TOPICS OF THE DAY.
NAPOLEON'S COMMERCIAL POLICY.
"COULD statesmen," we said on Christmas Eve, "shake off pre- conceptions which belong properly to the puerile sera of the world's history, the work which just now oppresses the brain and con- science of Europe would be easy. Could we but rise to the full conception of the idea embodied in Christianity, we,—we English might settle the affairs of the Congress this Christmas. Au Jour de PAn the Imperial leader of France would, poloree, spon- taneously, take up the great crusade of peace ; and France and England could dictate to the world on the warrant of their common master." Imperfectly elid we anticipate the evidence that the Emperor Napoleon was actually doing so much, "spon- taneously," although not "perforce." Yet the great "work of peace" on which, as he says, he has now entered, ought not to be a surprise. So long ago as 1857, we heard something of it, when M. Michel Chevalier made representations to the Emperor how injurious to France was the exclusive system of her commerce ; and when the Emperor is said to have listened sympathetically, but to have said that much remained to be done before that work could be taken up, and that probablv it could not begin before 1860. We have arrived at 1860, and Napoleon is punctual.
The interval has not been wasted. It is not to be denied that under the Empire a very considerable impulse has been given to the spirit of enterprise in France ; and if it has been held in check by warlike doubts, or still more by the long-habitual re- liance of the French in their exclusive system, they have recently felt the practical necessity for imports,—of food, of iron for rails, of other raw material, of luxuries ; and while they have had such relaxations of their falsely trusted vigour as have met immediate wants, they have thus learned practically to trust both the policy and the discretion of Napoleon. They are the better prepared for the gigantic measure now announced.
For it amounts to a total change in the administration and
spirit of French commercial policy, agricultural, industrial, and commercial. Our contemporaries seem scarcely to have appre- ciated the whole scope of the change. Except that the Times and some few spoke of it in adequate terms, the press generally at first handled it with reserve, and characterized it stintingly ; but by degrees, and not slow degrees, English heartiness comes out, English practical sense asserts its judgment. There were several reasons fur the dubious feeling. In some the cause may simply have been the dislike to render acknowledgments heartily,—a consti- tutional debility, however, not frequent in this country. In others it is prejudice against Napoleon, who is assumed to act in a spirit which he has never displayed towards this country since he has been in possession of power. But in most it is simply the different point of departure. Englishmen forget that it is scarcely half a " generation " since we introduced free trade amongst ourselves, abolishing at that time some of the absurdest and silliest restrictions which a great country ever maintained. They forget that not long before that date commercial exclusion was the popular and the official principle ; and that even in this day, an important interest of national character is murmuring at the loss of "reciprocity" if not of prohibition. When Peel passed his admirable measures,—bold, generous and thoroughgoing,— he told the trimmers that the true way to obtain " reciprocity " was to show our own thorough reliance on our own principle,—to throw our own system open, to illustrate the advantages, and to be sure that other nations would follow our example and ask to reciprocate. We have done it; and Napoleon is fulfilling the promise of Peel.
We noticed two weeks since, the broad distinction between the
commercial spirit of the French and our own—their reliance on "les petites economies" in lieu of our reliance on investment and exer- tion—good sound mental and bodily exertion. They think of saving, we of producing. "They have thought," we should say, for they are beginning to outgrow the system' and Napoleon breaks through it. It was late last century when Arthur Young began his agricultural tour, and saw with English eyes the saddening pauperizing effects of corvee and villeinage: they are now re- publishing Arthur Young's tour in France. Not a century ago they told stories of despot landlords who were so completely owners of their serfs, that among the aristocrats a recipe for a cold was to put the feet into a warm serf, recently cut open for the purpose ; and, false as the myth may be, it illustrates the feeling on the sub- ject. And, by the way, let us not forget certain tyrannical, vicious, and impoverishing " droits du seigneur," which survived in Scotland and Ireland, if not in England, not a century ago. We have not been so very long out of the wood as to justify the airs of superiority that some of us assume. The French are not out of the wood yet,—but Napoleon is at their head, and has given the order, " March ! "
Before the revolution, France was a half-cultivated park—if we can say so much as half-cultivated, and can call half-waste " park, —owned by gay idlers, whose answer to remonstrance Was " apres nous le deluge," and who heeded little the cultivation of their estates worked by slave labour, and made to yield re-
