Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 423, January 1851

Are all the wonders prophets told
But wild delusive dreams?
And can it be that human mould
Is but the clay it seems?

Shall love and virtue live on earth,
And with the earth decay?
Shall faith, and hope, and stainless worth,
Pass like a dream away?

Come forth, thou false and subtle sage!
Creation read aright!
Cast off the gathering mists of age,
And clear thy clouded sight!

Throw down, throw down the guilty pen —
Break off the stubborn mask:
The creed thou dar'st assert to men,
Its truth of Nature ask!

At morn, at noon, or sacred eve,
On land or on the sea,
The lightest sound thy step may leave
Shall breathe "Eternity!"

Come tread with me this dizzy height,
And, through this waste of air,
Gaze out upon the forms of night —
What is thine answer there?

The moonlit fields of waving corn,
That ripening harvests fill —
The bubbling springs where lakes are born,
To man subservient still —

All speak of His unbounded love
Who caused those streams to flow,
Who fed those fields from founts above,
And made the harvest grow.

And wheresoe'er the broad moon's rays
In matchless beauty fall,
They mirror forth to thoughtful gaze
The Hand that fashioned all.

There's not a plant upon the earth,
There's not a tree nor flower,
But bears the stamp of heavenly birth,
The proof of heavenly power.

The very leaf on which you tread
Was wrought with wondrous hand, —
A fragment of a volume dread
That speaks to every land:

A book unchanged from age to age —
The same since time began:
For Nature is a living page
That preaches God to man!

    Charles Wilton.

BRITISH LABOUR AND FOREIGN RECIPROCITY.[29 - The Harmony of Interests, Agricultural, Manufacturing, and Commercial. Skinner, Philadelphia.]

We hear a great deal at the present day, not only from pretended philanthropists, but from well-meaning and conscientious people, about the "Rights of Labour." In fact, the term has become so hackneyed that very rarely is any popular speech delivered from a hustings, or elsewhere, without its occurrence as a marked and leading principle, which the speaker is determined to uphold.

But general terms are almost always susceptible of wide and contradictory construction; and when we come to analyse this phrase, "the rights of labour," and to consider the different interpretations which have been passed upon it, we are forced to arrive at the conclusion, that very few of those who use the words have any distinct idea of the meaning which they ought to convey. One man considers "the rights of labour" as identical with the operation of the maxim which exhorts us "to buy in the cheapest, and to sell in the dearest market." Another defines those rights to mean, "a fair day's wage for a fair day's labour." And so the term is bandied about among us, repeated and reiterated, until it has fairly lost the semblance of anything like clear significance.

Meanwhile labour, in this country at least, is loudly calling for the recognition of its rights, whatever those rights may be – not for the shadow, but the substance; not for the name, but for the reality. Labour in Ireland is struck down and paralysed – paralysed in its first natural function and duty, the production of food, although millions of acres, capable of yielding large returns of cereal produce, are either unbroken or withdrawn from the tillage of the plough. Labour in Scotland is becoming daily less remunerative; the northern population is driven to emigrate by thousands, or to take refuge in the cities and towns already redundantly supplied. Wages are decreasing in the Lowlands; the poor-rate is multiplying fast; and the greatest source of our wealth, the iron trade, is in a state of lamentable prostration. Labour in England, by far the richest country of the three, is scarcely better remunerated. In the rural districts, we hear of lowered agricultural wages and growing discontent; in the towns, we are told of mills closed or put upon short time; and, from the metropolis and the larger cities, we have accounts of misery and destitution which, did they reach us from missionaries in a heathen land, would fill our souls with horror, and our hearts with righteous indignation.

To that call, proceeding from the labourers themselves, we cannot and we dare not turn a deaf ear. We must listen to it, appalling as it is; and examine into the cause of it, if we wish society to remain as it has been. We must allow no preconceived ideas or impressions, generated, perhaps, by the delusions of the last few years, or of many years, to stand in our way when so frightful a calamity approaches as the destitution and demoralisation of the working and producing classes of this mighty empire; for we may as well expect a fabric to stand after its foundations have been worn away, as suppose that a state can exist without the support of those who are, in reality, the artificers of its whole wealth and produce.

