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BLACKWOOD'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCLXXXVII.

JANUARY, 1818.

VOL. LXIII.

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THIRTY YEARS OF LIBERAL LEGISLATION.

"EXPERIENCE," says Dr Johnson, "is the great test of truth, and is perpetually contradicting the theories of men. "If an empire," said Napoleon, “were made of granite, it would soon be reduced to powder by political economists." Never was there a period when the truths stated by these master minds were so clearly and strikingly illustrated as the present; never was there an epoch when the necessity was so fearfully evinced of casting off the speculative dogmas of former times, and shaping our course by the broad light which experience has thrown on human transactions. If this is done, if wisdom is learnt by experience, and error expelled by suffering, it is yet possible to remedy the evils; though not before a frightful and yet unfelt amount of misery has been encountered by the people.

For the last thirty years, the liberal party have had the almost uncontrolled direction of the affairs of the nation. One by one, they have beat down all the ancient safeguards of British industry, and given effect to the whole theoretical doctrines of the political economists. So complete has been their ascendency in the national councils-so entire in general the acquiescence of the nation in their direction, that without one single exception ALL their doctrines have been carried into practice; and the year 1847 exhibits a fair, and it may be presumed average result of the liberal

VOL. LXIII.—NO. CCCLXXXVII.

system when reduced into execution. The result is so curious, its lessons so pregnant with instruction, its warning of coming disaster so terrible, that we gladly avail ourselves of the opening of a new year, to portray them in a few paragraphs to our readers.

The first great change which took place in British policy was in 1819, by the famous Bank Restriction Act, passed in that year. Every one knows that the obligation on the Bank of England to pay in specie, was sus pended by Mr Pitt in February 1797; and that under that system the empire continued to rise with all the difficulties with which it was surrounded, until in the latter years of the war it bore without difficulty

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annual expenditure of from £110,000,000 to £120,000,000 annually. But under the new system introduced in 1819, the currency was restricted by imposing on the bank the obligation of paying its notes, when presented, not in gold or silver, but in GOLD ALONE. The currency was based on the article in commerce most difficult to keep, most easy of transport, most ready to slip awaythe most precious of the precious metals. The result has been that the nation,-which, with a population of 18,000,000 of souls, raised without difficulty £71,000,000 annually by taxes, and from £30,000,000 to £40,000,000 annually by loans in 1813, 1814, and 1815, of which at least a half was sent abroad, and

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wholly lost to the nation-is now, with a population of 28,000,000, not able to raise in round numbers above £51,000,000 on an average of years by taxation, and is brought to the verge of ruin by the purchase of £33,000,000 worth of foreign grain in 1846 and 1847, and the expenditure of £35,000,000 in 1846, and £25,000,000 in the first six months of 1847 on domestic railways, every shilling of which last sum was spent at home, and puts in motion industry within the nation.

The next great change was made in the year 1821, when the reciprocity system was introduced by Mr Huskisson. This subject has acquired great importance now, from the avowed intention on the part of government, scarcely disguised in the opening speech of this session of Parliament, to follow up the labours of the committee which made such laborious inquiries last session, by a bill for the total abolition of the Navigation Laws. We shall not enlarge on this subject, the vastness and importance of which would require a separate paper. Suffice it to say, therefore, that here too, experience has decisively warned us of the pernicious tendency of the path on which we have entered, and of the truth of Adam Smith's remark, that " though

some of the regulations of this famous act may have proceeded from national animosity, they are all as wise as if dictated by the most deliberate wisdom. As defence is of much more importance than opulence, the act of Navigation is perhaps the wisest of all the commercial regulations of England.” * It appears from the parliamentary tables compiled by Mr Porter, that, while the British tonnage with the Baltic powers had increased from 1801 to 1821, under the protective system, to a very considerable degree, theirs with us had declined during the same period; under the reciprocity system, our tonnage with them had on the whole decreased to a third of its former amount, while their shipping with us had, during the same period, quadrupled.† It further appears, from the same tables, that the great increase which has taken place during the same period, has arisen from the prodigious growth of our colonial trade, or increase of the countries with whom we had concluded no reciprocity treaties, but left them on the footing of the protection of the old Navigation Laws. And though the profits of shipping of all sorts have received a vast addition, from the enormous importations consequent upon Sir R. Peel's free-trade measures, yet the returns of these years prove that the greater part of this

* Wealth of Nations, vol. ii. b. iv. c. ii. P. 195.

Table showing the British and Foreign tonnage with Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Prussia since the Reciprocity treaties with these powers in 1821.

SWEDEN.

NORWAY.

DENMARK.

PRUSSIA.

British Foreign British Foreign British Foreign British Foreign
Tonnage. Tonnage. Tonnage. Tonnage. Tonnage. Tonnage. Tonnage. Tonnage.

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increase has accrued to foreign states and powers, which may at any time turn the maritime resources thus acquired against ourselves. Suffice it to say, as an example of this truth, that of the ships which, in 1846, imported four million nine hundred thousand quarters of corn into the British harbours, no less than three-fourths were foreign vessels, and only one fourth British. Nevertheless, so insensible are political fanatics to the most decisive facts, when they militate against their favourite theories, that it is in the full knowledge of these facts that government are understood to be prepared to introduce, even in this session of parliament, a measure for the abolition, or at least the essential abrogation, of the Navigation Laws.

