THE SOURCES OF ENGLISH PROSPERITY.
T is pleasant, in a day when every one is anticipating .2.1_ misfortunes, and a pessimism which is not entirely -superficial governs every department of thought, to read a good hearty outburst of optimism about the future of England. It is therefore with little pleasure that we point out how slight is the foundation on which Mr. Grant Allen builds his glowing anticipations. That entertaining writer, in the Westminster Gazette of Saturday, declares that the prosperity of Great Britain is founded on her geographical position in relation to water-carriage, and that this is unalt( ra,ble, except by the occurrence of ,some "Big Thing," such as the invention of an easy method of aerial navigation. Social changes matter nothing ; even industrial changes, like the Eight-Hours movement, matter little ; England is nearest to every- where by water, and therefore she will keep her com- mercial supremacy. It is soothing doctrine, and we should like to believe it ; but we fear that Mr. Grant Allen in this, as in most of the speculations he publishes, is far too materialistic. The position of a country has a certain effect in creating commercial success, but it certainly is not the only cause of it ; and we question if it is even the main one. To begin with, it is, by itself, absolutely powerless. Mr. Grant Allen points to Carthage, and attributes her marvellous success in commerce,, not to the enterprise, daring, and intelligence of her Phoenician rulers, but to her position ; but Carthage exists now almost in the same place, the centre-point of the Mediterranean, and has comparatively no trade at all, even in the Mediterranean. Marseilles to the West, and Smyrna to the East, have beaten her out of the field. Ever since Asiatic seas were navigated, and Hincloos swarmed into the Eastern Archipelago, Singapore has been for South Asia the natural depot, and yet till the British occu- pied the island it was a place for fishermen. Venice lies nearer to the Black Sea and the Asiatic seas than she ever did when she was the wealthy Queen of the Adriatic ; and what is Venice commercially com- pared with Marseilles or Southampton ? Has Holland moved, perhaps, or the seas she traded in, that her commerce has glided away ? or does Mr. Grant Allen really expect to see Alexandria the entrepiit of all Asiatic trade ? That city is, by position, its natural centre and bonded warehouse. Constantinople has not slipped East or West- ward since she was the dep8t for the coasts of two seas, and most of the trade of Asia ; her position is still for commerce, as well as war, almost matchless in the world ; but since she became Turkish her trade may be said to have disappeared, and she cannot contend either with Marseilles or Odessa. Make Constantinople a free port in British hands, and not twenty years would elapse before every port on earth, except only London, would allow itself to be surpassed in trade and accumulated wealth. That England owes much to her position, we of course heartily admit ; but it is not as good as that of France, which sits upon two seas ; and far inferior to that of the United States, with her unbroken waterway on one side to Europe and Africa, and on the other to the richest and most commercial side of Asia. Even as regards the carrying trade by itself, we question if England owes most to geographical position ; whether more has not been due, first of all, to the energy of her sailors ; and secondly, to the strange series of circumstances which induced the maritime nations of the world to build their ships of a material which will not float; of which, and the work- ing of which, Britain had almost a monopoly. We are the workers in metal of to-day, and probably shall be even when iron has been superseded by aluminium ; and against that advantage, which does not arise ultimately from any material circumstance but from British energy, distance of a thousand miles this way or that way weighs exceedingly little. The carrying trade of the world is not going to Panama or Port Said either ; nor, granted certain conditions of which we shall presently speak, do we believe that even aerial navigation would make any serious difference.
