THE SILK TRADE.
SCARCELY had the Catholic question been disposed of when the Silk question made its appearance, connected with the hopes and wishes and fears of indeed a smaller but still a very respectable class of petitioners. Happily for all parties, it has been sooner got rid of than its lingering predecessor. Two months barely sufficed to kill the political—two nights have done the business of the com- mercial anti-relaxation-men. Tram, singles, and organzine, lute- string and Bros-de-naples, prohibition and free-trade, have been put to rest for another session at least. We feel some reluctance to enter on the consideration of such a dry subject as that which was discussed on Monday and Tuesday; but we must sometimes attend to the utile as well as the dulce. In the first place, we are bound to vindicate the science—or whatever its friends or enemies may term it—of political economy, from a very ignorant and undeserved reproach. No sooner does distress of any kind or degree affect any trade or manufacture, in any part of the country, than some empty sciolist, without inquiry or deliberation, sets it clown to the account of political economy. It is the Liberal system—the MACCULLOCH system—the HUSKISSON system—that is to blame for all the evils that afflict society. This mode of declaiming—it would be blasphemy against the divinity of reason to call it arguing —would be merely ridiculous if it were directed to men of sense ; but unfortunately these form a small minority even of the read- ing community. The great mass of mankind, when they feel themselves uneasy, will look to every cause within the limits of their vision rather than to themselves for the origin of the disease; and hence the readiness with which their • sins are assigned to the Devil and their sufferings to the economists. The former gentle. man, we may safely leave to manage his own quarrel ; but the latter class are men. of like passions with ourselves—stimulated by the same praises and wounded by the same calumnies. We sly, then, that to blame political economy for the distresses of the slk- weavers, even were they as clearly and positively referable to the relaxation of the prohibitory laws as they are doubtfully connected with it, would be most unjust and most unreasonable ; because that relaxation, in principle and in practice, is as much opposed to the dictates of political economy as the prohibitory laws were. The prohibitory laws were imposed in order to protect the silk- trade ; the 30 per cent duties were imposed for the same purpose : now it is one of the elementary truths of political economy, that a
trade which requires any protecting duty, however small, not
.worth pursuing. The principles of that science are as completely violated by a protecting duty of 30 per cent. or of 3 per cent. as they are by absolute prohibition ; and consequently they are as much opposed to the existing silk-laws as they were to their pre cursors. So much for the ignorant abuse of those principles by the pretended friends of the silk-trade. But, in the second place, it will be said that although the cen- sures be misdirected, they are yet well founded—although the economists are not to blame for the law of 1824, the law of 132-1 is to blame for the present distress. The only connexion that has been established between the alteration of the'law and the existing distress, is that the latter has been more or less urgent for tike last four years—not from 182G, when the law came into operation, but from 1825, a twelvemonth before that period. When Dr. REID, the celebrated moral philosopher, was a youth, an Englishman travelled through Ayrshire with a remarkably large white ox, which he exhibited as a show : the same veer the measles happened to be very rife in that part of the country, and a great many children died : by the whole of the old women, says the Doctor, the mor- tality was attributed, not to the coldness and lmmidity of the win- ter, but to the Englishman and his large white (ix! so that, had they ventured back the following year, it was not unlikely that the pair would have been roasted whole, as a sign to the people. A few years ago, a reverend clergyman of Edinburgh published a ser mon, in which he proved, by incontestible arguments, that the great fire there was the effect of a musical festival celebrated a few months before—that the " bleeze of the auld Biggins " in the Par- liament Square vas kindled up, not by an eight-m-the-pound dip applied to the rotten timbers by a living hand, as was foolishly alleeari by some, but by the inflammatory influences of HAYDN'S " Let the-, be light ; " and that the descent of the fiery element to the Cowgate, l'e-ough seventeen mortal floors, was not the conse- quence of any ordirrae,
alU u e t aws of combustion, but merely in obedi-
ence to BRAHAM S melo exhortation of " Deeper and deeper still." We may smile at such reeeening, but in reality the fallacy in the case of the weavers of Spitalfieta;.is more open and palpable. Net only is there no evident connexion between, the distresses and th107elaxation laws, but it is admitted that thy: distress preceded the relaxation. The former began in 1825, the latter in 1526. Our Irish fellow-countrymen Sometimes speak of two things following alongside of each other, but this was following before. Even supposing- that the distress had begun in 1827 instead of 1825,
before we can admit that a return to the prohibitory system would operate as a cure, it must be shown that no such distress ever oc- curred under that system. Now it happens, unfortunately for its advocates, that not once or twice, but repeatedly, has the distress of Spitalfields been at least as great under the old system as it is at present under the new. Can any thing be more base and more ignorant, therefore, than to impute hardheartedness or indifference to those who oppose a return to prohibitory duties ? This is pre- cisely as if a suffering patient, on seeking advice from his physician, should, instead of following his prescriptions, abuse the adviser, because he refused to administer medicine which in his conscience he believed would greatly aggravate the distemper, and if persisted in render a cure impracticable.
But then, in the third place, comes the grand argument—" We
must have higher prices for our silks," say the weavers, "or you must lower the taxes." We should like to know who is here meant by you. Is there any I, you, or he, in the kingdom, that is exempt from taxes ? When CORBETT told Sir FRANCIS BURDETT that it was unreasonable to ask him to pay his debts, because he was op- pressed by a had government, Sir FRANCIS replied, that he could not allow the validity of such a plea, because Mr. Coanaaa's cre- ditors were equally oppressed with himself. When the manufac- turers and weavers of silk, therefore, tell the community that gros- de-naples ought to be six shillings instead of four shillings a yard, because they have heavy taxes to pay, the community have a right to answer, that Bros-de-naples ought to be two instead of four, because they have heavy taxes to pay.
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