THE RECIPROCITARIANS.
I T is a pity not only that so many people will talk of what they do not understand, but that so few will take the trouble to understand what is so completely within the province of strict and demonstrable science to explain. The Reciproci- tarians, as we take leave to call them,—they deserve a clumsy name, even better than O'Connell's fishwife deserved to be called a parallelopiped, for they take a vast deal of trouble to confuse the public mind about what is really very simple,— the Reciprocitarians exhibit two very unfavourable intellectual symptoms,—they are excessively irrelevant in the vast amount of talk with which they do indulge us ; and the moment they come to the point where we are hoping to learn what remedy they really do propose for the troubles, real and fanciful, under which England is just now suffering, that moment they are dumb. What they appear to insist on is,—(1) that there is a good deal of stagnation of trade in England, which is admitted ; (2) that we should be a good deal better off if France and America and other countries did not keep out our manufactures by a high protective tariff, which is also admitted • (3) that our Free-trade measures, though right in themselves but for the want of reciprocity, are somehow responsible,—how, they are careful not to tell us,—for that want of reciprocity ; (4) that by a little inquiry we should be able to make out how they were wrong, and to put the matter right again. Now, as we have said, these worthy persons are entirely right on the first and second heads, on which they speak out very intelligibly, and explain themselves with perfect lucidity. But then, no one differs from them on these points at all, and it is simply irrelevant to keep crying aloud that we are ill, and should be better if some one else would do his duty by us, without any practical suggestion at all as to how we are to persuade or compel those persons who are insensible to their duty to do it. No sensible man com- plains aloud that he is poor, and that if his friends would but do him common justice he should be rich, unless he has some specific means, in which public opinion is likely to help, of compelling the said friends to do him justice. We may fairly assume that, though the Reciprocitarians are right in their first two perfectly unquestioned premisses, that there is a great dullness just now in English enterprise, and that a free-trade policy in America and France would probably do much to remove this paralysis, yet that all the significance of their movement lies in the last two positions, which are perilously vague, as well as, so far as they are intelligible, utterly false in their drift, namely, that we could have done something which we failed to do at the time of the French Treaty of Commerce to compel greater reciprocity ; — and next, that thorough inquiry now will show us how to remedy our mistake, and get back upon the right path. Worthy Mr. Newdegate, who, if he has not the clearest head in the world, never voluntarily disguises his meaning, said pretty plainly at Manchester on Monday that he wants a return to Protection. "His opinion was that we must begin by a modification of the system of free imports, and progress most carefully. The abandonment of import duties as a source of revenue was a system at which the Americans scoffed ; it was a system adopted by no other country in the world." Even that is evasive lan- guage, for Mr. Newdegate knows as well as any man that " the abandonment of import duties as a source of revenue" has never been broached by any statesman in England, and that import duties are now the source of a very great revenue annu- ally, that the only thing we have seriously abandoned is import duties as a source of protection, which was what Mr. Newde- gate meant, but did not feel the courage to say. Spirits, wine, sugar, tea, &c., are all taxed as a source of revenue. What we have given up is every duty on articles produced in Great Britain, and this is evidently what Mr. Newdegate really wishes to restore. "Far be it from him to say that it was not good economy to buy in the cheapest market and sell
in the dearest ; but this [the French] Treaty was not in favour of free trade. It was the most direct violation of it." In conclusion, Mr. Newdegate said he was quite with them about Reciprocity, "which he considered to be the neces- sary compensating element in the modern system of free trade. Were England again bound to France, she would be like a man in debt who is confined in his dealing to a par- ticular shop, for while binding herself to impose no import duties, she would get no equivalent restrictions to prevent a discount upon her exports being charged in the form of duties." And that is really what all these mysterious and roundabout demands for inquiry mean,—they do not mean that inquiry is wanted at all, but that the advocates of inquiry are anxious to gain a little time for the propagation of the doctrine openly professed by Mr. Newdegate, that after the expiration of the Treaty we should put back all the unpleasant restrictions we can on French commerce till France consents to take off her heavier duties on British manufactures ; and that in like manner, apparently, we should tell America that her corn (and cotton ?) shall not come here free of charge, unless she removes the heavy duty from our exported manu- factures. That is what this mysterious agitation really means, if it means anything. This is what Mr. Newdegate meant, this is what Mr. Staveley Hill, Q.C., meant, this is what the chairman of the Manchester meeting, Mr. Richard Haworth, meant. And this is what we assert, that any intelligent girl or boy of sixteen, who had mastered the most elementary treatise on political economy, could show these eminent persons that they were great geese for meaning.
