Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 70, No. 434, December, 1851

TO THE SHOPKEEPERS OF GREAT BRITAIN

Gentlemen, – As it is customary for most men about this season of the year, when accounts are balanced and squared, to take a serious survey of the posture of their affairs, and to examine into their business prospects, perhaps you may not consider a few observations, touching the welfare and position of that important class of the community to which you belong, either impertinent or ill-timed. You are aware that, for the last year or two, Her Majesty's Ministers have been in the habit of opening Parliament with a congratulatory assurance of the continued, and even augmented, prosperity of the country. The reason why such statements were made, altogether irrespective of their truth or falsehood, is obvious enough. In a political point of view, they were necessary for the vindication of the measures which Government either originated or adopted. To have admitted that the country was not prospering under the new commercial system, would have been considered by the public as tantamount to an acknowledgment that the policy which dictated those measures was vicious; and that the Whig ministry, if not deficient in duty, had at least erred sorely in judgment. In private life, we rarely meet with that degree of candour which amounts to an unequivocal admission of error in point of judgment – in public life, such an admission is altogether unknown. Failure may indeed be acknowledged when the fact becomes too evident to admit of further denial; but the causes of that failure are never attributed to their real source. Not only the purity of the motive, but the wisdom of the conception, is vindicated to the last. In this case, however, failure is totally denied. So far from being put upon their defence, the Whigs maintain that they have achieved a triumph. Their averment is, that, with the exception of the agricultural producers, among whom they allow that a certain degree of distress prevails, all other classes of the community are prosperous. Even for the agriculturists there is balm in store. The prosperity of the other classes is to react upon them; so that, within some indefinite period of time, we shall all find ourselves in circumstances of ease and comfort which have hitherto been unknown in our land.

With you the benefit is represented, not as prospective, but as present. The agriculturist may have to wait a little longer, but you are already provided for. Your cake is baked; and we are assured that you are eating it in thankfulness and joy. If this is really the case, there is no more to be said on the subject. If the harvest of Free Trade has actually yielded you such a large measure of profit, it would be madness in anyone to decry that line of policy in your hearing. You constitute the class which, from its peculiar position and vocation, is better qualified than any other to judge accurately, and from experience, of the degree of prosperity which is actually known in the country. The verdict of twelve shopkeepers, given after an inspection of their books for an average of years, ought to be of more weight, in settling the merits of any disputed commercial question, than the random assurances of a dozen cabinet ministers whose reputation and official existence are bound up in the vindication of their own policy. The reason of this is perfectly obvious. Your profit is simply a commission upon your sales. You do not produce or manufacture articles of consumption – you simply retail them. Your profit depends upon the briskness of trade, that is, the amount of demand. It rises or falls according to the general circumstances of your customers. In good times you make large profits; in bad times those profits decrease. One while your stock sells off rapidly; at another, it remains upon your hands. Your interest is inseparable from that of the great body of consumers by whom you live. You have little or nothing to do with the foreign trade; for, whatever be the nature, of the articles in which you deal, you sell them in the home market. You have, therefore, the best opportunity of estimating the real condition of your customers. The state of your own books, and the comparative degree of ease or difficulty which you experience in the collection of your accounts, furnish you with a sure index of the purchasing power of the community. Compared with this criterion, which is common to every man among you, tables of exports and imports, statements of bank bullion, and such like artificial implements as have been invented by the political impostors and economists, are absolutely worthless. When our sapient Chancellor of the Exchequer, or Mr Labouchere, tell you, with an air of unbounded triumph, that the exportation of calicoes to China or Peru has mightily increased – and therefore argue, without condescending to inquire whether such exportation has been attended with any profit at all to the manufacturers, that the prosperity of the country is advancing at a railway pace – you may indeed be gratified by the statistical information, but you will fail to discover in what way the public are benefited thereby. It is pleasant to know that there are fifteen millions of gold in the vaults of the Bank of England, and that, so long as this hoard remains undiminished, there is little chance of a commercial crisis, or a violent contraction of credit. But we take it you would be infinitely better pleased to know that sovereigns were circulating freely from hand to hand amongst the people, and that your customers had their pockets so well filled as to enable them to purchase largely, and to pay their accounts when due. To you any depression whatever is a serious matter – a depression which assumes a permanent appearance cannot be much short of ruin. Therefore you ought most especially to take care that no false representation is made regarding your circumstances, which may be the means of perpetuating a system that has already proved detrimental to a large body of your customers.

