[12] See No. CCCXL, Blackwood's Magazine, p. 261.

The free traders fully admit, and deeply deplore, as we have shown on a former occasion, these unfavourable results; but they say that it is to be hoped they will not continue: that foreign nations must, in the end, come to see that they are as much interested as we are in enlightened system of free trade; and that, meantime, it is for our interest to continue the system; or even though it totally fails in producing any augmentation in our exports, it is obviously for our advantage to continue it, as it brings in the immediate benefit of purchasing articles imported at a cheaper rate. Supposing, say they, we obtain no corresponding advantage from other states, there is an immense benefit accrues to ourselves from admitting foreign goods at a nominal duty, from the low price at which they may be purchased by the British consumer. To that point we shall advert in the sequel; in the mean time, it may be considered as demonstrated, that the free trade system has entirely failed in procuring for us the slightest extension of our foreign exports, or abating in the slightest degree the jealousy of foreign nations at our maritime and manufacturing superiority. Nor is there any difficulty in discovering to what this failure has been owing. It arises from laws inherent in the nature of things, and which will remain unabated as long as we continue a great and prosperous nation.

It is related of the Lacedemonians, that while all the other citizens of Greece were careful to surround their towns with walls, they alone left a part open on all sides. Thus, superiority in the field rendered them indifferent to the adventitious protection of ramparts. It is for a similar reason that England is now willing to throw down the barriers of tariffs, and the impediments of custom-houses; and that all other nations are fain to raise them up. It is a secret sense of superiority on the one side, and of inferiority on the other, which is the cause of the difference. We advocate freedom of trade, because we are conscious that, in a fair unrestricted competition, we should succeed in beating them out of their own market. They resist it, and loudly clamour for protection, because they are aware that such a result would speedily take place, and that the superiority of the old commercial state is such, that on an open trial of strength, it must at once prove fatal to its younger rivals. As this effect is thus the result of permanent causes affecting both sides, it may fairly be presumed that it will be lasting; and that the more anxiously the old manufacturing state advocates or acts upon freedom of commercial intercourse, the more strenuously will the younger and rising ones advocate protection. Reciprocity, therefore, is out of the question between them: for it never could exist without the destruction of the manufactures of the younger state; and if that state has begun to enter on the path of manufacturing industry, it never will be permitted by its government.

But this is not all. If free trade must of necessity prove fatal to the manufactures of the younger state, it as certainly leads to the destruction of the agriculture of the older; and it is this double effect this RECIPROCITY OF EVIL, which renders it so disastrous and impracticable an experiment for both the older and the younger community. The reason of this has not hitherto been generally attended to; but when once it is stated, its force becomes obvious, and it furnishes the true answer on principle to the delusive doctrines of free trade.

Nature has established, and, as it will immediately be shown, for very wise and important purposes, a permanent and indelible distinction between the effect of civilization and opulence on the production of food, and on the preparation of manufactures. In the latter, the discoveries of science, the exertions of skill, the application of capital, the introduction of machinery, are all-powerful, and give the older and more advanced state an immediate and decisive advantage over the younger and the ruder. In the former, the very reverse takes place: the additions made to productive power are comparatively inconsiderable, even by the most important discoveries; and as this capital and industry have in the end a powerful effect, and always enable the power of raising food for the human race to keep far a-head of the wants of mankind; yet this effect takes place very slowly, and the annual addition that can be made to the produce of the earth by such means is by no means considerable. The introduction of thorough draining will probably increase the productive power of the soil in Great Britain a third: scientific discovery may perhaps add another third; but at least ten years must elapse in the most favourable view before these effects generally take place—ere the judicious and well-directed labours of our husbandmen have formed rivulets for the superfluous wet of our fields, or overspread the soil with the now wasted animal remains of our cities. But our manufactures can in a few years quadruple their produce. So vast is the power which the steam-engine has made to the powers of production in commercial industry, that it is susceptible to almost indefinite and immediate extension; and the great difficulty always felt is, not to get hands to keep pace with the demand of the consumers, but to get a demand to keep pace with the hands employed in the production. Manchester and Glasgow could, in a few years, furnish muslin and cotton goods for the whole world.

Nor is the difference less important and conspicuous in the price at which manufacturing and agricultural produce can be raised in the old and the young state. This is the decisive circumstance which renders reciprocity between them impossible. The rich old state is as superior to the young one in the production of manufactures, as the poor young state is to the rich old one in that of subsistence. The steam-engine, capital, and machinery, have so enormously increased the power of manufacturing production, that they have rendered the old commercial state omnipotent in the foreign market in the supply of its articles. Nothing but fiscal regulations and heavy duties can protect the young state from ruin in those branches of industry. Heavy taxes, high wages, costly rents, dear rude produce, all are at once compensated, and more than compensated, by the gigantic powers of the steam-engine. Cotton goods are raised now in Great Britain at a fifth of the price which they were during the war. A gown, which formerly was cheap at L2, 10s., is now sold for ten shillings. Silks, muslins, and all other articles of female apparel, have been reduced in price in the same proportion. Colossal fortunes have been made by the master manufacturers, unbounded wealth diffused through the operative workmen in Lancashire and Lanarkshire, even at these extremely reduced prices. This is the real reason of the universal effort made by all nations which have the least pretensions to commercial industry, of late years to exclude, by fixed duties, our staple manufactures; of which the President of the Board of Trade so feelingly complains, and which the advocates of free trade consider as so inexplicable. A very clear principle has led to it, and will lead to it. It is the instinct of SELF-PRESERVATION.

