PROTECTIONIST FORECASTS. [To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—We are
frequently told that some of the forecasts of Cobden have not been verified. The fact remains that the balance of ill, as compared with the balance of good, which resulted from the changes he was instrumental in bringing about is merely as dust in the scales. The Protectionist leader, Lord George Bentinck, was very certain of the evils which would follow in the train of Free-trade, and indeed invented the phrase "the balance of imperial ruin" in con- nection therewith. In Disraeli's " Lord George Bentinck : a Political Biography" (1852) a letter from the Protectionist
leader is quoted, dated November 11th, 1847, in which he says :—
" Canada's time' too must be near at hand. Her flour trade superseded by that of New York, and her timber beaten down in price by that of the Baltic, she will be placed in very much the same position with the Mauritius and Dominica. I always expected the sugar-planting colonies would fall first, and I placed the British Canadas second, the recoil of their ruin falling upon Manchester and the West Riding of Yorkshire. I scarcely expected that the manufacturing interests would take precedence in the march of ruin of the British colonies and British agricul- ture. This last has been saved for a time by the potato failure in Ireland. A couple of years more of favourable harvests over the world will bring the English corn grower into the condition of the British sugar planter. Then will follow the diminished home consumption of British manufactures in the track of colonial export. And then will come such a state of things as every man who loves England may well shudder to think of."
Two months later he wrote to a friend saying :—
" Free trade will break down and protection eventually triumph through the sugar duties. Pray give your mind a little to this subject, and let us be prepared for all corners and rouse the country. Recollect, however, that we cannot deny that in the first instance the revenue has gained £400,000, and that the con- sumers have saved nearly two millions and a half in the price of their sugar ; but with all this the balance of imperial ruin is so great as to be intolerable."
44 Park Mansions, Albert Gate, S.W.
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