Were we to take for granted the ministerial statement of prosperity – which no doubt will be repeated next February – your Whig minister being an incorrigible cuckoo – this paper would certainly not have been written. But, having had occasion early to doubt the truthfulness of this vernal note, and having taken some pains to examine the statements which from time to time are issued by the great houses engaged in commercial and manufacturing industry, as also the accounts of the present condition of the poor, which have excited so much public interest, we have really been unable to discover any one influential class, beyond the money-lenders and creditors, or any one large and important branch of industry, which can, with truth, be described as prospering, or will confess to the existence of such prosperity. Shipmasters, manufacturers, merchants, iron-masters, and agriculturists, all tell the same tale. This is very strange. You may possibly remember that Mr M'Gregor, once Secretary to the Board of Trade, and now member for Glasgow, the great commercial city of Scotland, estimated the additional amount of wealth which was to accrue to Great Britain, in consequence of the repeal of the Corn Laws, at two millions sterling per week! Upon what data that profound gentleman, who thus enunciated the prophecy and assumed the mask of Midas, proceeded in his calculation, we know not, and perhaps it would be superfluous to inquire. It certainly was a good round sum; for, by this time, without insisting upon compound, or even simple interest, it should have amounted to rather more than one-half of the national debt; but unfortunately nobody will own to having fingered a farthing of the money. In recalling to your memory this little circumstance, it is by no means our intention to offer any disrespect to the intellectual powers of M'Gregor, for whom, indeed, we entertain a high degree of veneration, similar to that which is manifested by the Mussulman when he finds himself in the company of a howling derveesh. We merely wish to reproduce to you one phantom of the golden dream, which, five or six years ago, when the fever of gain was epidemical, possessed the slumbers of so many; and having done so, to ask you, now that the fever is gone, whether it was not indeed a phantom? We are wiser now – at all events, we have had more experience – and the producing classes tell us very distinctly, and quite unanimously, that they have derived no benefit whatever from the commercial changes which have taken place. Capital, whether invested in ships, factories, mines, or land, is less profitable, and therefore less valuable, than it was before; and in some instances, where the depression has been most heavy, it has been almost annihilated.

These are not our statements, but the statements of the several interests, as put forward by their own representatives. They are statements which emanate alike from the Free-Trader and the Protectionist. Men may differ as to the cause, but they all agree as to the grand fact of the depression. So that, when we hear ministers congratulating themselves and the country upon its general prosperity, and, pari passu with this congratulation, find the accredited organs of each of the great branches of productive industry vehemently asserting that they are exceptions from the general rule, an anxious believer in the probity of all parties has his faith somewhat rudely shaken.

We believe that, collectively, you are the best judges as to this disputed matter. As the real wealth of the country depends upon the amount and value of its yearly produce – as from that annual creation, when measured by the monetary standard, and circulated through a thousand channels, all our incomes are derived – you, who supply the whole population with the necessaries and luxuries of life, (fabricated by others, but passing through your hands,) must necessarily have the best means of knowing whether the circumstances of that population have, on the aggregate, been bettered or made worse. When Napoleon in the bitterness of his heart declared that we were a nation of shopkeepers, he uttered no terms of reproach, though he intended to convey a taunt. Your position in the community is such that you cannot flourish independent of its general prosperity. The exporting manufacturer, and even the foreign merchant, may multiply their gains, and realise fortunes, whilst other classes, whose wellbeing is far more important to the stability of the empire, are hastening to decay. Such phenomena are common in old states, when the process of dissolution has begun. The parasite lives and thrives, while the tree round which it has wound its tendrils is crumbling into rottenness. But such is not your case. Your interests are identical with those of the productive classes, for without them you could not exist. Ill-remunerated labour – unproductive capital – lessened means – deteriorated property – are things which affect you as deeply as though you were the direct sufferers or losers. Upon the wealth of your customers depends your own. And therefore, in such an important crisis as the present, when the existing commercial system of the country is vigorously assailed by one party, and as obstinately defended by another – when facts and statements apparently of much weight are adduced on either side, to serve as arguments for the overthrow or the maintenance of that system – when some cite statistical tables to prove that the country must be prosperous, and others adduce real evidence to show that the reverse is the case – you cannot afford to sit idly by, without throwing the weight of your testimony and experience into one or other of the scales. You have had admirable opportunities of noticing the working of the Free-Trade system. It matters not what were the original prepossessions of any of you, or what might have been your opinion with regard to the merits of this or that scheme, while it was still in embryo and untried. A more complex question than that of Free Trade, as affecting the importation of corn, probably never was presented to the public consideration. Many excellent, judicious, and thoroughly patriotic men, relying upon the truth of statements which were regarded by others as mere plausible theories, were willing to submit to the experiment. And when, by the grossest act of political perfidy that was ever perpetrated – an act which future times, if not the present, will stigmatise with deserved opprobrium – the last and most important change, save that which subsequently assailed our maritime interest, was suddenly effected, it was the declared opinion of the majority that the new system must at least have a trial, until its real results were developed, and until it became apparent to the nation whether or not Free Trade would operate for the advantage of the people, as its advocates and promoters had predicted.

