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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 38

Letter Third

Letter Third.

The strong man, Mr. Editor, self-reliant, moves boldly forward, careless of the comments of those around him, and confident in his power for self-defence. His feeble rival, full of doubts and fears, watches anxiously, hoping to maintain his position yet hesitating as regards his power so to do. In which of these men may we find the prototype of France commercially considered In which that of Britain? Let us see!

In the sixty years that have passed since the close of the great war, France has, as I believe, never once attempted to interfere in our affairs; nor, so far as I can recollect, have the French people sought in any manner to influence our legislation. She and they have been content to allow us to determine for ourselves our commercial arrangements, confident that, whatsoever might be their form, French skill and taste would so far triumph over such obstacles as might be raised as to enable France to participate in supplying the great market the Union now presents.

Widely different from this, British interference has been persistent throughout this whole period, increasing in its force as the danger to British interests became more clearly obvious. On one occasion, some five and twenty years since, your then minister had the bad taste, if not even the impertinence, to send to our State Department a lecture on the folly of protection, accompanied by a strong remonstrance against increase in the duties on British iron. Of the course that has been since pursued some idea may be formed after a study of the exhibit, made in a document herewith sent, of the discreditable proceedings of the Canadian Commissioner in reference to that, so-called, Reciprocity Treaty whose adoption he page 11 then was urging; these things having been done under the eye, and, as we have every reason to believe, with the sanction of the minister under whoso roof the commissioner was then residing. The corruption then and there practised may be taken as the type of the whole British action in this country; agents being sent out to lecture on the advantages of free trade, journalistic correspondents being purchased; Cobden Club publications being gratuitously distributed; and our domestic affairs being in every possible manner interfered with; with simply the effect of proving that there reigns abroad great fear that the Union may speedily achieve an industrial independence and thus emancipate itself from the system described more than a century since by Joshua Gee when assuring his countrymen that more than three-fourths of the products of these colonies were absorbed by British traders, and that the share allowed to the colonists scarcely sufficed to purchase clothing for their families and themselves.

Turn now, Mr. Editor, to your own journal of the 25th ult., and re-read the inquiry there made as to "what possible outlet we can have for our produce in the event of such an important purchaser being lost to us permanently;" following this up by study of your answer to the effect, that "the high tariff so long maintained by the United States has at length brought her producing powers up to her requirements," and that, therefore, "we cannot but greatly fear that the crisis of depression is by no means past, and it is not improbable that the list of works that have to be closed for want of orders will be augmented, and many more workmen be thrown out of employment before the year is out." Turn next to your report of the Address of the President of the Sheffield Chamber of Commerce, and find him admitting that although "they had argued during the term of the free trade agitation that protected industries failed, that the quality deteriorated, and the enterprising manufacturers began to stagnate, that did not seem to apply to American manufacturers;" the general result at which the speaker had arrived being precisely that which you yourself had just before suggested, to wit, that the American market had been lost, and had been so because of a protective tariff such as you have now denounced.

Turn further, if you please, to your report, a part of which is here below given, of the proceedings of a meeting of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, now but a fortnight old, and mark, first, the alarm excited by the recent and rapid growth of the cotton manufacture of India; and, second, the admission there made that the duty, trivial as it is, is "a great grievance to Manchester," paid, as it is here admitted to be, by the British producer, and Not by the Hindoo consumer:—

"Mr. W. E. Taylor, Enfield, strongly condemned the Indian import duties upon cottons, and attributed the delay in their abolition to the influence of Lord North-brook, with respect to whom he said that, whatever the causes of his retirement, they would hail the consequences with satisfaction.

"Mr. J. A. Bremner also supported the resolution, and especially commended the action of the Chamber with respect to the cotton import duties. He said that the £750,000 raised by means of these duties in India fell upon 80,000 employers and work people in Lancashire, its average incidence being at the rate of £10 per head."

page 12

Had these gentlemen been talking in those Washington committee rooms which their representatives so constantly, and so impudently, invade, or through our public journals, they would have insisted that it was the poor consumer who paid the duty, but here, among themselves, they admit what they and we know to be the fact, that it is they who pay and they who are to be benefited by its abolition.

Look next to the Cobden Club, a body of English gentlemen, and see it, as we are now assured may be done, in defiance of your own denunciation of the document as unworthy of credit, scattering broadcast throughout Italy a paper by one of its members who claims to be recognized as an American, every page carrying with it evidence of that gross misstatement in reference to the working of the protective policy in this country, throughout the last dozen years, which had led the Times to its repudiation.

Allow me now, Mr. Editor, to ask if there can be better evidence of weakness than that which is above exhibited? Strong men can always afford to speak the truth. Weak ones only find themselves compelled to resort to falsehood.

Turn back a few months and study for yourself the facts connected with the urgent request made to M. Chevalier when last in England, to the effect that he should urge upon his government some relaxation of that protection of the sugar manufacture by aid of which French refiners were driving those of Britain out of their own markets; continental beet growers meanwhile threatening annihilation of the cane growers of Britain's tropical possessions. Turn next to a file of the Pall Mall Gazette and study the exhibit there made, but few weeks since, of the trepidation caused by the suggestion that Austria had determined upon the adoption of specific duties, thereby putting your shoddy cloth and cinder iron upon a level with the more honest products of Germany and of France. Turn to the Economist, the Manchester Guardian, and other journals, and see how great had been the alarm excited by the statement that Italy was surely bent upon "a complete return to the protectionist system." Look next to the joy that has been since expressed on receiving an assurance from the Commissioner that what was being sought was merely increase of revenue without reference to protection. Had Signor Luzzati been further interrogated the rapturous feeling would, however, have been greatly modified by his assurance to the effect that his government had arrived at the conclusions, that for the suppression of brigandage it was indispensable that employment should be found for the Italian people; that for attaining this result it was needed that employments should be diversified; and that, to that end, there should be such an increase of duties as would at one and the same time give both revenue and protection.

Look further in what direction we may, we meet with evidences of a nervous feeling of apprehension singularly corroborative of the views of the great father of economic science when cautioning his fellow citizens against the dangers and difficulties that must inevitably result from an almost entire dependence on the foreign trade.

page 13

Referring now to one of the many reports which British ministers are required to make, each and all proving the existence of great anxiety as to the future, allow me to ask your attention to that of Mr. Phipps, your representative in. Madrid, in which he so clearly shows how almost marvellous has been the growth of the foreign commerce of Spain consequent upon the adoption, some thirty years since, of a protective system by aid of which an import of cotton, dye-stuffs, and other raw materials, had been substituted for that of cloth and other manufactures. That done, Mr. Editor, mark the astonishment, if not even the horror, he expresses at the rapid growth of the protective feeling; at the action of the government in refusing reduction of existing duties; and especially at the "short-sighted and suicidal" measures now likely to be adopted with a view to bringing about those harmonious relations between agriculture and manufactures which were held by Adam Smith in such high regard.

Passing northward and eastward mark if you please, the alarm that has been caused by reason of the belief that Russian road making must lead to absorption of the trade of Central Asia by Russian manufacturers.

Study then the causes of the destructive and useless war of the Crimea, followed, as it has been, by almost endless negotiations in regard to Turkey and to Egypt and its canal, all tending to prove an anxiety in reference to the commercial future from which France seems so almost entirely exempt.

Proposing in my next to call your attention to the comparative movements of France and Britain, I remain, etc.,

Henry C. Carey.

Philadelphia,