J.S.

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FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION

THE CORN LAWS.

It is remarkable that, while we hear so much of the advantages of free trade, the reciprocity of them is always in prospect only.  By throwing open our harbours to foreign nations, indeed, we give them an immediate and obvious advantage over ourselves; but as to any corresponding advantages we are to gain in our intercourse with them, we are still waiting, in patient expectation of the anticipated benefit.  Our patience is truly exemplary; it might furnish a model to Job himself.  We resent nothing.  No sooner do we receive a blow on one cheek, than we turn up the other to some new smiter.  No sooner are we excluded, in return for our concessions, from the harbours of one state, than we begin making concessions to another.  We are constantly in expectation of seeing the stream of human envy and jealousy run out:—­

  “Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis:  at ille
  Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum.”

We are imitating the man who made the experiment of constantly reducing the food on which his horse is to live.  Let us take care that, just as he is learning to live on nothing, we do not find him dead in his stall.

This, however, is no joking matter.  The total failure of the free trade system to procure any, even the smallest return, coupled with the very serious injury it has inflicted on many of the staple branches of our industry, has now been completely demonstrated by experience, and is matter of universal notoriety.  If any proof on the subject were required, it would be furnished by Porter’s Parliamentary Tables, to which we earnestly request the attention of our readers.  The first exhibits the effect of the reciprocity system, introduced by Mr Huskisson in Feb. 1823, in destroying our shipping with the Baltic powers, and quadrupling theirs with us.  The second shows the trifling amount of our exports to these countries during the five last years, and thereby demonstrates the entire failure of the attempt to, extend our traffic with them by this gratuitous destruction of our shipping.  The third shows the progress of our whole exports to Europe during the six years from 1814 to 1820, before the free trade began, and from 1833 to 1839, after it had been fifteen years in operation, and proves that it had declined in the latter period as compared with the former, despite all our gratuitous sacrifices by free trade to augment our commerce.[12]

    [12] See No.  CCCXL, Blackwood’s Magazine, p. 261.