Here we must, for a moment or two, however unwillingly, digress. The later measures of Free Trade have assailed interests so important and so strong, that its former and earlier advances, stealthily and cautiously made, have almost faded from the public view. Free Trade, as a political system, did not alone strike at the agricultural or the shipping interest. Since the days of Mr Huskisson, who brought with him into active life the principles which he had imbibed in youth from his associates in French Jacobinism, the principles of Free Trade have been gradually but cautiously applied to various branches of British industry. The slow and insidious nature of the movement on the part of the statesmen, who, even then, were yielding to the influence of the modern economical school, showed their distrust of the system, which, if true, ought at once to have been openly promulgated. Like the late Sir Robert Peel, Huskisson was destitute of that manly courage which scorns concealment or deceit, and walks steadfastly to its goal. Cunning was an ingredient of his nature: whatever he did was accomplished by tortuous methods, and vindicated upon false pretences. The tendency of that policy which he commenced was to maintain by all means, at all hazards, and at the sacrifice, if needful, of every other interest, the manufacturing supremacy, of England in the foreign market – an object for which we still are striving, though at the imminent risk of the dismemberment of the British empire. It is due, however, to the memory of Mr Huskisson, to remark, that, although the originator of this policy, he does not seem to have contemplated the extent to which it would be carried out by his successors. His opinions upon the subject of protection to agriculture were clear and decided: "There is no effectual security, either in peace or war, against the frequent return of scarcity, but in making ourselves independent of foreign supply. Let the bread we eat be the produce of corn grown among ourselves; and, for one, I care not how cheap it is – the cheaper the better. It is cheap now, and I rejoice at it, because it is altogether owing to a sufficiency of corn of our own growth; but, to insure a continuance of that cheapness, and that sufficiency, we must insure to our own growers protection against foreign importation, which has produced those blessings, and by which alone they can be permanently maintained." The time, however, was fast approaching when the reins of government were to fall into the hands of a scion of the manufacturing body, in whose eyes the momentary supremacy of party was of more importance than any principle of national policy. There is no more curious page in history than that which records the rise of British manufactures towards the close of last century. Invention after invention, whereby manual labour was superseded by machinery, and the power of production almost indefinitely multiplied, paved the way for that monopoly which our manufacturers enjoyed for at least a quarter of a century, during which time every other country in Europe except our own was devastated by war, and the peaceful arts forgotten or overthrown. It was during that period that the gigantic fortunes of the Arkwrights and the Peels were made, and that influence secured to the manufacturing body in the British House of Commons which it never possessed before. But with the return of peace the monopoly disappeared. By invention in mechanical appliances, Britain had the start of other nations in the creation of manufactures; by war, she was enabled long to enjoy the undivided benefits. But inventions are not the property of a single nation; they pass from one to another with the rapidity of lightning; they are available by the foreign, even more easily than by the domestic, rival. Hence it very soon became apparent that other states were preparing to compete with us in those branches of industry which had proved so exceedingly profitable. France, Belgium, Germany, Russia, Switzerland, and America, all entered keenly into the contest; and then commenced that decline of prices which has continued, almost without intermission, to the present hour. Reciprocity treaties were tried, but were in fact of little avail; for the great bulk of the English exports consisted of those very textile fabrics which it was the object of each country to produce for its own consumption, if not to export to others. During the war, both the expenses of government and the interest of the National Debt had doubled in amount, and the monetary changes effected in 1819 added at least one-third to the weight of that augmented burden. In order to make this taxation bearable, the industry of the people was protected in their own market by a scale of customs duties, which prevented the influx of foreign produce at rates which must have annihilated the British workman. Protection is a clear necessity which arises out of taxation. If the tobacco, tea, coffee, sugar, beer, soap, and other articles of the labourer's consumption, are taxed in order to maintain an expensive establishment, and to defray the interest of an enormous debt, he must have a compensation of some kind. The only kind of compensation which can be granted, and which the wit of man can devise, is to be found in an equitable scale of duties, by means of which all produce imported into Britain shall be taxed as heavily as though it had been reared, grown, or made up on British ground by British labourers. Unless this be done, there is no fair competition. The less burdened foreigner must ultimately carry the day against the heavily-taxed Englishman. And when we consider that all taxes must be paid out of produce, there being no other source whatever from which they can be drawn, the importance of maintaining the market value of our produce at a point equal to the pressure of our taxation will at once become apparent.