But there is no steam-engine in agriculture. The old state has no superiority over the young one in the price of producing food; on the contrary, it is decidedly its inferior. There, as in love, the apprentice is the master. The proof of this is decisive. Poland can raise wheat with ease at fifteen or twenty shillings a quarter, while England requires fifty. The serf of the Ukraine would make a fortune on the price at which the farmer of Kent or East Lothian would be rendered bankrupt. The Polish cultivators have no objection whatever to a free competition with the British; but the British anticipate, and with reason, total destruction from the free admission of Polish grain. These facts are so notorious, that they require no illustration; but nevertheless the conclusion to which they point is of the highest importance, and bears, with overwhelming force, on the theory of free trade as between an old and a young community. They demonstrate that that theory is not only practically pernicious, but on principle erroneous. It involves an oblivion of the fundamental law of nature as to the difference between the effect of wealth and civilization on the production of food and the raising of manufactures. It proceeds on insensibility to the difference in the age and advancement of nations, and the impossibility of a reciprocity being established between them without the ruin of an important branch of industry in each. It supposes nations to be of the same genus and age, like the trees in the larch plantation, not of all varieties and ages, as in the natural forest. If established in complete operation, it would only lead to the ruin of the manufactures of the younger state, and of the agriculture of the old one. The only reciprocity which it can ever introduce between such states is the reciprocity of evil.

Illustrations from everyday life occur on all sides to elucidate the utter absurdity, and, in fact, total impracticapability of the system of free trade, as applied to nations who are, or are becoming, rivals of each other in manufacturing industry. Those who have the advantage, will always advocate free competition; those who are labouring under impediments, will always exclaim against them. In some cases the young have the advantage, in others the old; but in all the free system is applauded by those in the sunshine, and execrated by those in the shade. The fair debutante of eighteen, basking in the bright light of youth, beauty, birth, and connections, has no sort of objection to the freedom of choice in the ball-room. If the mature spinster of forty would divulge her real opinion, what would it be on the same scene of competition? Experience proves that she is glad to retire, in the general case, from the unequal struggle, and finds the system of established precedence and fixed rank at dinner parties, much more rational. The leaders on the North Circuit—Sir James Scarlett or Lord Brongham—have no objections to the free choice, by solicitors and attorneys, for professional talent; but their younger brethren of the gown are fain to take shelter from such formidable rivals in the exclusive employment of the Crown, the East India Company, the Bank of England, or some of the numerous chartered companies in the country. England is the old lawyer on the Cirucuit in manufactures—but Poland is the young beauty of the ball-room in agriculture. We should like to see what sort of reciprocity could be established between them. Possibly the young belle may exchange her beauty for the old lawyer's guineas, but it will prove a bad reciprocity for both.

It is usual for both philosophers and practical men to ascribe the superior cheapness with which subsistence can be raised in the young state to the old one, to the weight of taxes and of debt, public and private, with which the latter is burdened, from which the former is, in general, relieved. But, without disputing that these circumstances enter with considerable weight into the general result, it may safely be affirmed that the main cause of it is to be found in two laws of nature, of universal and permanent application. These are the low value of money in the rich state, in consequence of its plenty, compared with its high value in the poor one, in consequence of its poverty, and the experienced inapplicability of machinery or the division of labour to agricultural operations.

Labour is cheap in the poor state, such as Poland, Prussia, and the Ukraine, becuase guineas are few.—"It is not," as Johnson said of the Highlands, "that eggs are many, but that pence are few." Commercial transactions being scanty, and the want of a circulating medium inconsiderable, it exists to a very limited extent in the country. People do not need a large circulating medium, therefore they do not buy it; they are poor, therefore they cannot. In the opulent and highly advanced community, on the other hand, the reverse of all this takes place. Transactions are so frequent, the necessities of commerce so extensive, that a large circulating medium is soon felt to be indispensable. In addition to a considerable amount of specie, the aid of bank-notes, public and private, of Government securities and exchequer bills, and of private bills to an immense ammount, bcomes necessary. McCulloch calculates the circulating medium of Great Britain, including paper and gold, at L.72,000,000. The bills in circulation are probably in amount nearly as much more. A hundred and forty, or a hundred and fifty millions, between specie, bank-notes, exchequer bills, Government securities, on which advances are made, and private bills, constitute the ordinary circulating medium of twenty-seven millions in the British empire. The total circulation of Russia, with sixty millions of inhabitants, is not forty millions sterling. The effect of this difference is prodigions. It is no wonder, whten it is taken into account, that wages are 5-1/2d. or 6d. a-day in Poland or the Ukraine, and 2s. or 2s. 6d. a-day in England.

The clearest proof that this is the great cause of the superior cost of raising subsistence in the old than the young state, is afforded by the different value which money bears in different parts of the same community. Ask any housekeeper what is the difference between the expense of living in London, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen, and he will answer, that L.1500 a-year in Edingburgh, or L.750 in Aberdeen. Yet these different places are all situated in the same community, and their inhabitants pay the same public taxes, and very nearly the same of local ones. It is the vast results arising from the concentration of wealth and expediture in one place, compared with its abstraction from others, which occasions the difference. But if this effect is conspicuous, and matter of daily observation, in different parts of the same compact and moderately sized country, how much more must it obtain in regard to different countries, situated in different latitudes and politcal circumstances, and in different stages of wealth, civilization, and commercial opulence? Between England for example, and Poland or the Ukraine? The difference is there important and durable. Wheat can be raised with as good a profit to the cultivator for sixteen shillings per quarter in Poland, as for forty-eight shillings in England or Scotland.

This superior weight of wages, rent and all the elements of cost, in the old, when compared with the young community, affects the manufacturer as well as the farmer; and in some branches of manufactures it does so with an overwhelming effect. But, generally speaking, the advantages of capital, machinery, and the division of labour, render the old state altogether predominant over the young one in these particulars. It would seem to be a fixed law of nature, that the progress of society adds almost nothing to the application of machinery to agriculture, but indefinitely to its importance in manufactures. Observe an old man digging his garden with a spade—that is the most productive species of cultivation; it is the last stage of agricultural progress to return to it. No steam engines or steam ploughs will ever rival it. But what is the old weaver toiling with his hands, to the large steam-power mill, turning at once ten thousand spindles? As dust in the balance. Man, by a beneficent law of his Maker, is permanently secured in his first and best pursuit. It is in those which demoralize and degrade, that machinery progressively encroaches on the labour of his hands. England can undersell India in muslins and printed goods, manufactured in Lancashire or Lanarkshire, out of cotton which grew on the banks of the Ganges; for England though younger in years compared to India, is old in civilization, wealth, and power. We should like to see what profit would be made by exporting wheat from England, raised on land paying thirty shillings an acre of rent, by labourers paid at two shillings a-day, to Hindostan, where rice is raised twice a-year, on land paying five shillings an acre rent, by labourers receiving twopence a-day each.

