cordial support. It is much easier to enfranchise two hundred thousand paupers or bogtrotters, than to issue two or three millions of exchequer bills to sustain their industry. The old panacea, so often applied in the days of Tory Government, when distress became general, to relieve it by issues of exchequer bills, has been totally discarded since a Liberal Administration, resting on the urban constituencies, was installed in power. It is now discovered that it is much better to give the sufferers votes. Undoubtedly it is cheaper; and in these days, when everything is sacrificed to cheapness, charity itself, albeit covering a multitude of sins, must be sacrificed to it with the rest. In the next place it implies, or is likely to lead to, no change of public measures, no reaction against the commercial policy which has produced the suffering. The new voters, it may be presumed, will support the Liberal Government which has enfranchised them; gratitude will bear Ministers over more than one contested election. The very suffering produced by FreeTrade measures will bring up a host of voters to the poll, who will, it is hoped, support from gratitude the FreeTrade candidate. That is a matter of immense importance. It is not only spreading division through the Protection camp, but recruiting in it for troops to themselves. And though, doubtless, it is scarcely to be expected that men in the long-run are to support representatives who are ruining them, yet it is often astonishing how long they will continue to do so from party influences. The poison, like the contagion of the cholera, floats in the air, without any one knowing whence it comes or whither it is going: and, at any rate, the opening of men's eyes is the work of time;

and the great thing with Liberal Governments is to secure immediate support, or tide over immediate difficulties.

For observe one very remarkable feature in both the Liberal measures intended to allay the discontent in the agricultural districts of the empire-that is, that there is no change in the composition of the House of Commons. That assembly, which, as it has the command of the public purse, rules by its majority the whole empire, remains the same. Three-fifths of its members are still returned by the urban constituencies of Great Britain. At the late division on the motion of Mr Disraeli, the majority of twenty-one was composed of Scotch members, most of them members for burghs. Thus the ruling power is lodged in the urban constituencies, and the suffering rural districts are to be pacified by an extension of their electors, which will confer no real political power, and benefit no human being. The majority for Free-Trade measures will be the same whether the Irish members are returned by seventy-two thousand or three hundred thousand voters; or, rather, it is hoped by the promoters of the new measures, the Protectionists will be weakened by the change-because the Liberal candidate will be able to call himself the friend of the people, and to call on the new voters to record their votes for the Government which has enfranchised, and is ruining them.

So also in regard to the Colonies. The new measures. announced by Lord John Russell propose to give provincial assemblies or parliaments to all the Colonies; and so far they are founded on just principles. But they contain no provision for the representation of any of the Colonies in the Imperial Parliament which meets in London. The fatal majority of three urban to two rural representatives still determines the measures of Government, and will continue to do so, whatever provincial assemblies may be conceded to the Colonies. The invaluable nomination burghs, by means of which these distant parts of the empire, under the old constitution, were so effectually represented, still are extinct. Colonial wealth now can get into Parliament only by the favour of urban constituencies-that is, by adopting FreeTrade principles. Any man who stood upon the hustings in a British burgh, and proclaimed, "Justice to the Colonies," would be speedily thrown into a minority, from the