There are, however, plausible, though in reality most fallacious grounds, upon which the Protective System may be assailed. In this, as in every other country, the first and most important branch of industry is that which provides food for the population. To that all others are subordinate. It is impossible to estimate the amount of capital which has been laid out upon the soil of Britain, first in reclaiming it from a state of nature, and, since then, in maturing and increasing its fruitfulness. But some idea may be formed of its magnitude from the fact that, in 1846, the annual agricultural produce of the United Kingdom was valued, according to the prices then current, at £250,000,000. Whatever imperial taxation is imposed on other classes of the community is shared equally by the agriculturists; and they are, moreover, exposed to heavy local rates, from which the others are comparatively free. It is a received maxim in political economy – we ought rather to say a rule of common sense – that all taxes and charges paid by the producer, over and above his necessary profit, fail ultimately to be defrayed by the consumer – that is, that such taxes and charges form a component part of the selling price of the article. There is no specialty whatever in the case of corn or provisions to exempt them from the general rule. But all restrictions which tend to enhance the price of the first necessaries of life are obnoxious to that section of the people who, from ignorance or incapacity, cannot understand why bread should be dear in one country and cheap in another. They, too, are subjected to their share of indirect taxation, and the knowledge that they are so taxed in the consumption of articles which constitute their only luxuries, renders them doubly impatient of a system which, on the authority of wicked and designing demagogues, they are led to believe was invented by the landlords solely for their own benefit. Thus heavy taxation, however engendered, must always be fraught with great peril to the permanency of a state. The burden of such taxation falls most heavily upon the land, and yet the agriculturist is expected to provide food for the people as cheaply as though he were altogether exempt from the burden.

The reason why the exporting manufacturers, and those politicians who entered thoroughly into their views, were so bent upon the destruction of the Corn Laws, was twofold. In the first place, the competition in foreign markets threatened to become so strong, owing to the rapid development of textile industry on the Continent, that it was necessary to lower prices. England had given machinery and models to the Continent, and the Continent was now fighting her with her own weapons, and at a cheaper cost, as labour abroad is less expensive than it is here. In order to bring down the value of labour in England, for the purpose of protracting this grand manufacturing contest, it was necessary to lower, in some way or other, the price of food in England, and this could only be accomplished by free admission of foreign supplies. In short, their object was to bring down wages. On this point we have the testimony of Mr Muntz, M.P. for Birmingham, as early as February 1842. He wrote as follows: – "Say what you will, the object of the measure is to reduce wages, and the intention is to reduce them to the Continental level. I repeat it, the Corn Laws very materially support labour in this country… Why, the professed object of the repeal is to enable the English merchant to compete with the foreigner, and how can he do that unless by a reduction of wages, which reduction will be upon all trade, home and foreign?" Mr John Bright was not less clear as to the necessity of such reduction of wages in order to maintain our exports: "If the tariff in Russia imposed a heavy duty on English yarn, and if English yarn went there and had to be sold at the same rate as the yarn of the Russian spinner, he (that is, the Russian spinner) not paying the heavy duty, it followed that we must, by some means or other, make our goods cheaper by the amount of duty which we paid, and to do that it was absolutely necessary that the wages of the operatives in this country should be reduced." And Mr Greg of Manchester, a leading member of the Anti-Corn Law League, wrote as follows: – "In the only remaining item of the cost of production – that is, the wages of labour – foreign nations have a decided advantage; and although a free trade in provisions, by lowering them here, and raising them abroad, might regulate the difference, I doubt if it ever could be entirely removed. Better education, more sober habits, more frugality, and general forethought, together with cheaper food, will no doubt enable our people to live in much greater comfort than at present UPON CONSIDERABLY SMALLER EARNINGS." These extracts sufficiently disclose the designs of the Free-Traders against the wages of the workman. In the second place, it was believed by many of them, that, by sacrificing the agriculturists, they would be able to turn the attention of other countries, especially America, from the prosecution of their rising manufactures. They argued, that if we were to surrender and secure our provision market to foreign states, they would return the compliment by allowing us to manufacture for them – in other words, that the foreigners were to feed England, and England was to clothe the foreigners! This precious scheme has since been avowed, seriously and gravely, by men who have seats in the present House of Commons; and, so far as we can understand their language, the philosophers of the Edinburgh Review consider this a most sensible arrangement!

The agricultural interest, however, was of too great magnitude to be attacked at once. Several outworks were to be gained before the citadel was summoned to surrender. Accordingly Mr Huskisson began, and Sir Robert Peel continued, that system of commercial relaxations, (which, some five-and-twenty years ago, was exposed and denounced in this Magazine,) annihilating some branches of industry and depressing others – pauperising whole districts, as in the Highlands, and merging the villages in the towns – until the time seemed ripe, and the opportunity propitious, for the accomplishment of the grand design. It is not now necessary to dwell upon the circumstances which attended the change in the Corn and Navigation Laws – these are still fresh in the memory of all of us, and will not soon be forgotten. Our object in this digression was simply to remind you that Free Trade, in its insidious and stealthy progress, has warred with other interests than those which belong to the agricultural and the maritime classes.