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prices; therefore it could not, alone, have any great effect in mitigating public suffering. It might, for a few months, create confidence and speculation, and thereby get up prices; but the latter would soon fall to what they are at present. As the auxiliary of what I have already recommended, it would be highly efficácious. With free trade, prices in this country must, in spite of bank notes, be mainly governed by continental ones, precisely as Scotch and Irish prices must be governed by British ones.

I now close my remarks on political economy, but before I suffer the pen to quit my fingers, I must offer some general ones on the state of my unhappy country.

For four successive years, England has been scourged with continually increasing distress. During this long term, not a single division of her inhabitants has known prosperity for even a moment! the property of her agricultural, manufacturing, and trading classes, has been regularly wasting, and the wages of her labouring orders have been, with little exception, regularly declining. The state of things is now worse than it has ever been since the commencement. After losing many hundreds of millions, the men of business are on the verge of general bankruptcy, and the working classes are without a sufficiency of necessaries.

This is wholly without example in modern history. Former fits of suffering were of short duration, they never seriously injured more than a part of the population at the same moment; and they were followed by an enlarged measure of prosperity, Putting out of sight the effects of civil war, never before, in so short a period, did any great nation sustain such an enormous loss of capital, part with such a gigantic portion of the comforts and food of its inhabitants, and retrograde to such an appalling extent in all that constitutes the well-being of society. The circumstances of the mass of the population are now much worse in this, than in almost any foreign country. There is no prospect of improvement; on the contrary, loss and insolvency increase, wages keep falling, and the future promises only additions to distress already insupportable.

Are the causes unknown? Nowhen the divisions of the community are looked at separately, the sources of the suffering which overwhelms each and all, are matter of demonstration. The empire has been brought into this horrible state, neither by the visitations of Providence, nor by the measures of foreign nations, but by the acts of its own rulers. It has not been ravaged by plague and famine; its markets abroad have not been destroyed by war or foreign legislation; but the evils which plague, famine, war, and foreign rivalry could have produced, have been showered upon it by its own lawgivers.

And are the remedies involved in mystery? No. They are before the eyes of all; it is matter of general confession, that measures could easily be resorted to, which would give prosperity to the great majority of the community. Not only has it been proved by experience, but the very champions of the present system own, that a change of law could render the agricultural interest and several others prosperous, and that the return to small notes would benefit a vast part of the country. Remedies could be at once adopted which, a few years ago, on the admission of enemies as well as friends, filled the realm with wealth and abundance, which, after pouring an incredible amount of riches into the public treasury, enriched both the individual and the community at large.

The ministers and legislators of this empire avow that the causes are intended to produce the low prices which are inseparable from stagnant markets, insolvency, and pauperism; and they acknowledge that the remedies did, and would again, produce wealth and prosperity. The chief of what they urge against the latter is, that the prosperity would be occasionally interrupted by fits of suffering; and while they urge this they confess that, without them, the fits of suffering will be equally frequent. The country sees that the causes produce the bad prices and glutted markets which are so ruinous, and it feels that, without the remedies, it has to endure, not a temporary fit, but a permanency of loss and distress, infinitely more comprehensive and destructive than the fit of 1825, or of any former time,

Yet the causes are to be not only preserved, but multiplied; and the remedies are not to be, on any account, resorted to.

To what is this incredible and portentous state of things owing? The reply may be given in two words ignorance and profligacy.