It is the constant operation of this law of nature which ensures the equalization of empires, the happiness of society, and the dispersion of mankind. To be convinced of this, we have only to reflect on the results which would ensue if this were not the case; if no unvarying law gave man in remote situations an advantage in raising subsistence over what they enjoy in the centres of opulence; and agriculture, in the aged and wealthy community, was able to acquire the same decisive superiority over distant and comparatively poor ones, which we see daily examplified in the production of manufactures. Suppose, for example, that in consequence of the application of the steam-engine, capital, and machinery to the raising of subsistence, Great Britian could undersell the cultivatiors of Poland and the Ukraine as effectually as she does their manufacturers in the production of cotton goods; that she could sell in the Polish market wheat at five shillings a quarter, when they require fifteen shillings to remunerate the cost of production. Would not the result be, that commerce between them would be entirely destroyed; that subsistence would be exclusively raised in the old opulent community; that mankind would congregate in fearful multitudes round the great commercial emporium of the world; and that the industry and progress of the more distant nations would be irrevocably blighted? Whereas, by the operation of the present law of nature, that the rich state can always undersell the poor one in maufactures, and the poor one always undersell the rich one in subsistence, those dangers are removed, a check is provided to the undue multiplication of the species in particular situations, and the dispersion of mankind over the globe—a vital object in the system of nature—is secured, from the very necessities and difficulties in which, in the progress of society, the old and wealthy community becomes involved.

These considerations point out an important limitation to which, on principle, the doctrines of free trade must be subjected. Perfectly just in reference to a single community, or a compact empire of reasonable extent, they wholly fail when applied to separate nations in different degrees of civilization, or even to different provinces of the same empire, when it is of such an extent as to bring such different nations, in various degrees of progress, under one common dominion. They were suggested, in the first instance, to philosophers, by the absurd restrictions on the commerce of grain which existed in France under the old monarchy, and which Turgot and the Economists laboured so assiduously to abolish. There can be no doubt that they were perfectly right in doing so; for France is a compact, homogeneous country, in which the cost of producing subsistence is not materially different in one part from another, and the interests of the whole community are closely identified. The same holds with the interchange of grain between the different provinces of Spain, or for the various parts of the British islands. But the case is widely different with an empire so extensive as, like the British in modern or the Roman in ancient times, to embrace separate kingdoms, in wholly different circumstances of climate, progress, and social condition. Free trade, in such circumstances, must lead to a destruction of important interests, and a total subversion of the balance of society in both the kingdoms subjected to it. To be conviced of this, we have only to look at the present condition of the British, or the past fate of the Roman empire.

It is the boast of our manufacturers—and such a marvel may well afford a subject for exultation—that with cotton which grew on the banks of the Ganges, they can, by the aid of British capital, machinery, and enterprise, undersell, in the production of muslin and cotton goods, the native Indian manufacturers, who work up their fabrics in the close vicinity of the original cotton-fields. The constant and increasing export of Britsh goods to India, two-thirds of which are cotton, demonstrates that this superiority really exists; and that the muslin manufacturers in Hindostan, who work for 3d. a-day on their own cotton, cannot stand the competition of the British operatives, who receive 3s. 6d. a-day, aided as they are by the almost miraculous powers of the steam-engine. Free trade, therefore, is ruinous to the manufacturing interests of India; and accordingly the Parliamentary proceedings are filled with evidence of the extreme misery which has been brought on the native manufacturers of Hindostan by that free importation of British goods, in which our political economists so much and so fully exult.

The great distance of India from the British islands, the vast expense of transporting bulky articles eight thousand miles accross the ocean, have prevented the counterpart of this effect taking place; and the British farmers feeling the depressing influence of the Indian plough, in like manner as the Indian manufacturers have the ruinous competition of the British steam-engine. But it is clear that, if India had been nearer, the former effect would have taken place as well as the latter. If the shores of Hindostan were within a few days sail of London and Liverpool, and the Indian cultivators, labouring at 2d. or 3d. a-day, had been brought into direct competition with the British farmers, employing labourers who received two or three shillings, can there be a doubt that the British farmers would have been totally destroyed in the struggle? The English farmers would have been prostrated by the same cause which has ruined the Indian muslin manufacturers. Cheap grain, the fruit of free trade, would have demolished British agriculture as completely as cheap cotton goods, the fruits of unlimited importation, has ruined Indian manufacturing industry.

Is, then, commercial intercourse impossible, on terms of mutual benefit, between states in widely different circumstatnces of commercial or agricultural advancement; and is the only reciprocity which can exist between them and reciprocity of evil? It is by no means necessary to rest in so unsatisfatory a conclusion. A most advantageous commercial intercourse to both parties may be carried on, but it must not be on the footing of free trade. The foundation of such an intercourse should be, that each should take, on the most favourable terms, the articles which it wants and does not produce, and impose restrictions on those which it wants and does produce. On this priciple, trade would be conducted so as to benefit both countries, and injure neither. Thus England may take from India to the utmost extent, and with perfect safety, sugar, indigo, cotton, tea, spices, cinnamon, and the more costly species of shawls; while India might take from England some species of cotton manufacture in which they have no fabrics of their own, cutlery, hardware, and all of the various luxuries of European manufacture. But a paternal and just government, equally alive to the interests of all its provinces, how far removed soever from the seat of power, would impose restrictions to prevent India being deluged with British cottons, to the ruin of its native manufactures, and to prevent Britian—if the distance did not operate, which it certainly would, as a sufficient protection—from being flooded with Indian grain. The varieties of climate, productions, and wants, in different countries, are such, that commerce, regulated on these principles, might be carried to the greatest extent consistent with the paramount duty of providing in each state for the preservation of its staple articles of industry.

