The Express.
London, England, 1849-03-27 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, TUESDAY EVENING, MARCH 27, 1849.

Lion. And all the clamour et mem rooms, and mili-
tary clubs, and a Howe of Commons which differs
little from spelt military club, will not prevent lons
BULL from speaking his mind of each a paltry and
equivocal system with his cluirseeristio frankness and
plainness of speech.

WE Lave read Mr. NEWDZGATeII letter to Me.
LABOUeIIERE, on the Balance of Trade, and that La
saying a great deal. What dote Mr. NEVIDEGATE
want? Here are twenty-right pages of close print,
into which m st Felple will re very loth to penetrate,
and after thsm three-and-twenty pages of figures, of
which we may traly say that much which is inge-
nious and much that is true is disfigured by blunders
almost too conspicuous to be accidrntal. Still what
does Mr. NEwDEGATE want? He eats oat with some
most sensib!e remark* on the slovenly condition of
our camm.rcial reflation—remarks ro sensible that

wa began to wonder how so much common sense had
found its way into that region of the p litic tl
hemiep`to c of which the nonourablo member
for Warwickshire is so di.tinguialied an abo-
riginal. But this is a purely deceptive manoeuvre.
We very speedily find ourselves in the midst of Mr.
NEWDEGATE'S native fog. The pamphlet hu been
written apparently to expound the doctrine of the
balite° of trade; but for some reason, genuine or
awunted, it confounds the balance of trade with the

anr_unt of the na,ional income. The little book is
written apparently to extinguish ADAM SMITH. and,
by a most ingenious collation of passages from the
"Wealth of Nations" and the book of Dr. LIST, it
does ncthing but extinguish itself. It embodies most
leborious calrulieions to show the value of the goads
we sell and the goods we buy, and it altogether ex-
chides from the calculation the chief items which
some under the head of both ; and while the pages
ars crammed with figures about shipping and naviga-
doe, they whimsically place the result of their compu-
tations to the wrong side of the account. Mr.
Newbenate has made his first attempt at political
economy in the shspe of a pamphlet which has all
the paraphernalia of arithmetic without its precision,
sad all the formality of statistic!, without their truth.
What does Mr. NEWDEGATE mean by the "balance
of trade"? He says, truly enouga, in one passage of
his pamphlet, that the balance atria& is the excess
of the imports over the °epee's, or of the exports over
the imports, and that as far as the substantial pros-
perity cf a nation is concerned, this balance is to be
regarded as an accident which may disturb but cannot
dettr..iy the equilibrium of itsprogrees. There is no
objection to a sensible dpepine like this. But
Mr. NEWDEGATE has found out another ba-
lance, and hastens to confound and alarm
himself by mixin; the balance of trade and the new
balance together. ADAM SMITH appears to have
se-isted Mr. NEWDEGATE to cue clear id, a et least,
when he says in the "Wealth of Nati-ns," ghat if a
people happen to buy more than they happen to sell,
the inequality will presently work its own cure, bat
if they consume more than they produce, they must
infallibly b. come impoverished. "Very true," says
Mr. NEWDEGATE. "I Mn perfectly comprehend
that," and most people will participate in Mr. New-
DEGATeie readiness of perepaion ; but surely no
but himself could have attached Mr. Never:m.lTA
preposterous conclusion to such a premises, for it h
the object Of the pamphlet and the figures before us
to prove that 'he balance of trade and the balance of
income are the same thing, and that in spite of in-
creasing bullion and favourable exchanges this coun-
try is positively cansuming its substance at the rate
of some sixteen millions a year.
If we hid a potato famine every smond season,
combined with cotton at Bd. a pound, there might be
some small ground for an alarm of this nature ; bat,
to have the foreign trade which this country carries
on in ordinary Store described as a species of inter-
change which impoverishes the country, is a startling
absurdity. What do we import? Do we import
only articles of consumption ? Are we fed by forrgn
soils, clothed by foreign looms, or decorated and pro-
tected by foreign ingenuity and industry? Not at all.
A nation in such a helpless state of imbecility might
well live in hourly apprehension of the evils of assay
described by ADAM SMITIL Its collie=
would exceed its produce, and its
of trade might be truly an index of
the velocity of its ruin. But this is not our asses
It is the precise reverse of our case, and Mr. NEWDE-
GATE himself has proved the absurdity of his own
panic. Let km examine and classify his own list of
imported commodities in 1845—an average year—
and he will find that the valneof articles of raw mate-
rial, wool, cotton, indigo, flax, tallow, timbar, and
so on, amounts to sixty-fw; pir cent. of the entire im-
portal of that year. What do We make of these raw
materials? Do we consume them in personal grati-
fiarion, or do we use them for purposes which in
crave the wealth and extend the power of England,
wherever a physical want is to be supplied, wherever
industry is to ibe fostered, or an end of civilisation
fulfilled?
But we do notconfl as our criticism to general emote,.
Mr. NEWDEGATE pretends to prove that in 1815
there was an adverse balance of trade. Did any sen-
sible man ever hear of an adverse balance of trade
taking place in a year when the quotation of the ex-
change on Paris inertia's! from 25.60 in January, to
25 65 in August sn4 23.63 in December ; and the
exchange on Hamburgh from 13.111 to 13.121 be-
tween the tame periods?

