THE FREE-TRADE QUESTION IN FRANCE.*
IT would be impossible at the present day for an English writer to engage the attention of the English public by a work on free- trade, still less by a volume of speeches on the subject. For the latter, indeed, there is now scarcely ever an occasion ; but even before the Free-Trade battle was decided amongst us, how few were the politicians whose speeches deserved collecting? Yet it is possible for the English reader to peruse this volume of M. Simon's speeches on the subject not only with interest, but occa- sionally with real pleasure. This is owing not only to the*fact that the struggle is still being keenly fought across the Channel —although in some measure complicated with the still vaster one between Emperor and people, in consequence of free-trade having been, in fact, imposed upon the nation by a sort of commercial coup d'elat, so that it is half an offence against the popular sovereignty to support it—but also to that marvellous neatness of intellectual workmanship of which French writers have almost alone at the present day the secret, and which invests at their * Le Libre-Exchange. Par Jules Simon. Paris : Librairie Internationale. Brussels, Sc., Lacroix, Verboeckhoven, et Cie. 1870. hands even common-place with a true artistic value. Not, indeed, that M. Simon's volume owes its merit to generic qualities only. His training as a professor has given him a familiarity with classical models, which has clothed the results of his subsequent researches into the most practical questions of social life with a grace of form and style seldom to be found in works treating of such subjects. Add to this a full dose of French esprit, and the experience of a brilliant causeur in Parisian salons, and you will have sufficient elements to account for the worth of the present volume as a study for Englishmen.
The four speeches which it comprises were all delivered in the course of the last two years,—at the first meeting of the Free- Trade Society of Bordeaux, November 25, 1869, at a free-trade meeting in Paris, February 6, 1870, in the Legislative Body, on the discussion of certain interpellations on commercial questions, February 19 and 20, 1870, and again on that of interpellations on the subject of the commerc- 'navy, February 4, 1870. The main purpose of three at least oifof the four is the maintenance of the commercial treaty with E land, and having reference to what has been said above, as t the circumstances under which it was made, it is curious to o rve how M. Simon is compelled by subtle distinctions to apolbgize, as it were, for being a free-trader, whilst the Emperor is one too. He feels bound on every occasion to denounce the unexpected suddenness with which the treaty was concluded, the disturbance thereby produced in the business of the country, the act of the "personal power stretching its hand even over private interests." There were "two things," he says elsewhere, "in the treaty,—the way in which it had been done, and what it contained " ; or again, "I approved the tariffs, and I disapproved the right of making tariffs." At the same time, his position as a representative of the Gironde, the centre of the great wine-growing interest, after having been that of Bercy, the centre of the wine-selling interest, gives him, it must be admitted, peculiar aplomb in combining the character of a free-trader with that of a member of the advanced Opposition. For France is, after all, mainly an agricultural country, and the culture of the vine is her choicest staple labour. In seventy-nine departments the vine is cultivated, in sixty-nine it is preferred to any other growth, and M. Simon declares that in one department, the Herault, he has himself witnessed the disappearance of the last plots of land devoted to the culture of cereals. Bordeaux, on the other hand, is the largest city whose interests are mainly bound up with this great French interest, and the one which for many years now has taken the lead in the demand for a free-trade policy.
Some of M. Simon's arguments will indeed appear out of date to most English free-traders. He takes pains to show, for instance, how France exports to England more than she imports from her, and exports to England manufactured goods in a larger proportion than she receives such from her,—scarcely able apparently himself, or deeming his hearers unable, to see in imports themselves, i.e., in the powers of consumption of a nation, any evidence of national prosperity. More remarkable are his figures as to the increased production in France of coal, cast iron, and textile fabrics, even those of cotton, since the reduction of duties by the treaty. Admitting, at the same time, the gravity of the late commercial crisis in France, he assigns to it a variety of causes other than free-trade,—insufficiency of public works, too high tariffs for inland water and railway carriage, sometimes so fixed as to give a positive premium to the foreign over the French manufacturer (as when a bale of cotton sent from Havre to Bale has to pay 64f. 50c., but if it stops short at Mulhouse 3f. 15c. more) ; too short credits ; the French succession laws, which tend, he maintains, to break up perpetually French houses of business ; high taxation, a too numerous army, a bad consular organization, the octroi, not to speak of incidental causes, such as the American struggle, the cattle-plague, the silkworm disease, or again, as respects iron, the Bessemer process.