The Roman empire in ancient times afforded the clearest demonstration of the truth of these principles; and the fate of their vast dominion shows, in the most decisive manner, what is the inevitable consequence to which the free trade principles, now so strongly contended for by a party in this country, must lead. Alison is the first modern author with whom we are acquainted, who has traced the decline of the Roman empire in great part to this source. In the tenth volume of his "History of Europe," p. 752, we find the following passage:—

"No nation can pretend to independence which rests for any sensible protion of its subsistence in ordinary seasons on foreign, who may become hostile, nations. And if we would see a memorable example of the manner in which the greatest and most powerful nation may, in the course of ages, come to be paralysed by this cause, we have only to cast our eyes on imperial Rome, when the vast extent of the empire had practically established a free trade in grain with the whole civilized world; and the result was, that cultivation disappeared from the Italian plains, that the race of Roman agriculturists, the strength of the empire, became extinct, that the fields were laboured only by slaves and cattle. The legions could no longer be recruited but from foreign bands, vast tracts of pasturage overspread even the fields of Lombardy and the Compagna of Naples, and it was the plaintive confession of the Roman annalist, that the mistress of the world had come to depend for her subsistence on the floods of the Nile."

This observation has excited, as well it might, the vehement indignation of the free trade journals. The example of the greates and most powerful nation that ever existed being weakened, and at length ruined by a free trade in corn, afforded too cogent an argument, and was too striking a warning, not to excite the wrath of those who would precipitate Great Britain into a similar course of policy. They have attacked the author, accordingly, with unwonted asperity; and, while they admint the ruin of Italian agriculture in the later stages of the Roman empire, endeavour to ascribe it to the gratuitous distribution of grain to the Roman populace, not the effect of a free importation of grain from its Egyptian and African provinces. The vast importance of the subject has induced us to look into the original authorities to whom Alison refers in support of his observation, and from among them we select three—Tacitus, Gibbon, and Michelet. Tacitus says,

"At Hercule olim ex Itaila legionibus longinquas in provincias commeatus portabantur, nec nunc infecunditate laboratur; sed Africam potius et Egyptum exercemus, navibusque et casibus vita populi Romani permissa est."—TACITUS, Annal. xii. 43.

Antiquity does not contain a more pregnant and important passage, or one more directly bearing on the present policy of the Britsh emprire, than this. It demonstrates: 1, That in former times Italy had been an exporting country: "olim ex Italia commeatus in longinquas provincias portabantur." 2, That at the time when Tacitus wrote, in the days of the Emperor Trajan, it had ceased to be so, and had come to import largely from Africa and Lybia, "sed nunc Africam potius et Egyptum exercemus." 3, That this was not the result of any supervening sterility or unfruitfulness, "nec nunc infecunditate laboratur," but was from causes which made it more profitable to purchase grain in the Egyptian or Lybian markets, "sed Africam POTIUS et Egyptum exercemus."

Of the extent to which this decay of agriculture in the central provinces of the Roman empire went, in the latter stages of its history, we have the following striking account in the authentic pages of Gibbon:—

"Since the age of Tiberius the decay of agriculture had been felt in Italy; and it was a just subject of complaint that the life of the Roman people depended on the accidents of the winds and the waves. In the division and decline of the empire, the tributary harvests of Egypt and Africa were withdrawn; the numbers of the inhabitants continually diminished with the means of subsistence; and the country was exhausted by the irretrievable losses of war, pestilence, and famine. Pope Gelasius was a subject of Odoacer, and he affirms, with strong exaggeration, that, in Emilia, Tuscany, and the adjacent provinces, the human species was almost extirpated."—GIBBON, vol. vi. c. xxxvi. p. 235.

Of the progress and extent of this decay, Gibbon gives the following account in another part of his great work:—

"The agriculture of the Roman provinces was insensibly ruined; and in the progress of despotism, which tends to disappoint its own purpose, the emperors were obliged to derive some merit from the forgiveness of debts, or the remission of tributes, which their subjects were utterly incapable of paying. According to the new division of Italy, the fertile and happy province of Campania, the scene of the early victories and of the delicious retirements of the citizens of Rome, extended between the sea and the Apennines, from the Tiber to the Silarius. Within sixty years after the death of Constantine, and on the evidence of an actual survey, an exemption was granted in favour of 330,000 English acres of desert and uncultivated land, which amounted to one-eighth of the whole surface of the province. As the footsteps of the barbarians had not yet been seen in Italy, the cause of this amazing desolation, which is recorded in the laws, (Cod. Theod. lxi. t. 38, l. 2,) can be ascribed only to the administration of the Roman emperors."—GIBBON, vol. iii. c. xviii. p. 87. Edition in 12 volumes.

Michelet observes, in his late profound and able History of France—

"The Christian emperors could not remedy the growing depopulation of the country any more than their heathen predecessors. All their efforts only showed the impotence of government to arrest that dreadful evil. Sometimes, alarmed at the depopulation, they tried to mitigate the lot of the farmer, to shield him against the landlord; upon this the proprietor exclaimed he could no longer pay the taxes. At other times they abandoned the farmer, surrendered him to the landlord, and strove to chain him to the soil; but the unhappy cultivators perished or fled, and the land became deserted. Even in the time of Augustus, efforts were made to arrest the depopulation at the expense of morals, by encouraging concubinage. Pertinax granted an immunity from taxes to those who could occupy the desert lands of Italy, to the cultivators of the distant provinces, and the allied kings. Aurelian did the same. Probus was obliged to transport from Germany men and oxen to cultivate Gaul.[13] Maximian and Constantius transported the Franks and Germans from Picardy and Hainault into Italy: but the depopulation in the towns and the country alike continued. The people surrendered themselves in the fields to despair, as a beast of burden lies down beneath his load and refuses to rise. In vain the emperor strove, by offers of immunities and exemptions, to recall the cultivator to his deserted fields. Nothing could do so. The desert extended daily. At the commencement of the fifth century there was, in the happy Campania, the most fertile province of the empire, 520,000 jugera in a state of nature."—MICHELET, Histoire de France, i. 104-108.

[13] "Arantur Gallicana rura barbaris bobus, et juga Germanica captiva praebent colla nostris cultoribus."—Probi Epist. ad Senatum in Vopesio.