To use a very stale expression of the Liberals-The Ministry and Legislature are half a century behind the body of the country in knowledge. They and their literary partisans are blind to the prodigious mass of information which experience has provided in the last fifty years; and they can see nothing but the exploded dogmas of the Economists. Did experience prove incontestably during the war, that when corn rose, other commodities did not rise_equally that when wages rose, profits, instead of falling, rose likewise-that the culture of the worst land raised greatly, instead of reducing, the general rate of profit-that with such culture the means of subsistence were infinitely more abundant than they had previously been without it, when the amount of population was much smaller that restrictions, prohibitions, and bounties, added very greatly to trade that with the paper currency public prosperity was infinitely greater, and was much more free from fits of interruption, than it had ever been without it did experience prove all this, and far more, did it decisively refute every leading principle of the Smiths and Ricardos, the Horners and Huskissons?—it is a matter below notice! Experience is a vulgar, mechanical thing, which plods at the plough-tail, the desk, and the counter; it deals in low-bred stale realities; it is no Economist or currency philosopher; and it treads the finest opinions of "economical science" in the dirt as unceremoniously as those of the uninformed hind; of course it must be disregard ed when it contradicts the writings of the enlightened Economists who were strangers to it, and had no practical knowledge of the subject on which they wrote. Actual experiment may be safely followed in individual matters; you may listen to it in the building of your dwelling, otherwise the latter may chance to bury you under its ruins; you may even obey it in the making of a pud

ding, for one composed of prussic acid and gravel might be neither palatable nor nutritious; but in public affairs it must never be attended to. In the latter, whenever experience contradicts abstract opinion, it must be despised. If such opinion, in its application, take away the bread of the workman and the capital of the employer-if it involve the empire in ruin, it is still unerring, and must be religiously adhered to, in spite of all that physical demonstration may offer to the contrary.

This is what is practically taught and acted on. In the last half century the country has been dragged through every variety of experiment in political economy; the results completely falsify all the principal doctrines of the Economists, but nevertheless they are treated with derision; and the doctrines are as confidently appealed to, as though their truth could not be impeached.

Its character shews very clearly its guilty parentage. For many years the leaders of the Whigs have been, in general, mere political adventurers; they have been men possessed of no stake in the public weal; traders in politics, who could not afford to look at any interests but their own, and whose interests were eternally at variance with those of the empire. Incapable of acquiring public confidence, and of triumphing as a party by combating for public benefit, these men have regularly contended as a faction, by attacking all established things. Every new doctrine, no matter how absurd, which assailed the policy and institutions of the empire, has been adopted by them, not because of its truth, but by reason of its use as a weapon of opposition. In this manner they have bound themselves to every thing which can distress and destroy the empire.

Every man who has paid attention to the conduct of these Whig leaders, must have seen ample proof that, in their attacks on the laws and institutions of the country, they have been principally actuated by party and factious motives. Their speeches, instead of displaying careful examination and cautious judgment, have been composed of puerile, commonplace declamation touching abstract principles, and have manifested ig norance, not more gross, than evi

dently intentional. When the Catholic question could serve them as a party, they pressed it, to the injury of every public interest; when it could not do this, they placed it on the shelf. When Reform could benefit them as a faction, they supported it by filling the country with convulsion and treason; when it could no longer do this, they abandoned it. Their conduct has been the same on questions involving the property and food of the population.

Men who so act can only escape utter ruin by looking solely at abstract principles; they are lost if they admit that actual facts and demonstrations, that real nature and consequences, are entitled to the least regard. These Whig leaders have been well aware of this. Solemnly pledged against the navigation laws, the restrictive system, the paper currency, the corn laws,-in a word, against every thing on which public prosperity rested; and so pledged for the vicious object of their personal aggrandizement, they have never deigned to glance at the fruits of what they have advocated.

They have not wholly escaped punishment. In all its sorrows and sufferings, the country has never suspected that they could relieve it; when it has sighed for a change of Ministry, it has never cast its eyes on them; distressed, hopeless, and detesting the conduct and measures of their opponents, it has still despised them as dolts, and hated them as aliens.

An upright and wise Ministry would have anxiously wished for an Opposition composed of these Whig traders, as one which would be necessarily for ever in the wrong, and covered with national animosity. But the Tory leaders became the reverse of upright and wise, and in consequence they became the instruments of such an Opposition, instead of beating it to the dust at the head of the country.

I say instruments advisedly. No one can look at the conduct of the present Ministers touching the repeal of the Test Acts and the Catholic question, and at their audacious avowal, that principle ought to be made subservient to expediency, that is, to personal profit, without believing that their general rule of action

has been, not conviction, but interest. Men who have acted and spoken as they have done, must be regarded as sordid traffickers in creeds, who are capable of professing and renouncing any and all for the sake of office.

