has been the case of late years? Can you expect to make them loyal and peaceable, whilst you deny them the means of obtaining a fair day's wage for a fair day's labour-whilst you not only encourage, but convert into an actual fact the idea that a large portion of the poor are oppressed, and drive them to seek a remedy in attempts to procure a more popular representation? Free trade has been the great incentive to Chartism, and, unless men return speedily to their senses, it may chance to be the terrible promoter of revolution.

wear clumsy English boots when he could get French ones at a lower price; or British instead of Parisian gloves; or silk from Spitalfields rather than the less costly fabric of Lyons. The more honest of the free traders make no scruple of announcing their views. They admit that the realization of their maxim, to sell in the dearest and buy in the cheapest market, implies the ruin of every non-exporting trade, and they seem absolutely resolved to push their theory to the utmost. At present Sir Robert Peel has managed it so, that, without being absolutely annihilated, But what is to be the real amount the poorer classes are ground down to of the deficit? No man living can the lowest point. We ask the shop- tell. Lord John Russell estimated it keepers, artisans, and smaller manu- at about three millions, and subsefacturers, who have no connexion quently Sir Charles Wood announced with the foreign market, whether this that, by sundry savings and sales of is not truly the case, and if so, whe- old stores-which latter source of ther they are inclined to allow this revenue very much resembles the case cruel, selfish, and inhuman system to of a gentleman parting with his body be carried any further-nay, whether clothes to make up for his annual exthey will not at once resolve to make penditure-it might be reduced to a determined head against it? But for million and a half. Since then we the obstinate blindness of the political have received the official accounts of economists, we would appeal to that the trade of the kingdom for the six dearest of all considerations, their own months ending 5th July 1848; and safety. Do they really think it pos- we very much fear from a perusible, even were it politic, to drive sal of these, that the Chancellor of the whole operative industry of Britain the Exchequer has understated his into the compass of a few exporting trades? Can they make millions of men change their habits of a sudden, and walk from the country towns and villages, wherein, before Sir Robert Peel introduced the foreigner to swamp them, they had supported themselves by the exercise of their craft, to the factory, or the mine, or the furnace, or the printing work, there to spend the remainder of their existence in twisting, digging, smelting, and stamping, for the benefit of Cobden and his confederates ? The idea is absolute madness. Already we see the effects of false and unpatriotic legislation, in Chartist meetings and processions, in agitations for universal suffrage, in crime three-fold increased, and in augmented poorrates. What are considerations of sanatory reform or of public instruction compared to these? Will men thank you for soap and tracts, even should these articles be gratuitous, if you take their labour away from them, and legislate for one class alone, as

difficulties. Our exports, for the sake of which every other interest has been sacrificed, have fallen off to an alarming extent. During the corresponding six months of last year the declared value of our exports was £25,395,243 the whole amount for this period is £21,571,939, or very nearly FOUR MILLIONS less on the half year! Here is another staggering instance of the utter futility of free trade. The decrease of export for the year 1846, as compared with 1845, was about two millions-and now it is going on at the rate of four millions for half the time! Was there ever a more pregnant proof of the impossibility of forcing markets?

Looking to the imports, we find some very curious results. Lord John Russell took great credit for the increased consumption of sugar consequent on his West Indian experiments, which we shall presently have occasion to notice more minutely; and predicted a still further consumption and increase to the revenue. Let us

see how that matter stands. The months of the three last years refollowing is the total of sugar imported to this country for the first six

sons, that the results were too start ling for disclosure. But we shall take the statistics of the silk manufactured trade alone, from which it will be seen that, in two years after the relaxation

of the duties, we have doubled our imports, thereby throwing immense numbers of our own operatives out of employment.

FOREIGN SILK MANUFACTURES, ENTERED UNDER TARIFF OF 1846.

167,284 lbs.