Pursued to its very grave by the same deep-rooted cause of evil, the strength of Italy, even in the last stages of its decay, was still prostrated by the importation of grain from Egypt and Lybia. "The Campagna of Rome," says Gibbon, "about the close of the sixth century, was reduced to the state of a dreary wilderness, in which the land was barren, the waters impure, and the air infectious. Yet the number of citizens still exceeded the measure of subsistence; their precarious food was supplied from the harvests of Egypt and Lybia; and the frequent repetitions of famine betray the inattention of the emperors to a distant provice."—GIBBON, vil. viii. c. xlv. 162.

Nor was this desolating scourge of foreign importation confined to Italy; it obtained also in Greece equally with the Ausonian fields, the abode of early riches, opulence, and prosperity. "In the later stages of the empire," says Michelet, "Greece was almost entirely supported by corn raised in the fields of Podolia," (Poland.)—MICHELET, i. 277.

Now let it be recollected that this continual and astonishing decline of agriculture, and disappearance of the rural cultivators in the latter stages of the Roman empire, took place in an empire which contained, as Gibbon tells us, 120,000,000 of inhabitants, and 1600 great cities, was 3000 miles long and 2000 miles broad, contained 1,600,000 square miles, chiefly fertile and well cultivated land, which embraced the fairest and most fertile portions of the earth, and which had been governed for eighty yers under the successive sway of Nerva, Adrian, Trajan, and the two Antonines, with consummate wisdon and the most paternal spirit.[14] The scourge of foreign war, the devastation of foreign armies, were alike unknown; profound tranquillity pervaded every part of the empire; and a vast inland lake, spreading its ample waters through the heart of the dominion, afforded to all its provinces the most perfect facility of intercourse with the metropolis and the central parts of the empire. Yet this period—the period which Mr Hume has told us the philosophers would select as the happiest the human race had ever known—was precisely that during which agriculture so rapidly declined in the Italian and Grecian fields, during which the sturdy race of free cultivators disappeared, and the plains of Italy were entirely absorbed by pasturage, and maintained only vast herds of cattle tended by slaves.

[14] "Quingena viginti octo millia quadringinta duo jugera, quae Campania provincia, juxta inspectorum relationem, in desertis et squalidis locis habero dignoscitur, iisdem provincialibus concessum."—Cod. Theod. lxi. i. 2382.

What was it, then, which in an empire containing so immense a population, and such boundless resources, drawn forth and developed under so wise and beneficent a race of emperors, occasioned this constant and uninterrupted decay of agriculture, and at length the total destruction of the rural population in the heart of the empire? How did it happen that Italian cultivation receded, as Tacitus and Gibbon tell us it did, from the time of Tiberius; and equally under the wisdom of the Antonines, as the tyranny of Nero, or the civil wars of Vitellius? Some general and durable cause must have been in operation during all this period, which at firest depressed, and at length totally destroyed, the numerous body of free Italian cultivators who so long had constituted the strength of the legions, and had borne the Roman eagles, conquering and to conquer, to the very extremities of the habitable earth. The cause is apparent. It was the free importation of Egyptian and Lybian grain, consequent on the extension of the Roman dominion over their fertile fields, which effected the result. Were England to extend its conquering arms over Poland and the Ukraine, and, as a necessary consequence, expose the British farmer to the unrestrained competition of Polish and Russian wheat, precisely the same result would ensue. If the shores of Hindostan were within three or four days' sail of the Tiber, this result would long ago have taken place. Let Polish and Russian grain be admitted without a protecting duty into the British harbours, as Lybian and Egyptian were into those of Italy, and we shall soon see the race of cultivators disappear from the fields of England as they did from those of old Rome, and the words of Tacitus will, by a mere change of proper names, become a picture of our condition; three hundred thousand acres will soon be reduced to a state of nature in Kent and Norfolk, as they were in the Campania Felix. "Nec nunc infecunditate laboramur, Podoliam potius et Scythiam exercemus, navibusque et casibus vita populi Anglici permissa est."

The free traders allege that the decay of agriculture in the central provinces of the Roman empire, to which, by the concurring testimony of all historians, the ruin of the dominion of the Caesars was chiefly owing, is to be ascribed, not to the free importation of grain from Egypt, Podolia, and Lybia, but to the tyranny of the emperors, the gratuitous distribution of grain to the Roman populace, and the dreadful evils of domestic slavery. A very slight consideration, however, must be sufficient to show that these causes, how powerful soever in producing general evils over the empire, could not have been instrumental in occasioning those peculiar and separate causes of depression, which so early began to check, and at length totally destroyed, the agriculture of its central provinces.

The tyranny of the Caesars, the oppression of the Proconsuls, the avarice of the Patricians, were general evils, affecting alike every part of the empire; or rather they were felt with more severity in the remote provinces than the districts nearer home, in consequence of the superior opportunities of escape which distance from the central government afforded to iniquity, and the lesser chance of success which the insurrection of a remote province held forth to the "wild revenge" of rebellion. Muscovite oppression, accordingly, is more severely felt at Odessa or Taganrog than St Petersburg; and British rule is far from being restrained by the same considerations of justice on the banks of the Ganges or the Indus, as on those of the Thames. The gratuitous distribution of grain by the emperors to the populace of Rome, could never have occasioned the ruin of the Italian cultivators. Supposing that the two or three hundred thousand lazy and turbulent plebeians, who were nourished by the bounty or fed by the terrors of the Caesars, were the most useless, worthless, and dangerous set of men that ever existed, (which they probably were,) that circumstance could never have uprooted the race of cultivators from the plains of Lombardy, Umbria, or the Campania Felix. The greatest possible good to a nation, according to the free trader, is cheap grain, and never more so than when it is purchased or imported from foreign growers. If this be true, the importation of the harvests of Egypt and Africa into the Italian harbours, either by the voluntary purchase of the Roman emperors, or the forced tribute in grain which they exacted from those provinces, must have been the greatest possible benefit to the Italian people. How then, if there be no mischief in such foreign importations, is it possible to ascribe the ruin of Italian cultivation, and with it of the Roman empire, to these forced contributions? If the free traders have recourse to such an argument, they concede the very point in dispute, and admit that the introduction of foreign grain is injurious, and may in the end prove fatal, to the agriculture and existence of a state.