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The third great change made during the last quarter of a century has been in the government of Ireland. Here, if any where, the liberal system has received its full development, and has had the fairest opportunity for displaying its unmixed blessings. The Catholic disabilities, which we had been told for thirty years were the main cause of its distressed condition, were repealed in 1829. A large measure of parliamentary reform-larger than the most vehement Irish patriots ventured to dream of was conceded in 1832. Corporate reform succeeded in 1834; the Protestant corporations were dispossessed of power; the entire management of all the boroughs of the kingdom was put into the hands of the Romish multitude; and a large portion of the county magistracy were, by the appointment of successive liberal Lords Chancellor, drawn from the better part of those of the same religious persuasion. The Protestant clergy were deprived of a fourth of their incomes to appease the Romish Cerberus; and, to avoid the vexation of collecting tithes from persons of a different religious belief, they were laid directly as a burden on the land; Maynooth was supported by annual grants from government; the system of national education was modified so as to please the Roman Catholic clergy. Monster meetings, where sedition was always, treason often, spoken, headed by O'Connell, were allowed to go on, without the slightest

opposition, for two years; and when at length the evil had risen to such a height that it could no longer be endured, the leading agitator, after being convicted in Ireland, was liberated, in opposition to the opinion of a great majority of the twelve judges, by the casting-vote in the House of Peers of a Whig law-Lord. British liberality, when the season of distress came, was extended to the famishing Irish with unheard-of munificence; and while the Highlanders, who suffered equally under the potato failure, got nothing but from the never-failing kindness of British charity, Ireland, besides its full share of that charity, received a national grant of TEN MILLIONS STERLING, of which no less than eight millions were borrowed by Great Britain.

What have been the results? Has crime decreased, and industry improved, and civilisation advanced, under the liberal system? Has attachment to the British government become universal, and hatred of the stranger worn out, in consequence of the leniency with which they have been treated, and the unparalleled generosity with which their wants have been supplied? The facts are notoriously and painfully the reverse. Hatred of the Saxon was never so general or so vehement; idleness and recklessness were never so widespread; destitution was never so universal; life and property was never so insecure,-as after this long system of concession, and these unparalleled acts of private and public generosity. The Irish Repealers declare, that though Ireland, like England, has been blessed with an uncommonly fine harvest, there are four millions of persons in that country in a state of hopeless misery; and supposing, as is probably the case, that this statement is exaggerated, the authentic reports to Parliament on the state of the poor prove that there are above two millions of paupers, or a full fourth of the population, in a state verging on starvation. A new so-called Coercion Bill has been brought into Parliament in consequence of the great increase of crimes of violence, and, above all, of cold-blooded murders; and on the necessity that existed for its introduction the present Secretary

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195

Making a total of cases, Looking at the districts in which these crimes were committed, he found that the total number of all those crimes committed in three of the counties of Ireland, i. e., Clare, Limerick, and Tipperary, was to the whole of Ireland as 139 to 175, or that 71 per cent of the whole amount of crime was committed in those three counties, which did not include more than 13 per cent of all Ireland."

Such has been the result of liberal government during twenty years in Ireland. And it is particularly worthy of notice, that the three counties in which this unenviable pre-eminence of atrocious crime exists, viz., Clare, Limerick, and Tipperary, are precisely those in which the Romish faith is most inveterate, and the authority of the priesthood most unbounded.

The next great change introduced by the liberal party, was by the carrying through of the Reform Bill, and settling the constitution upon an

entirely new basis by the act of 1832. We do not propose at present to resume any part of that great debate, in which at the time this Magazine took so prominent a part. We have seen no cause to change any of the opinions then expressed, and only pray God that the predictions then made may not be too faithfully verified. As little shall we inquire whether the changes which have since ensued, and under which the nation is now so grievously labouring, are or are not to be ascribed to the constitution of government as then framed, and the urban ascendency which the bestowing of two-thirds of the seats in the House of Commons upon towns necessarily occasioned; we are content to accept the constitution, as newmodelled by the Reform Bill, as the constitution of ourselves and our children, and to support it as such. We know that by it the government of the country is substantially vested in the majority of eight hundred thousand electors. We aim only at explaining facts and dispelling illusions to these electors. Suffice it to say, therefore, that, whether the Reform Bill has worked for good or for evil as regards the industrious classes; whether it has substituted or not substituted moneyed for landed ascendency; whether or not the first devil has

been expelled, but straightway he has returned with seven other devils worse than himself, and the last state of the man is worse than the first-in any of these cases the liberal party have got nothing to say, and have no title to complain of the results which have followed. They got every thing their own way; they remodelled the constitution according to the devices of their own hearts; and if they are now suffering, they are reaping the fruits of the seed which they themselves have sown.

But of all the innovations of the liberal party, that of which the consequences have been most disastrous within the sphere of their immediate influence, and which have now been demonstrated in the most decisive way by the results of experience, are the changes they have made on our West India colonies. They exhibit a series of alterations so perilous, so irrational, so disastrous, that we do

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