Would to heaven we could persuade men to throw aside, not for a time, but for ever, their party notions, and, what is still more difficult, their selfish interests; and induce them to look this great question broadly and fairly in the face! They will not find it treated of in their politico-economical treatises – those wretched collections of sophisms compiled by the dullest and most blear-eyed of mankind, which have been accepted in our day as monuments of transcendent wisdom. They will not find the question mooted at all in the tomes of their conceited statists: but if they step beyond that dreary range, and go forth into the scenes of busy life, they will hear it discussed, always eagerly, sometimes ably, sometimes incompetently, in the workshop, the forge, the factory, the cottage, and the mine; and they may then form some idea of the importance which the working-classes attach to that much-abused term – "the Rights of Labour."

The mere general discussion of such a point implies that there is something amiss, either in our social or in our commercial and national system. With regard to the first, we think there can be no argument. Unless some totally new evangel has been reserved for these latter days, Socialism, as it is understood on the Continent, and even partially among ourselves, is a wild and miserable delusion. It has been tried, over and over again, under circumstances far more favourable for its development than any which are likely to occur again, and has invariably failed. Nay, the tendency of Liberalism has been to sweep what modified Socialism might exist in a civilised community away. Guilds, corporations, the chartered privileges of burghs, have all vanished, or been reduced to shadows, and nothing is now permitted to stand between the employer and the employed. Socialism, through the law, can have no existence. It may, indeed, lawfully rear and extend itself, if it can, on its own simple merits; but, tried by that test, it simply resolves itself into a new form of labour, liable to competition as before, and powerless to affect prices, by which labour must ever be estimated.

Our firm and fixed belief is, that what are termed social grievances are simply the consequence of a faulty or erroneous commercial and national system. Vapid and superficial writers have talked a great deal about what they are pleased to call the "Laissez-faire" tendencies of modern statesmen – intending thereby to convey the impression that Government is not active enough in its regulating and modifying functions. According to our view, this is a most unfounded charge, as against either the Government or the Legislature. We can discern no lack of activity – no want of interference: on the contrary, we are inclined to complain that changes are too common and rapid. This is an evil to which governments, based on the popular representative principle, are peculiarly liable; and the skill and prescience of the modern statesman will be more conspicuously shown in restraining than in encouraging the spirit of change. Why complain of want of activity, or of culpable negligence, when the fact is before us that, during the last few years, the whole of our commercial system has undergone a radical change, which has affected, more or less, every source of labour, every branch of industry, every application of capital throughout the British empire? We have been the reverse of idle, both at home and abroad. At home, not one single interest has escaped the ordeal of experiment; abroad, we have subjected the colonies to forced operations, from the effects of which it is exceedingly doubtful if they can ever rally, at least under our tutelary care.

These alterations and changes were no doubt intended by their devisers to be productive of good, but they may in reality have been productive of evil. It is impossible to foretell with certainty the effect of any sweeping change, even when the elements of calculation appear to be within our own control. When they are beyond it – as must be the case whenever we assume the co-operation of foreign independent powers, without securing it by treaty – the uncertainty is still greater. It cannot be denied that the late commercial changes proceeded upon the assumption of reciprocity, and that this assumption has been proved by experience to be utterly wrong. So far, then, they have not answered the expectations of their framers. Free imports may be advantageous or the reverse; but they have at all events failed in producing reciprocity, and in converting foreign nations to our insular commercial doctrines. It would be, to say the least of it, becoming in those who advocate the maintenance of the present system to remember this, and to mitigate the arrogance of their tone; for, undeniably, the most important half of their prophecy has fallen to the ground.

Still it remains to be seen whether, in spite of the absence of the promised reciprocity, we have derived any material advantage from the change; and here men will differ according to their methods of estimation. Those who are determined, at all hazards, to cry up the advantages of Free Trade, will point to a balance-sheet of extended exports as a sure index of the prosperity of the nation. Is it, after all, a sure index? The whole amount of our national exports is but an infinitesimal portion of the annual creation of wealth in the country; it consists of the products of only a few branches of industry, and represents the employment, not of the masses of the population, but merely of a small section. Some of these branches, indeed the most important of them, do not possess the first guarantee for stability and endurance. They depend for their existence entirely upon the supply of foreign material. But for the cotton-wool of America, the factories of Lancashire would be shut up; and we shall presently have occasion to inquire what likelihood there is of an extended, or even a continued supply. Increased exports give us no account whatever of internal and home consumption. During the last year, with a limited supply of raw material, owing to a deficient crop, we have sent away more cotton goods than before. What is the natural inference from that, as to the capabilities of the home consumer?