venue rather estates, profit. The revolution carried things to the opposite extreme, and cut up the broad lands—" broad " but thin— into a sort of universal "freehold land proprietaries," about half of which are assessed to the land-tax at 5 francs, and are worth to their owners about 40s. a year—half of them 40s. freeholds ! And out of 11,500,000 properties, only 53,000 were assessed as worth more than 2001., only 16,400 more than 400/. a year. This was in 1842, but subsequent changes have not essentially altered the proportions. The Societe de Credit Foncier has not effected the true revolution which is now to be initiated. The old revolu- tion broke down such of the internal restrictions on commerce as had belonged to the aristocracy, but the people thought to retain their privileges ; and the levy of moneys absolutely necessary for public purposes, which the people might have grudged to pay in good round gold and silver pro re nata, was tolerated in the form of a sort of ubiquitous customs, which has cut up France commer- cially, as (ill countries were cut up politically during the middle ages. But grand changes have taken place in France. The con- struction of railways has not only conveyed vast numbers into closer intercourse, but has made the people feel the restraints of their own system, and brought them face to face with obso- lete abuses. Above all, the changes of Government have carried them so much further from the old feudal or counter-feudal dogmas of the old monarchy and old revolution ; and the ground has thus been opened for economists like Michel Chevalier, for law-givers of economy like that now on the throne of France. Still we must remember that to the vast bulk of the people all these ideas are new,—their positive ideas chiefly belong to the past rera. Hence Napoleon had to shape such a measure as, al- though large and effectual, even when judged by English—that is, standards of practical free traders,—should not look formidable to his people, so as to shock and alarm them disproportionately.
This he has done, by a skilful combination. At a blow, he
abolishes prohibition. He institutes progressive reduction of [protective] duties on sugar and coffee. He reduces the dues on canals—competing with railways. And from the surplus on hand of the last national war loan—the result of an open loan—he offers advances, like our agricultural advances, in aid of agricul- ture, railways and other public works. Thus competition is to be met by the French people with the support of state aid, in such manner as to stimulate private exertion ; while the first effects of the measure will be, to render transit more facile and pro- gressively still more so ; to place the raw material within reach of the manufacturers, to stimulate the natural produce of the land, and the food that is to invigorate its industrial classes,— for industry, intelligence, and natural greatness are to a large extent a matter of good and sufficient food. And with all this, Napoleon provides for his people an expanding foreign trade,— for he joins England in inviting enlarged exchanges with foreign countries. Not many years since political econoray,—for political economy, like all constituted opinions held independently of the facts which are the coefficient of opinion, grows to be a supersti- tion with its superfluity of prejudices,—would have shrieked out against Government aid. But we have found our advances to agriculture work well in England.
And India offers a peculiar experience just now, which is most encouraging for the authors of the new measure in showing im- portant collateral effects likely to flow from it. At present a very strong preference is shown in our London money market for In- dian enterprises, and why ? Because of the Government guarantee given in so many cases, and implied in the ease of
the public stock. Thus the Goverment guarantee now given in France for the means of prosecuting improvements, and of turning this vast opportunity to a profit worthy of the greatest of nations, is calculated to have a most favourable effect, not only upon the enterprises and improvements which come within the scope of the particular measure, but upon all French securities generally,—in other words, upon all French property, and all French means of industry.
The most important aspect of the measure is its tendency to promote intercourse between France and her neighbours. It has been observed that we have little remaining to concede, but we still have something to do in that way. So long ago as October 1852, the City article of the Times pointed to the wine duties as operating, by the refusal of an available exchange, to restrict the foreign market for our manufactures. The consumption of the lighter wines has been steadily increasing in this country, and is obviously kept down by the duty. The ordinary sources for the wine most commonly used here happen to be failing, for we ob- serve that the Wine circulars report the Douro in 1859 "a total failure." Nor are our "manufactures," in the popular sense of the word, all that are likely to benefit by the reciprocal enlarge- ment of intercourse. We have recently noted the painful state of agricultural implements in France, from the stinted use of iron. The one depressed trade in this country is that of shipping ; but if the enlargement of French trade is likely primarily to benefit French shippers, it will most assuredly conduce to that ulterior
enlargement of trade between the nations generally which must afford a yet wider and ever extending field for our own mercantile marine. And these specific and direct benefits, instances of which might readily be multiplied, are of less importance than the multiplied occasions for intercourse, and that gradual accumula- tion of a common stake in commerce and property which has for- bidden war between this country and the United States, and must forbid war between any countries that thus share their enterprise and its fruits.
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