Now if, as it is fair to suppose, the same increase, or even half of it, has taken place in the importation of other articles upon which the duties were removed, but which have been quietly withdrawn from the official tables; these statistics are enough to condemn free trade before any tribunal in the world. Mark how the matter stands. Here is a doubled importation of foreign manufactured goods. One half at least of these goods have come in to displace your home manufacture. The other half would have come in as formerly to supply the rich, who would have had to pay a high duty for the gratification of their fancy. That duty, where reduced, is now lost to the revenue. Who is the gainer, then?

10,530

286,870 lbs.

221,335 lbs. No one, save the rich consumer; whilst, on the other hand, the revenue has suffered, and home industry has received a prostrating blow. Butsay men of the Cobden school-though the silk weaver, and embroiderer, and milliner, and plaiter, and shoemaker, and tailor, may have suffered, the country is no loser, because we export goods in return for the articles_of import. Do you, gentlemen ? us turn to the export tables, and see how your account stands. Recollect, you have undertaken to show us a corresponding export of your goods to meet the influx of foreign manufac tures. Unless you can do this, your case is utterly worthless, and you stand as detected impostors.

EXPORT OF PRINCIPAL MANUFACTURES FROM The United KinGDOM.

Let

£18,199,774 £15,022,404 without which men must starve, but which free trade periodically sweeps from out our grasp. The lowered tariffs have operated peculiarly unfavourably at the present crisis-not perhaps so much in the branch of silk manufactures as in others; for it is remarkable that the increase of import in 1847, over that of 1846, is quite as large as the increase of the present over the former year; and had Lord John Russell been alive to the duties of his situation,

or capable of comprehending the effects which a glut of foreign goods must produce on the home market, he ought instantly to have brought in a bill augmenting the customs duties, and hurried it through Parliament without a moment's unnecessary delay. The madness of encouraging increased imports, whilst exports are falling, is utterly inconceivable to any who have not eaten and drunken with Cobden ; and it

is quite possible that some who have been admitted to that precious privilege, may agree with us if they will take the trouble to consider the foregoing tables. We are not the only sufferers. America is beginning to understand that increased imports are by no means decisive symptoms of a healthy commercial state; and the following extract from Transatlantic correspondence, which we copy from the money article in the Sun newspaper of 16th August last, is pregnant with meaning in the present posture of

affairs.

going forward to purchase goods which could not be obtained on the usual credit. In this way, our whole foreign trade has become deranged, and we have thus far borne the brunt of the commercial revulsions and political revolutions in Europe."

What is to be said of a system which swamps our home market, whilst at the same time it promotes a drain of gold? What is to be said of the system which makes a drain of gold

ruptcy?
almost tantamount to national bank-

manner!

subjects of the currency and finance, Having hitherto dealt with the let us at the new legislation for our colonow glance for a moment nies. We need not tale of the disasters into which the repeat the ruin which has befallen many of our West Indies have been plunged, or the to their misfortune, had embarked own most respectable citizens, who, their capital and fortunes in sugargrowing estates, trusting to British faith and protection for at least an adequate return. The veriest zealot the crime of slavery more bitterly could not have wished to have seen avenged; but in what a Great Britain, after having made a sacrifice of twenty millions to emancipate the slave population in her own colonies, a sacrifice to her, though not an adequate compensation to the planters,-after having declared to the whole world her determination no longer to participate in the profits of forced labour-after having made treaties, and equipped armaments for the suppression of the slave trade,suddenly changed her policy, admitted slave grown sugar from foreign states, first, at a high, and latterly, at so low a duty that her own colonies, already impoverished, could no longer afford to defray the cost of production. Here, again the principal of free-trade has been triumphant and ruinous; here, again the exporting trades have carried their point, not only against the interests of the colonists, but against those of benevolence and Christianity. The cause of the Blacks has been abandoned for the tempting bribe of cheap sugars, of an augmented demand for cottons and blankets to supply the