"But what is the use of talking sense to an interest? Tell a ruined manufacturer that it is the progress of science which ruins him. He is capable of replying to you that you are a philosopher! Tell him that the American war suppressed cotton, and that cotton tissues cannot be made without cotton; he will say that you are a philosopher, that you cannot see the practical side of things. Tell him that Australia and the Plate have deluged our markets with their wools. You are but an ignorant philosopher. Reckon for him, if you choose, the number of bales,—ignorant still. Take the documents of the Custom House,—you are ignorant, and more than ignorant, a dupe, since you are naif enough to believe the declarations of the French administration. Bring English statistics in lieu of our own. It matters not ; on both sides of the Chan- nel there is a conspiracy to dissemble the truth. It is the treaty which is the cause of all ; it, and it alone. The cause of the absence of cotton and of the abundance of wool ; the CUM of the silkworm disease, the cattle plague, the scarcity of corn. It would be the cause of the vine disease, were it to reappear. It is the treaty, and not Count von Bismarck, which defeated Austria at Sadowa. It is the treaty which has inspired the Sovereigns of Europe with this mania of endless armaments, which devours on all sides so many millions of money. And the droll thing, or rather the sad one, is that English Protectionists close up their ears like our own, call to their aid the same reasonings, assert their ruin, treat as rubbish all the causes, unfortunately but too real, which are assigned to them for it, lay all upon the treaty, and claim its repeal."
M. Jules Simon appears never to better advantage than when he tries to raise his audience above mere figures and isolated facts. We group together a few passages, not immediately consecutive, but which really hang on the same thread of thought :— "These battles of figures are like fights with snow-balls ; the pro- jectiles fall thick from all sides; one would think it was artillery ; two
minutes after, all is melted There is a whole class of men, extremely numerous so numerous that they form almost the total of the human race, who when they have hold of one fact imagine that with this fact they will be able to crush principles. But were they a million, before me, ten millions, a hundred millions, I should be there to say that what makes truth, what makes strength, is not a fact, nor even the ensemble of facts, but a doctrine, a reason, a principle How many have we seen of those facts which were to have crushed us, stand- ing up in serried battalions, marching to tho storm of human reason, borne and supported by all the practical men, all the wise men, all the men of experience, having against them but one or two utopists, or if you deign to give them a polite name, one or two philosophers, who maintained the struggle in the name of the Inward Light ! But times passed away, ages succeeded ages, and the battalions changed their place; a moment came when the solitary witness for reason and principle had in his turn all the battalions behind him ; the others fled vanquished, despised, forgotten, they disappeared in the night of the past, to have henceforth their recollection only called up in order to establish the
depth of human stupidity We make continual efforts to put coal, cotton, wool, iron above ourselves ; but it is in vain that you will crash the thought of man beneath all the coal of England, all the iron of Sweden, all the cotton of Asia and of America, still will human thought be force par excellence, the supreme force."
- Here is another fine passage, on over-regulation,—the inveterate curse of France :—
" We are powerful ! we are strong ! and we are then occupied in binding ourselves, making ourselves uncomfortable, putting weights on our back, as men do on race-horses to equalize the light with the heavy. It seems to me sometimes, when I think of all these enfeeb- ling laws, as if one took a child, and as soon as he began to leave his nurse's arms, one were to bind his two legs and give him crutches, and to teach him in this way to walk. Later, when this child shall have become a man, if one should take away his crutches and should say unto him, 'But walk now on the soles of your feet, that is what you are made for.'—' Ah! good God!' he would exclaim, 'if you take away my crutches I shall no longer be able to stand upright.' That is where we are, with our octrois, our custom-houses, our censorship, our routine of all sorts, our centralization, our preventive laws. When we have well hampered, hindered, dwarfed nature, we admire ourselves in our work, and we call it civilization."
The following description of the burning of foreign goods under the First Empire, although having taken place within the memory of living men (M. Simon calls MM. Cremieux and Hipp. Passy to witness of it), exhibits a scene which will be new to most readers :
Men took manufactured goods, beautiful goods, the admiration of a manufacturer, the envy of a woman, brought them into some public place. The authorities would put on their embroidered coats, those wonderful coats which we see yet parading on the backs of the walking gentlemen of our theatres. They would wrap themselves in their senators' man- tles, fasten their orders on their breast, would proceed in state, drums and fifes preceding, to the place of execution. Then a pro- clamation was made, perhaps a speech, if the prefect or the go- vernor were eloquent, and then—do not think they were satisfied with simply setting fire to those beautiful shawls, those splendid woollen stuffs, those fine silks, with breaking up under the hammer that admirable pottery, that noble glass-ware ! By no means. As formerly the executioner took up by the hair the head of his victim to show it to the people, there was a functionary there whose business it was to un- fold those silk tissues, to make them glance and sparkle. The flames consumed all, the rich man's luxury, the poor man's need and one might say to oneself that if war were elsewhere more bloody, nowhere was it more odious."
To those persons amongst ourselves who believe that the French system of "maritime inscription," which renders every man on board a trading-ship liable to be taken for the war-navy from 18 to 50, is worthy of adoption in this country, we would recommend M. Simon's repeated arguments against the system, and he fact which he quotes, that on the French coasts many a father forbida his sons to put a foot on board ship, lest they should become sub- ject to the conscription for the Navy. Being, as he says, born himself on the sea-coast, where he spent 17 years of his life, he is a competent witness on the subject, and he declares that only when the maritime inscription is suppressed will the coast population of France take freely to the sea.
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