They, too, have had their punishment. Saying nothing of the others Mr Peel's public life has been one continual course of despicable grovelling, mercenary faithlessness to principles and party; and now when the mask is wholly thrown awaywhen the smirking hypocrite is resolved into the shameless betrayer

his new principles break down with him in every particular. As soon as his apostasy is completed, the world sees that the creed it has given him is composed, throughout, of destructive ignorance and error. To every honest man this must be matter of rejoicing.

Thus, with the Whig leaders, Whiggism has been converted into a creed of national destruction;-free trade has been cried up, and paper currency has been cried down -for purposes of factious opposition and by the Tory leaders this Whiggism has been embraced as the means of possessing place and emolument. The Whig must attack Protestant rights, and defend Catholic treason; he must clamour for cheap bread, vituperate the aristocracy, rail against British monopolies, eulogise foreign trade, and insist on concessions to foreign nations,―he must do this though public ruin be the consequence, because it forms his only means of gaining party support, and crushing those who oppose him. And the fallen, degraded, liberal Tory must servilely echo all the Whig advances, though public ruin be the consequence, because it forms his only means of gaining that Whig alliance or neutrality, without which he cannot retain office.

The abstract principles are, therefore, with both, matters of guilty party and personal profit: of course their truth and products are not to be thought of. From the manner in which they are spoken of in Parliament, it might be concluded that the truth of such principles could not be affected by their products. Granting that one will, in practice, sever Ireland from England-that another will plunge millions into insolvency and

suffering and that a third will fill the empire with bankruptcy and hunger, they must still be rigorously acted on. Granting that they have yielded such fruits, it proves nothing against their beneficial nature. The profligacy is carried so far, that it virtually reverses the nature of things; it makes the weal of the community consist in loss and wretchedness, and renders it the first duty of government to scourge and dismember the empire.

It is because the ignorance is thus intentional, that it is so gross, invulnerable, and omnipotent. Refute the abstract principles in Parliament ! absurd!you might as well attempt to argue the brute into the body and spirit of man. Pray for enquiry to prove their baleful operation?-ridiculous!—because if you prove all you assert, it will prove nothing against them. You are treated as unworthy of argument, and are silenced by derision. Discussion and information are thus excluded from Parliament. The Holy Whig and Tory Fathers must preserve their political faith from the heresy of truth -they must canonize their saints, sell their relics, worship their images, exact credence to their legends, and consign unbelievers to the moral rack and faggot, because in this is involved their public existence. They are destroyed, if argument and fact be suffered to kindle the blaze of reformation.

The press naturally follows its parties, surpasses them in guilt, and covers every point which they are incapable of defending. What the combined Parliament dare not utter, is solemnly sworn to by the combined press; where shame suspends the labours of the former, the latter steps in and completes the work. The dominion of darkness and barbarism is in every quarter guarded by the doctrines of infallibility, lying legends, pretended miracles, and bulls of excommunication of the ghostly political priesthood of the combined press. This monkish body displays as much unscrupulous zeal in the propagation of error and suppression of truth, as the Papal priesthood ever displayed in the worst of times.

Say that the Holy Fathers-the Wellingtons and Hollands-the Huskissons and Broughams-the Peels

and Burdetts, can err; and this press dooms you to the stake for uttering such an impious impossibility.

The shipowner, on attempting to charter his vessel, is told that he must take a losing freight, or a foreign vessel will be employed;-the silk manufacturer, on offering his goods for sale, is told by the mercers that he must take a bad price, or they will buy of foreigners; in many cases he is told his goods are so inferior to foreign ones, that they must be refused at any price; the farmer knows that he cannot sell his wool, because foreign is used instead of it, and that if his general prices were a little higher, the market would be glutted with foreign produce. The causes which distress and ruin them are thus matters of obvious, unquestionable fact, which will not admit of mistake. Nevertheless, this press swears by heaven and earth that they are ignorant of their own trades, are strangers to the causes of their injury, and are hugely benefited by their foreign competitors.