"The whole of Europe is in a terrible condition, and our only hope is, that Great Britain may escape the blast which has swept from one end of the Continent to the other with such devastating effect. If England escape, we shall continue to find extensive markets for our products, and our prosperity will be partially preserved. Our markets on the Continent have almost become extinct, so that the worst in that particular has already been realized; but, every week or month, consumption in that section of the world is restricted or limited --so much the more injurious must be the revolution causing such a state of things. With the exception of Great Britain, our European export trade has been literally annihilated; but unfortunately, our import trade with these countries has not met with a similar fate, but on the contrary, has rather increased than otherwise. Importers and speculators in this country have taken advantage of the financial embarrassments growing out of the Revolution, which the manufacturers of France and Europe generally have labored under, and have purchased of them for cash, good at one half their cost, and have filled our markets. A portion of the specie which has been shipped from this port within the last four months went abroad for this purpose; and while our exports had become reduced to the lowest limit, and exchange drawn upon previous shipments gangs of Cuba, and of machinery for of produce was coming back protested, Brazil, to enable the planter more millions of dollars of gold and silver were utterly to prostrate Jamaica.

upon

In February last we reviewed with the seven wise men of Greece sate great care all the evidence which we could collect regarding the West Indian interest. The conclusion to which we arrived was contained in the following paragraph" And what is it that our colonists ask? What is the extravagant proposal which we are prepared to reject at the cost of the loss of our most fertile possessions, and of nearly two hundred millions of British capital? Simply this, that in the meantime such a distinctive duty should be enforced as will allow them to compete on terms of equality with the slavegrowing States. Let this alone be granted, and they have no wish to interfere with any other fiscal regulation. And what would be the amount of differential duty required? Not more, as we apprehend, than ten shillings the hundred weight." Having hazarded this statement so early, it was certainly gratifying to find that an impartial committee of the House of Commons, reporting four months later, had, after a full investigation of the whole case,-and of course with official documents before them, the correctness of which could not admit of a doubt,―arrived at precisely the same result. The proposition for a differential duty of ten shillings, which was finally agreed to by the committee, was actually made by a member whose general opinions are understood to lean toward the side of free trade, -we mean Sir Thomas B. Birch, one of the representatives for Liverpool.

This resolution of course implied a direct condemnation of the Whig Act of 1846, which the West Indians bitterly complained of as a flagrant breach of faith, and as having put the coping-stone on their misfortunes. It was the resolution of an independent and intelligent parliamentary committee, founded upon a mass of evidence derived from every quarter; and in a matter of this sort, wherein so vast an interest as that of our most valuable colonies was concerned, it might have been expected that the report would be treated with deference, even though it might in some degree impugn the sagacity of a prime minister, by exposing the results of his former reckless legislation. Such was not the case. Had

that committee, their report would have been utterly indifferent to Lord John, who immediately came forward with a counter-scheme, which had not even the merit of consistency to give it colour. He proposed a new sliding-scale of duties, the result of which will be, that next year the colonists will have a protection against the slave-owners of seven shillings in the article of clayed, and five-and-sixpence in that of muscovado sugar,-the boon to taper away annually, until, in 1854, the protective duty will be reduced to three shillings on the one article, and two shillings upon the other. This is the doom of the West Indies, and we expect nothing less than an immediate stoppage of the supplies for the maintenance of the colonial governments. Robbed as they have been, ruined as they are, and all through a course of most reckless and unprovoked legislation, it is in vain to hope that any further capital will be embarked in the cultivation of these islands. For the benefit of economists at home, and the clamourers for cheap sugar, it may be as well to record that this new slidingscale is to be accompanied with a loan of £500,000 in addition to £160,000 already guaranteed this session, for the purposes of promoting immigra tion, and that at a period when the annual deficit was originally calculated at three millions! The amendment of Sir John Pakington, founded upon the resolutions of the committee, was negatived in a full house by the small majority of fifteen.

This has been by far the most important debate of the session; and at one time it was confidently expect ed that ministers would have been defeated. Sir Robert Peel, however, came to their rescue at the last stage. Oleaginous and plausible as ever, the wily baronet began his speech by deploring the misfortunes of the West Indians, repudiating mere pecuniary considerations, and calling to mind old struggles, in which these colonies had stood by the side of the mother country. This sympathetic introduction boded little mercy for the parties it seemed to favour. Sir Robert had acquiesced in the Act of 1846, and it was now rather difficult to back out from