The resources of Britain in coal and iron, and the num- bers of her children are, of course, factors, immense factors, in her wealth ; but the grand factor has been, and still is, the character of her people. It was their daring and energy which gave them, first, ascendency on the seas, and then a world-wide Empire, the existence of which is still the most direct source of her prosperity. It was their habit of industry in association which gave the needed strength for that marvellous effort in the manufacture of all goods, which alone made victory in the commercial can-- paign a possibility, and for which, with all deference to Mr. Grant Allen, the position of England does not suit her, most of her raw materials and half her food having thousands of miles to traverse before they can be utilised. Position, quotha, when for a generation the cotton of New Orleans and Surat went back to the ports of export in clothes from Britain, with which the growers of the cotton could not compete. It was the business aptitude of the people, not geography, which, when the Suez Canal brought Asia to the doors of the Mediterranean ports, left the trade of Asia still to an island perched in latitude 51° in the North Atlantic. And finally, it was the orderly peace of the island and the honesty they cultivated which aided her people to heap up the marvellous store of capital that enabled them to snatch every advantage and embrace every opportunity, to turn their whole northern territory into a factory, to bind every factory to a port, and to find money for each other in every enter- prise at rates which, compared with profit, have often been imperceptible. Let the State fail for a year to pay the interest on the National Debt, let the merchants become untrustworthy in bargains, let there be but three months of anarchy in London, and British commerce would, for all its advantages of position, be a thing of the past, which could hardly be reclaimed. We do not fear Eight-Hours Bills, or socialistic wage-rules, or democratic voting about property, because we believe in the national character, and in that solid substratum of sense which has usually kept Englishmen straight ; but let British industry really relax even by one-fourth, let the workers become greedy beyond what trade will bear, let any class whatever, even the millionaires, feel that the fruits of toil, daring, and success cannot be peaceably enjoyed, and the consequences will be worse for the prosperity of the island than if her foundations slipped a thousand miles out to sea. The whole of her wealth will pass, as it ought on those conditions to pass, to the rivals who keep their senses, who recognise that Nature pays nothing except for toil, that no man sows where he knows that he cannot reap, that nothing grows save in a motionless quiet which often looks like absence of energy and life. Mr. Grant Allen says it is all geographical position ; but let him for half a generation suspend the operation of the laws, or tax away the profit of capital, or pay wages not according to work but according to need, and he will soon discover what an advantage of position is worth. Why, there is not at this moment a White country in the world which dares let England have untrammelled and unhandicapped access to her coasting trade, lest the energetic islanders, with every disadvantage of position, should sweep it away from its " proper ' owners. The true source of a nation's wealth is character, and not posi- tion at all. Put Irishmen in Holland, and the dykes would fall ; put Dutchmen in Ireland without one single new advantage, and she would be, size for size, one of the wealthiest of the European nations. We do not say, be it understood, that the commercial character is the highest, or that a dreamy philosopher in Heidelberg, or a Moravian peasant in Suabia, may not be a much higher man than the average Englishman. All we assert is, that the Englishman owes his success in commerce to himself and his institutions, and not to the latitude and longitude of his habitat ; and that, consequently, any .internal change which threatens seriously to modify either character or institutions, threatens also to decrease his Positive wealth. The Eight-Hours Bill will have conse- quences on commerce though the island remain for ever where it was originally left by the receding waters ; and so will every other law, if it reduces either energy, or industry, or the keen sense of commercial honour. If geographical position, as Mr. Graut Allen says, is the only source of wealth worth discussing, why is not every Londoner a wealthy man P We shall be told that such an argument as Mr. Grant Allen' s is hardly worth answering; but such arguments chime in with the "scientific" fancy of the day, and secure a mis- chievous result,—an apathetic belief that nothing signifies, because nothing of importance can be altered. The one thing of real importance in commerce, as in all other pursuits requiring effort, is character, and that is affected, often seriously, by every new law. If not, why do we educate, or keep up the eternal and necessary fuss about our civili- sation ? Is that, perchance, the result of our position, —though the position left us tattooed barbarians when Alexandria was a civilised capital, and Hindoos were thinking out the hardest problems of philosophy ? It is nonsense to say we are dependent on position, just as it is nonsense to say that with our coal the history of Britain must end. Who found coal for Carthage ? or who doubts that in our new agent, electrieity, a limitless supply of a heat and motive energy character thehd. development otf. the l i need for them ? It is r w makes national wealth as well as national strength, and it s as affecting character that politics have their permanent interest and importance. The little island in the North Sea is a great State because of her people, not because she is, on the whole, one of the nearest points to all the great accumula- tions of humanity. She is not so near to the great masses- of mankind as Smyrna is, even if we count both the- Americas to swell the English tale.
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