Is the shipping interest, or any other, in distress, this press protests that it is in the highest prosperity. Is the whole community overwhelmed with misery, this press declares that the evil has been produced solely by itself, and not in the least by any measures of government. Does any part of the nation petition the legislature for relief-pray for enquiry into the source of its sufferings

and offer to point out this source by indisputable proofs,-this press covers it with ridicule and abuse, and insists that its prayers shall be treated with contempt. Are agriculture, manufactures, and trade, overrun with loss and bankruptcy-are the labouring orders starving-is the country a fearful scene of waste of property, pauperism, and wretchedness,-this press maintains that the causes shall not be enquired into, and that nothing shall be attempted in the way of remedy.

At the command of its infallible superiors, this press actually or practically proclaims that cheap corn benefits landlords and farmers-that a losing trade benefits the shipowners, silk manufacturers, &c.-that the labouring classes are benefited by bad wages and loss of employment-that the destruction of capital and trade

must enlarge them-that the country reaps vast profits from the giving away of its trade to foreign onesand that individual and general loss and hunger produce individual and general gain and abundance.

Of course the monkish priesthood of this press replies not to those who dissent from it, by argument and fact: it cannot bestow these on heretics. It destroys their character, public and private, and insists that they do not possess a vestige of knowledge and understanding. Refute it by decisive facts, and its answer is that you are a monster, a knave, or a lunatic; overthrow its creed and legends by convincing proof, and it proclaims you an outlaw and consigns you to perdition. Its weapons naturally are the anathema and excommunication; that they are not also transportation and the gallows, is clearly owing to the state of the law.

One great cause of this appalling state of things is to be found in the degeneracy of the Aristocracy. Heretofore this body combined much patriotism with its party spirit, but it is now the degraded slave of personal politics. Only a few years ago, county and other public meetings were held to petition for Reform or against the property tax, to vote addresses in favour of the Ministry, or to promote other subjects of still smaller comparative importance. But now when the community is struggling with unexampled suffering, and the empire is threatened with ruin, no such meetings can be mentioned. The country gentleman could risk person and fortune in the cause of party and faction; but he can risk nothing in that of his country: he could exhaust effort in creating convulsion, deranging the finances, and labouring to give office to one knot of public men, or preserve it to another; but he cannot stir a finger in endeavouring to arrest the progress of general insolvency, give bread to the millions of his starving countrymen, and place public affairs under the direction of honesty and right principle. He sees his tenants in ruin, and their labourers without necessaries; he feels that his rents are departing, and his property is undergoing practical confiscation; but he is still mute and motionless. There is no ministry to

please, no party to serve, no faction to benefit, by exertion; the cause is that of patriotism and humanity against them, therefore the spiritless, cringing, grovelling bondsman puts the yoke on his neck, hangs the chains on his limbs, and, even to the sacrifice of his own estate, submits to be made an instrument in protecting and enlarging the fearful evils. make no distinction between Whig and Tory. While agriculture is distressed as it is, not even a petition to Parliament has been spoken of in any quarter!

Looking in Parliament, what are those who still, though most unworthily, bear the name of country gentlemen? One part are the humble tools of this minister, and another of that; a third must servilely follow their whig connexions; and a fourth, though they profess hostility to both the ministry and the whigs, cannot on any account oppose them. With them, persons are every thing, and principles nothing; the selfsame measures, they will oppose in one ministry or party, and support in another. Looking out of Parliament, it is still person, and person only, which must be regarded. This batch of Peers, for weighty personal reasons, goes with the ministry; that, for similar reasons, sanctions the present system of policy; and the gentlemen of the county cannot be so refractory as to refuse to imitate them. Principles are of course out of the question.

It naturally follows, that the ministry is above the influence of the country gentlemen; it knows their abject servility, and despises them; all it has to do is to buy up the leading Peers. These Peers know that they can drag their abject followers to any thing, therefore they go to the extreme of corruption.

Another great cause is to be found in the conduct of too many of those who oppose the present system. These worthy people, with trembling humility, protest in every third sentence against imputing motives, condemning conduct, and the use of strong language. Let one minister deceive his friends, betray his cause, and exhibit the darkest specimen of apostasy on record-he is still a most pure and honourable person. Let another minister trample on the

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