Slavery, though a great evil, will as little explain the peculiar and extraordinary decline of Italian and Grecian cultivation in the later stages of the Roman empire. The greater part of the labour of the ancient world, as every one knows, was conducted by means of slaves. They were slaves who held the plough, and tilled the land, and tended the flocks, equally in Lybia, in Campania, in Egypt, as in Umbria. Nay, the number of freemen, at least in the days of the Roman Republic, and the earlier periods of the empire, was incomparably greater in Italy and Greece, the abode of celebrated, powerful, and immortal republics, than in Lybia and Egypt, which from the earliest times had been subject to the despotic sway of satraps, kings, and tyrants. So numerous were the free citizens of Rome in the early days of the empire, that, by the census of Claudius, we are told by Gibbon they amounted to 6,945,000 men,[15] the greater proportion of whom, of course, were residents in Italy, the seat of government, and the centre of wealth, power, and enjoyment. While so great was the multitude of free citizens which the Republic bequeathed to the empire, resident and exercising unfettered industry in Italy, the cultivators of Africa and Egypt were all serfs and slaves, toiling, like the West Indian negroes, beneath the lash of a master. How, then, did it happen that the labour of the Italian freeman was disused, and at length extinguished, while that of the African and Egyptian slaves continued to furnish grain for Italy down to the very latest period of the empire? We are told that the labour of freemen is cheaper than that of slaves; and the free traders will probably not dispute that proposition. It could not, therefore, have been the slavery of antiquity which ruined Italian agriculture, carried on, in part at least, by freemen; since African agriculture, the fruits entirely of slavery, continued to flourish down to the very last days of the Roman world.

[15] GIBBON, chap. i. 68.

The severe taxation of the emperors is justly stated by Gibbon and Sismondi, as well as Michelet, as a principal cause of the decline of Italian agriculture: but very little consideration is required to show, that this cause is inadequate to explain this ruin of cultivation in the Italian plains, when it continued to flourish and maintain the chief cities of the empire with food, in Egypt and Lybia. Heavy as it was, and oppressive as it ultimately became, it was equal; it was the same every where; it might, therefore, satisfactorily explain the general decline of rural industry through the empire, and doubtless had a large share in contributing to its downfall; but it cannot explain the particular ruin of it, in the central provinces of this vast dominion, while it continued, down to the very last moment, to flourish in its remote dependencies.

But the taxation of the empire, when coupled with the free importation of grain from these distant dependencies, does afford a most satisfactory, and, in truth, the true explanation of the ruin of Italian and Grecian cultivation. It was a fixed principle of Roman taxation, that the duties allotted on a particular district should remain fixed, how much lower the inhabitants or industry of the province might decline. When, therefore, by the constant importation of Egyptian and African grain, raised at half the cost at which they could produce it, the Italian cultivators were deprived of a remunerating return, and the taxes exacted from each district underwent no diminution, it is not surprising that the small farmers and proprietors were ruined; that they took refuge in the industry and crowds of cities, and that the race of freemen disappeared from the country. A similar process is now going on in the Turkish provinces. But without undervaluing—on the contrary, attaching full weight to this circumstance—nothing can be clearer than that it was the ruinous competition of foreign grain, raised cheaper than they could produce it, which rendered the same taxation crushing on the Italian farmers, which was borne with comparative facility in the remoter provinces, where land was more fertile, and labour less expensive. An example, a fortiori, applied to the British empire, where the free traders wish us to admit a free importation of grain from Poland and the Ukraine, where not only is labour cheap but taxation trifling, into the British islands, where not only is labour dear but taxation is five times more burdensome.

And for a decisive proof that it was the superior advantages which Egypt and Lybia enjoyed in the production of grain, and not any other causes, which occasioned the ruin of Italian agriculture, and with it the fall of the Roman empire, we have only to look to the condition of the Italian fields in the last stages of the government of the Caesars. Already, in the time of the elder Pliny, it had become a subject of complaint that the great properties were ruining Italy[16]—a sure proof, when the great division of estates in the days of the Republic—when, literally speaking, "every rood had its man"—that some general and irresistible cause, affecting the remuneration of their industry, was exterminating the small proprietors. Erelong, cultivators ceased entirely in the country, and the huge estates of the nobles were cultivated exclusively in pasturage, and by means of slaves. "La classe," says Michelet, "des petits cultivateurs peu a pee a disparu; les grands proprietaires qui leur succederent y suppleerent par des esclaves."[17] It is recorded by Ammianus Marcellinus, that when Rome was taken by the Goths, it contained 1,200,000 inhabitants, and was mainly supported by 1780 great families, who cultivated their ample estates in Italy in pasturage, by means of slaves.[18] For centuries before, the threat of blockading the Tiber had been found to be the most effectual way of coercing the Roman populace; and whenever it took place, famine ensued, not only in Rome, but the Italian provinces. The diminution of its agricultural produce had, long before, been stated by Columella at nine-tenths, and by Varro at three-fourths, of what at one period had been raised. Yet such was the wealth of the Roman nobles, derived from pasturage, that some of them had L.160, 000 a-year.[19] Agriculture, therefore, was destroyed; grain was no longer raised in Italy; Rome was wholly dependent on foreign supplies—but pasturage was undecayed; and colossal fortunes were enjoyed by a wealthy race of great proprietors, who managed their vast estates by means of slaves, and had bought up and absorbed the properties of the whole free cultivators in the country. Such was the effect—such was the result—of a free trade in grain in ancient times.

[16] "Verumque confitentibus latifundia perdidere Italiam."—PLINY, Hist. Nat.xviii. 7.

[17] MICHELET, i. 96.

[18] AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS, c. xvi.—See also GIBBON, vi. 264.

[19] GIBBON, vi. 262.

The free traders seem not insensible to these inevitable results of their favourite principles; but they meet them by describing such consequences as rather advantageous than injurious. If England, say they, can raise iron and cotton goods cheaper than Poland, and Poland and Russia grain cheaper than England, then the interest of each require that they should follow out these branches of industry, and it is impolitic to strive against it. Let, then, England admit foreign grain on a nominal duty, and this will in the end induce Russia and Prussia to admit English manufactured goods on equally favourable terms; and thus the real interests of both countries will in the end be promoted.