Let us look a little at the lever which the Reciprocitarians appear to suppose that England has in her hands for pro- ducing this revolution of opinion in America and France, and whether the application of it would hurt her own hands less than it would move the obstacle to which it is to be applied. Take the case of the American protective duties first. Undoubtedly they are the most onerous, and probably the most mischievous to England. A working-man, Mr. Hewins, in the discussion at Birmingham last Saturday, put the case as to " fairness " clearly enough ; but, as our readers will see, he, too, was bitten by Mr. Newdegate's sophisms :— " He gave as an illustration of the working of the present Free- Trade principle the case of two manufacturers, one residing in the Bull-Ring, and the other at Bordesley. The man in the Bull-Ring manufactures certain goods and takes them to Bordesley to sell. He had no objection to that. But sup- posing that when the man in Bordesley had manufactured certain goods, with the intent of bringing them to the Bull- Ring to sell, he was stopped on his journey by a man on Deritend Bridge, who demanded a toll of 7s. before he passed, would they say that was fair ? Then if it was not fair to charge for taking goods over the little river, it was not fair to charge for taking them over the great river. He was a free- trader, but he believed in what was just and right ; yet he believed that on the British G-overnment making the bargain with America, Brother Jonathan got the best of us." Now the delusion there, like the delusion in Mr. Newdegate's mind, and in the minds of all these wilfully blind fanatics for Reci- procity, lies in the absurd notion that Brother Jonathan in this transaction not merely does us an injury,—which is true.—but is able to profit by the injury, or, as Mr. Hewins says, to "get the best of us," and the implied notion that we should be only serving him out and trimming the balance by retaliating on him in like fashion. Brother Jonathan "gets the better of us" only in the sense in which the Hindoo who commits suicide because an Englishman insults him gets the better of the Englishman. Is it worth while—this is the simple ques- tion at the bottom of the whole misty agitation,—is it worth while severely to hurt ourselves only because the process by which we do so will inevitably hurt another too ? Is it a wise mode of bringing pressure to bear on America, to punish the United States on the same principle on which a wilful child will punish its mamma for not ordering his favourite dish by refusing to eat altogether ? Perhaps some one will say that it is worth the child's while to go fasting for once, if he finds that the result is to procure him his own way in future. But how long are we to be seriously advised to abstain from American corn and cotton, in the hope that we shall compel America to let in our manufactures free ? Is that result, in any limited time, probable ? Is it a bit more probable or near, is it even so probable or near, as it will be if we leave the Americans to find out their own interests, and do not insist on starving ourselves in order to make them begin to look blue ? No I doubt they would suffer more by that national co-operation in j an imbecile and destructive policy which would result if we joined them, than they would if we still held to our own wiser policy ; but is it worth while to inflict a certaii. persecution, for the sake of a very problematic and even impro- bable result, on the United States, when every thorn which we press into their flesh must necessarily enter our own as well t What can be sillier than to try to expedite the conversion of the United States to the very simple doctrine of Free Trade, by a process which confesses that we ourselves value it so little for ourselves that we are willing to forego it for a season, by way of punishing them, and so inducing them to come to terms ? If any man assured us that, being fully satisfied of the infinite advantages of good-temper by his own experience, he was yet going to indulge in ill-temper in order to make us feel the suffering it caused, and to induce us to compromise the matter with him and be good-tempered together in future, should we believe him ?—and much more if he put his threat in practice, should we not very soon be at blows- with him, and he himself entirely oblivious of his original, purpose ?
But the Reciprocitarians will tell us we have no right to fix attention on America. It so happens we could not pos- sibly diminish the supply of American corn and cotton without obviously and enormously aggravating the distress of our labour- ing classes by raising the price of their food, and immensely exaggerating the very mischief which is now causing such a paralysis in Lancashire. But we could afford, some people will say, to give the French a lesson about their wines and manufactures,—we could afford to make the French wine country feel our displeasure, and suffer for the sins of the French manufacturing districts. Nay, we could make those manufacturing districts themselves feel our displeasure if we only chose to put on import duties on the special kinds of French cottons which now compete successfully in our mar- kets with English cottons, and so exclude them. Why should not either or both of these strokes of policy be adopted ? Why not, indeed, except that they must do us pure harm, and would in all probability be the very last methods by which we should be likely to convince Protectionist France that it is wrong ? If we only punished the French wine dis- stricts for the sins of the French manufacturing Protectionists, we should either pay more for our wine, and so have less to save and invest in industrial operations, or we should have a poorer wine at the same price, and be sheer losers in quality by the transaction. Is that worth while, for the sake of snub- bing the French ? But we might really promote new cotton manufactUres—new industry—in England by embarking boldly in a reciprocity policy, and putting heavy duties on the French cottons till such time as they take off their duties on ours ? Of course we could, and provisional protectionism of that sort seems to us by far the most candid and plausible policy that has been suggested ; but we should suffer even more by that stroke of business than by merely compelling ourselves to drink dearer or worse wine than before. In the first place, we should be encouraging and brib- ing capitalists to go into a business which would cease to be remunerative directly the 'provisional' condition of things for which it was avowedly established had ceased,—which could never survive the taking-off the duty. We should deliberately foster either a permanent system of protection, or a
hollow enterprise liable to sudden collapse. If the former, the disavowal of protectionism by our Reciprocitarians is at once shown to be utterly false,—for they would mean not only
protection, but permanent protection. And what should we be doing for the nation ? We should be spending more on a
particular class of articles than we could get them for from France, i. e., we should be wasting wealth. But we should be employing labour ? No doubt, but the capital which employs it would be there all the same, and could be employed in some industry in which we have more advantage than the French, instead of less, and employed, of course, to greater advantage. Protection does not create capital. It only tempts it into a bad and unnatural investment, to the great loss of the nation. Put it how they will, the Reciprocitarians wish us to inflict a cer- tain and serious injury on ourselves for the sake of a very unlikely benefit., which we should have far more chance of securing by the ordinary spread of rational argument. If they do not want us to foster a temporary enterprise, certain to fail in the end, they want us to foster enter- prises that are permanently and needlessly wasteful ; and we do not know which proposal of the two is the more impertinent.
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