FREE TRADE AND PUBLIC MORALS.
OUR fashionable and sad contemporary the Morning Post occa- sionally favours us with a sort of exceptional encouragement, that implies a good deal of regular but unuttered censure. Praise, we admit, is such an agreeable form that it might reconcile us to the strictures conveyed in it ; but, such is the perversity of the human mind, that while we seize the agreeable we repudiate the dis- agreeable. Like the sick child, we snatch the sweet and decline the physic. Especially shall we do so now, from a sincere con- viction that the nostrum of our good nurse, however well- intentioned, is by no means suited to our case. Our censor applies his exceptional encouragement to what we said last week respecting the decline of the working classes, and marks with the emphasis of Italic type those phrases in which we contrasted the "cheap " and nasty cotton rags that clothe our peasant women with the stout homespun woollens that once kept them warm, and remarked that we had attended too exclusively to money wealth and trading greatness ; with other observations in a similar spirit, setting, forth that " no obedience to the dogmas and commonplaces of politics and public economy can absolve the council of the nation from the duty of attending to other matters besides the promotion of trading facilities and money wealth." Now, we do not know why the encouragement given to us for this doctrine should be exceptional. Certainly it was not broach- ed in the Spectator for the first time last week. On the con- trary, in the very height of Free-trade agitation, we persevered in keeping before those readers who honour us with their con- sideration, the fact that free trade could not do all things ; as in the height of political agitation we have kept in view the truth that the measure of the day was no panacea. Hence, "Reform- ers" have sometimes called us Tories in disguise ; "Free-traders," Protectionists ; but now the Post reverses the charges. We hope we may be correct in accepting these censures, each based, like all party views, on truths too partial, as testimony to our success in the endeavour to correct sectional and partial truths by a broader view. In the present instance, however, we are bound to express our belief, that few even of the Free Trade party— none but the most fanatical—would dissent from the views which our contemporary courteously and censoriously commends. The Post manifests surprise that we should thus "instruct" our readers, when we "so lately as the 8th instant were recommend- ing more free trade as one of the remedies for that state of affairs which produces the Chartist agitation." We presume that this passage refers to our noticing that effect of the Navigation-laws which excluded cotton that might be sent hither from Havre, to the advantage of the French merchant and possibly to the benefit of our working classes. To be plain, we should say that such sur- prise can only consist with some confusion of ideas. Last week we observed, that our statesmen have attended " too exclusively " to the duty of developing trading facilities and money wealth ; but that development is one among the duties of a legislative go- vernment. 'Free trade is proposed as a means of developing coni• mercial facilities' aimt money wealth ; and while economists are considering that object, we no more blame them for sticking to the record than we should blame an accountant for not including cesthetical doctrine or moral sentiments in a balance-sheet. But when" the statesman is busied with too exclusive an attention about trading affairs, we hold that he commits a mistake as miserable as that of the man who should invest his whole intel- lect and affections in the shop and its till. Do not write senti. ment in your ledger, deface it with poetry, or falsify it with ima- ginative aspirations: while we are discussing your progress in business, let us see the figures in their sternest nakedness ; but do not confess that the ledger is the whole reflex of your soul—the whole regimen for yourself and your family. We will say more. We will-admit that the "science" of pa. litical economy is by no means perfected, and that to be perfect it ought to include, for the statesman, considerations which lie be- yond the cognizance of the mere trader. Immediate profit and loss are not, even professedly, the sole object of contemplation by the true political economist : he should consider welfare not less than wealth, the enduring of prosperity as well as " quick re- turns," the advantage of all classes more than the profit of some. It is not good economy, even by the figures, to promote that state of things which occasions popular agitation, or a failure of hu- man strength. But one word as to that additional scrap of free trade which we are reproached with suggesting. There is a certain amount of raw cotton at Havre, and more is probably intended for the same destination, which cannot be used in France, through the unsettled state of that country. Dearth of the raw material has been one of the causes of distress in the factory districts ; and although Mr. George Frederick Young makes out that the dearth is over, cotton will keep in store. The alleged reason against admitting the cotton from Havre is, that to do so would infringe the Navigation-laws, and that those are necessary for the protection of our shipping. Now Europe seems to be rapidly hastening to that condition which will supersede our Navigation-laws, by giving us, while we maintain a mono- poly of internal quiet, a monopoly also of trade. Whatever defects may be found in our existing system, we believe that improvements must be sought by a process of development rather than by one of destruction. -Even if those schemes of Fourierism which the Morning Chronicle has so remarkably engaged in expounding were to be realized, they must grow out of existing elements, and not be planted, as M. Louis Blanc is trying, amidst the ruin and destruction of all that now exists. It is not through ruin that we are to seek prosperity. Therefore we hold, that no aspirations for the future need make us reject a present prosperity. While Europe vindicates the uses of war, let us illustrate the blessings which they leave to our un- divided share—those of peace. Let us accept the share of human activity which they leave to us for the day—that of commercial industry ; confining the question of the Navigation-laws to the ground of their real operation; and not refusing, by a literal and bigoted adhesion to the name of those laws, an opportunity for recommencing any new career of thriving commerce which pro- mises to open before us should the disordered state of Europe con- tinue.
Previous page