There are two objections to this system. In the first place, it is impracticable if it were expedient. In the second, it is inexpedient if it were practicable.

It is impracticable if it were expedient. Theoretical writers may coolly discuss in their closets the total destruction of various important branches of industry, the "absorption" of the persons engaged in them in other pursuits, and the transference of national capital and industry from agriculture to manufactures, and vice versa; but it is impossible to effect such changes by the voluntary act of government, even in the most despotic country. We say by the voluntary act of government; because there is no doubt that it may be effected, though at an enormous sacrifice of life, wealth, and happiness, by the silent and unobserved operation of the laws of nature, which are irresistible; as was the case with the transference of industry from agriculture to pasturage, under the effect of free trade in grain in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, in the later stages of the Roman empire; or from manufactures to agriculture, from the consequences of the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope in the Italian republics in modern times. But no government, not even that of the Czar Peter or Sultaun Mahmoud, could succeed in destroying or nipping in the bud brances of national industry, by simple acts of the legislature or sovereign authority, not imposed by external and irresistible authority. The Emperor Paul tried it, and got a sash twisted about his neck, according to the established fashion of that country, for his pains. The Whigs tried it, and were turned out of office in consequence. All the governments of Europe, despotic, constitutional, and democratic, meet our concessions, in favour of free trade, by increased protection to their manufacturers. They dare not destroy their rising commercial wealth any more than we dare destroy our old colossal agricultural investments. The republicans of America even exceed them in the race of tariffs and protection. Sixty-two per cent has lately been laid on our British iron goods in return for Sir Robert Peel's tariff; a similar duty on iron and cotton goods, it is well known, is contemplated in the Prussian leagues in Germany. The British government has at length, through its prime minister, spoken out firmly in support of the existing corn-laws. The feeling of the agricultural counties, as evinced at the late meetings, left them no alternative. All nations, under all varieties of government, situation, race, and political circumstances, concur in rising up to resist the doctrines of free trade. Necessity has enlightened, experience has taught them: a very clear motive urges them on, which is not likely to decline in strength with the progress of time—it is the instinct of self-preservation.

Such a system as the free traders advocate, if practicable, would be to the last degree inexpedient.

What would be the result? Why, that one country would become wholly, or in great part, agricultural, and the other wholly, or in great part, manufacturing. Is this a result desirable to either? Admitting that a city or small state, which has no territory which can furnish any considerable proportion of the subsistence which it requires, like Holland, may do well to attend exclusively to manufactures and commerce; or a country which, by the rigour of nature, or the remoteness of its situation, cannot attain to commercial or manufacturing greatness, would do well to attend exclusively to the cultivation or productions of the earth; the question which here occurs—Is such a system advisable or expedient for a nation which has received from the bounty of nature the means of rising to greatness in both—such as Great Britain, Russia, or Prussia? The free traders would have England sacrifice its agriculture to its manufactures, and Russia sacrifice its manufactures to its agriculture. Would such a system benefit either? Would England be happier or richer, more stable or more moral, if the already colossal amount of its manufactures were trebled; or Russia, if its rising iron and woolen fabrics were destroyed, and its industry confined exclusively to the slow return of agricultural labour? Is it desirable that the zone of tall chimneys, sickly faces, brick houses, and crowded jails, which at present spans across the whole of England and part of Scotland, should be doubled and trebled in breadth; and the fertile fields of Kent, Norfolk, and East Lothian, be reduced to vast unenclosed pastures, such as overspread Italy in the later stages of the Roman empire? Or is it desirable to Russia and Prussia that they should be for ever chained to the labour of boors, serfs, and shepherds, and all the vivifying and unimportant effects of commercial wealth be denied to their exertions? Nature has designed, experience recommends, a very different system. History tells us in all parts of the world, that it is in the intermixture of commerce and agriculture that the best security is to be found for social happiness and advancement, and the most effectual antidote provided to the evils with which either, when existing alone, is so prone. Mr McCulloch has told us, that the commerce and manufactures of Great Britain have now risen to such a prodigious height, that any further extension of them is undesirable, and that no real patriot would have desired them to have become so extensive as they already are. Is it desirable, in such a state of matters, to go on increasing the same splendid but perilous system, and to do so at the expense of the great pillar of national wealth, security, and independence—the land of the state?

Further, the proposed system is pernicious even with reference to the national wealth and interests of the manufacturers themselves, as tending to undermine the main branches of our national resources, and substitute encouragement to an inferior, to upholding of the superior market for our manufacturing industry.

Although in the meetings where they address the agricultural constituencies, the free traders hold out that their measures would benefit the manufacturers, and not injure the agriculturists; yet nothing can be clearer than that this is a mere shallow pretext, put forth to conceal their real objects and the effect of their measures, and that the result they really anticipate is as different from that as the poles are asunder. What is the benefit they hold out to the community as an inducement to go into their measures? Cheap grain. What is the motive which stimulates all their efforts, and which, among themselves and in private conversation with all men of sense, they at once admit is their ruling object? Reduced wages; the hope of extending our export in foreign countries by taking an additional quantity of their rude produce; and diminishing the cost of production to our manufacturers by lowering the price of food, and with it the wages of labour. The whole strength of their case rests in these propositions. Their influence over the urban multitudes arises solely from the continual reiteration of these alluring hopes. If these effects are not to follow free trade and the efforts of the League, in the name of Heaven, what good are they to do, and why do they agitate the country and subscribe to the League fund? Sensible men do not throw away L100,000 for nothing, for no benefit to themselves or others. But these prospects are as fallacious as they are alluring, and so a very few observations will demonstrate.

Considered in a national point of view, if the matter is brought to this issue, the great question is—Whether agriculture or manufactures are the superior interests in the production of national wealth. Admitting that the true policy for government is to protect all the branches of national industry, and stoutly contending, as we do, and ever shall do, that the real and ultimate interests of all is the same, and cannot be separated—the question comes to be, if one fiercely demands the sacrifice of the other, and insists that its interests are so weighty and momentous that all others must be sacrificed to them, which of the two thus placed in jeopardy is the most momentous? which brings in most to the national treasury? Now, on this point the facts are as adverse to the arguments of the League, as on all other branches of their case.