Neither is it fair to select any two or three branches of industry which may be flourishing, and to parade these as an index of the prosperity of the whole country. If Free-Trade had not been productive of advantage to some classes, it would not have been tolerated so long. We know perfectly well, and are prepared to admit, that at this moment some trades are doing well; but then they are thriving at the expense of the great body of the community. Such, for example, is the linen-trade of Dundee, supported at the present time by a large demand from abroad for coarse textures, the origin of which demand may be traced to the Free-Trade measures. That cheap provisions, owing to the imports from abroad, should be a great advantage to the operatives engaged in this kind of manufacture, will admit of no doubt; but how does that affect the general prosperity of the nation? Those operatives work for the foreigner, and are fed by the foreigner. Their contributions to the national revenue, through the customs' duties and excise, cannot be taken as an equivalent for their decreased consumption of British agricultural produce; yet how often is such an instance as this paraded as a proof of general prosperity! After all, it is, perhaps, the only branch of importance which is prospering at the present time. The woollen trade has been steady, but not more profitable than before. The cotton trade we know to be depressed; and the iron trade, one of our most valuable staples, because the raw materials of the coal and ore, as well as the manufactured article, are of British production, is at present worse than unprofitable.

We state these things, not as proofs of the inefficacy of Free Trade, but simply as tending to show that no sound inferences as to the general prosperity of the country can be drawn from the fact that exports have increased. The only criterion is, and must be, the condition of the working classes. We have already pointed out the vast depreciation of labour, and the want of employment which is visible over the three kingdoms; and we have alluded to the two most formidable symptoms – pauperism and extended emigration. How these unchallenged and admitted facts are reconcilable with the idea of general prosperity, it remains for our philosophers to show.

To what, then, is this owing? We can only attribute it to one cause – the total disregard of the interests of the British producer. Politicians may attempt, as they have heretofore done, to explain away evident and startling facts on trivial and insufficient grounds; journalists may affect to sneer at the representations of the sufferers, and to turn their complaints into derision; economists may offer to prove the fitness of existing circumstances, upon certain immutable laws of which they were the sole discoverers; demagogues may strive to divert attention from the lamentable consequences of their misdeeds by attacking other institutions; but the fact of general depression and distress remains uncontroverted and incapable of denial; and so it will remain until the national policy is altered.

It is now precisely twelve months ago since we drew the attention of the public to the actual state of British agriculture under the operation of Free-Trade prices. We then, and in subsequent articles, quoted the deliberate opinion of those who favoured and carried the repeal of the Corn Laws, as to what remunerative prices in reality were; we called as witnesses the late Sir Robert Peel, Mr Wilson, M.P. for Westbury, and others – and showed that, according to their judgment, not that of Protectionists, wheat could not be grown with a profit in this country unless it commanded in the market from 12s. to 16s. more per quarter than was at that time the average of England. We were told in reply, by our antagonists, that the depression was merely accidental. Hardly one of them ventured to say that they had anticipated such a result, or that such a result was desirable: on the contrary, the farmers of this country were told to believe that the low prices current were simply the consequences of an exuberant harvest, combined with the first impulse of new importation, and that, from sheer want of material, the latter would speedily subside. At the close of another year, and after another harvest materially differing in quality, we find prices actually lower than they were at this time twelvemonths. Nor is this the case with grain alone, but with cattle: thus demonstrating how hopeless is the condition of the British farmer under the operation of the present law.

That the impending ruin of the agriculturists, who constitute by far the most important body of British producers, and therefore of consumers in the home market, would speedily react upon every branch of industry, we foresaw and foretold; and the result is now before us, evident in each day's reiterated tale of distress.

Notwithstanding all this, we are assured in certain quarters, that at every hazard the experiment must go on; that, having once embarked in a career, however dangerous, we must persevere to the last; and that protection to native industry is inconsistent with the genius of a free and enlightened people.

Let us see whether it be so. And, as to judge of this question we must look elsewhere than to Britain, let us try to discover the extent to which the principles of Free Trade are acknowledged in other lands, where freedom, both of sentiment and action, is claimed quite as enthusiastically as in our own. It is worth while knowing how far our opinions on this commercial subject have been responded to, not by despotic states, wherein the popular voice might be suppressed, but by the most liberal and enterprising countries, which, we were told, waited only for our example to engage in the work of reciprocity.

Among these we are surely entitled to reckon Switzerland and Germany – including in the latter denomination that powerful confederacy, the Zollverein, which embraces the Hanseatic towns. These are Protectionist – determined at all hazards to maintain their doctrine of fostering native industry, and meeting us, not with reciprocity, but with augmented customs' duties. The following extracts from the last modifications of the general tariff of the Zollverein may be instructive: —

MODIFICATIONS OF THE GENERAL TARIFF OF THE ZOLLVEREIN.