Take the sum total of manufactures in Great Britain and Ireland, accompanied with the sum total of agricultural production, in order to discover which of the two is the more valuable interest—in order that it may be discovered, if matters are brought to that issue that one or other must be abandoned, which is to be sacrificed. The choice of a wise government could not be doubtful, if it were necessary to make the selection. The agricultural productions of the British islands amount to L.300,000,000 a-year, while the sum total of manufactures of every description is only L.180,000,000. Nor can it be said, with any degree of truth, that the agriculture of the country is dependent for its existence on its manufactures, and would decline if they were materially injured; for the example of modern Italy and Flanders proves, that three centuries after a country has ceased to be the chief in manufacturing or commercial industry, it may advance with undiminished vigour and success in the production of agricultural riches.

But this is not all. The statistical documents which have now been prepared with so much care by Parliament, and published by the accurate and indefatigable Mr Porter, himself a decided free trader, demonstrate that, of the manufacturing productions, nearly three-fourths are taken off by the home market, and four-fifths by the home and colonial market taken together, leaving only ONE-FIFTH for the whole foreign markets of the world put together—

"The total amount of British manufactures annually produced is about L180,000,000 worth, of which only L47,000,000 is taken off by the whole external trade of the world put together, while no less than L133,000, 000 is consumed in the home market; and of the foreign consumption, fully a third is absorbed by the British Colonies, in different parts of the world. So that the home and colonial trade is to the whole foreign put together as 5 to 1. And, whle the total produce of manufactures is L180,000,000 annually, and of mines and minerals L13,776,000, the amount of agricultural produce annually extracted from the soil is not less than L300,000,000; or a half more than the whole manufactures and mines put together."

Further, if we compare the proportion purchased of our manufactures, which is taken off by foreign nations, for the export to whom we are required to make the sacrifice of our domestic agriculture, with what is consumed by our own native population, whether in the British islands or in our colonies of British descent, the difference is prodigious, and such as might well, even for their own sake, make the Anti-corn-law League pause in their career of violence. From the tables compiled from Porter's Parliamentary Tables, and the population of the different states to whom we export, taken from Malte Brun and Balbi, it appears, that while the British population, whether at home or abroad, consume from L3 to L5 a-head worth of our manufactures, the foreign nations to whom we are willing to sacrifice the British agriculturists, take off per head ONLY AS MANY PENCE. In preferring the one to the other, therefore, we are, literally speaking, penny wise and pound foolish.

We have shown how agriculture was ruined in the Roman empire in Italy, by the free importation of grain from the Lybian and Egyptian provinces of the empire. As a contrast to that woful progress, the main cause of the destruction of the empire of the Caesars, we request the attention of our readers to the progress of British exports in official value, which indicates their amount from 1790 to 1840, premising that the whole of that period was one of protection to the British agriculturist; during the first twenty years of the period, by the effects of the war—during the last twenty-five, by the operation of the corn law and sliding scale, introduced in 1814. We recommend the advocates of free trade to search the annals of the world for a similar instance of progress and prosperity flowing from, or co-existent with, the practical adoption of their principles.

These facts, which, in truth, are altogether decisive of the present question, point to the great source from which the errors of the free trade party are derived, and which appears, in an especial manner, their favourite position, that cheap prices is an unmitigated blessing, and that the great thing to attend to is to increase our imports. Cheap prices of grain are like the Amreeta cap in Kehama; the greatest of all blessings is the greatest of all curses, according as they arise from magnitude of domestic production, or magnitude of foreign importation. Of the first we had an example during the five fine years in succession, from 1830 to 1835, during which the foreign importation was practically abolished by the abundant harvests, and consequent high duty on grain under the sliding scale. This was a period, as all the world knows, of universal and unexampled commercial prosperity. Of the second we had a memorable example during the five bad years in succession, which elapsed fiom 1836 to 1840, in the course of which the corn laws, from the effect of the same sliding scale, and the continued low prices, were practically abolished; and importations, at the close of the period, amounted to 2,500,000 quarters, and, on an average of the whole, was little short of 2,000,000 of quarters. And what was the result? The exportation of 6,000,000 of sovereigns in a single year to buy grain; an unexampled pressure on the money market; commercial embarrassments, long-continued, and severe beyond all former precedent; the contraction of ten millions of additional debt in four years, and the creation of a deficit which at length rose to the formidable amount, in 1842, of L.4,000,000 sterling! And what first dispelled this distress, and arrested this downward and disastrous progress? The fine harvests of 1842—the blessed sun of its long summer, followed by the more checkered, but also fine summer of 1843, which again gave us plenty, derived from domestic production, and consequent general and increasing manufacturing as well as rural prosperity.

It is in vain, therefore, to say, cheap prices are a blessing in themselves, and the consumers at least are ever benefited by a fall in the cost of grain. Cheap prices are a real blessing if that effect consists with prosperity to the producer, as by improved methods of cultivation or manufacture, or the benignity of nature in giving fine seasons. But cheap prices are the greatest of all evils, and to none more shall the consumers, if they are the result, not of the magnitude of domestic production, but of the magnitude of foreign importation. It was that sort of cheap prices which ruined the Roman empire, from the destruction of the agriculture of Italy; it is that sort of cheap prices which has ruined the Indian weavers, from the disastrous competition of the British steam-engine; it is that sort of low prices which has so grievously depressed British shipping, from the disastrous competition of the Baltic vessels under the reciprocity system. It is in vain for the consumers to say, we will separate our case from that of the producers, and care not, so as we get low prices, what comes of them. Where will the consumers be, and that erelong, if the producers are destroyed? What will be the condition of the landlords if their farmers are ruined? or of bondholders if their debtors are bankrupt? or of railway proprietors if traffic ceases? or of owners of bank stock if bills are no longer presented for discount? or of the 3 per cents if Government, by the failure of the productive industry of the country, is rendered bankrupt? The consumers all rest on the producers, and must sink or swim with them.

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Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work.

THE END