It seems also ghat 1846 was throughout a year of a.
adverse balance of trade. It is quite certain that after
the harvest of 1846 there was an adverse balance, but
before that time the facts were mut emphatically the
reveres. The exchange on Paris and Hamburg in
January 1846 wu 26.65 and 13.13 ; in August of the
same year it was 26.75 and 13.14}, and the amount of
bullion in the Bank of England had, what ?—not
bat increased from 13.1 to I6i millions aterlirg.
At present we 87 nothing of the computat one
which Mr. NewDza tTE has given of the value of the
import.. We perfectly coincide in his opinion that
the value of the imports ought to be ascertained and
published by the Custom-house; and whenever Mr.
NEwDEGATa will urge that reform in the House Of
Commons we engage that be shall receive the best
support. we can give him.
Leaving, however, the calculations as Mr. NEwDI.
GATE has left them, we have a word or two to say
about certain matters upon which he is unaccountably
silent. Suppose, for example, that the value of the
imports in 1847 we', se the pamphlet swats.
117,047,0001., and the value of the exports 70,368,0001.
Sorely this is not the whole case. Seventy
millions was not the whole of our exports is
1847, although seventy millions might he the
declared value of the goods which left this
emery during that year. We export other
things as well as goode. We export a supreme go-
esemunt to India. We export the dividends of a
certain portion of the national debt to foreigners ; and
we export the rent of their estates to certain sybarite
landlords—most of them protectionists like Mr. NEW.
DEGATE—we consume in Italy and FMCS the re-
sauces fur which they are beholden to the industry
and skill of Englishmen. Let Mr. NEWDEGATE ex-
amine these items. He will find that the Indian cos.
maxims of this country are equal to a sum of about
four millions yearly; that is to say, India pays us
4,000,000/. per annum for our government and pro-
tection such as it is. The foreign dividends may be
stated at half, and the absentee rents at a whole mil-
lion a year. Hers then are five and a half millions ot
exports, or 12 per cent, of the who's of which Mr.
NEWDEGATE, in a statistical account, introduced with
pomp and circumstance, takes not the smallest notice.
But this is not all, Mr. NEWDEGATE reckons up
the value of the imports in bond at prices which
include the cost of freight, that is to say the ant of
their transit from the place of production in British
and foreign ships.; but he does not deduct from this
value the proportion :of freight which belongs to the
amount of British tonnage engaged in the foreign
trade, and shewn by the navigation accounts to have
entered inwards ; nor, on the oilier band, does he
add to the value of the exporte the amount of freight
earned by British vessels in the foreign trade cleared
outwards. Take, far example, the year 1847. The
pamphlet states the imports at 117,047,0001. ; well,
but m 1847 there were 4,942,000 tons of British
tonnage entered inwards in the foreign trade. Sup-
pose the average earnings for the year to have bees
even 3!. a ton, then the actual coat of the imports wosid
be reduced to 102,174.0001. The entries outwards won
to the extent of 4,770,000 British tons and reckoned
at the was rate would increase the ;slue of the ex:
ports from 70.329,0001. to 81,639,000/. The differ-
ent*, therefore, in that year would amount to about
171 millions; and this adverse balance diminished by
the 6 millions already alluded to, leaves about
13 millions as the &dull excess of imports of food in
1847 to be paid for in money, and that was not far

from the truth in that year, es we know by the re-
turns of the Bank. Bat between twelve millions and
27,899,0001., i.e declared by Me. NEWDEGATZ, there is
a somewhat wido difference, and a difference which
will enable us to form some judgment of the modesty
of protectionist demand■ upon our belief, and the
accuracy of protectionist appeals to the se'ente of
numbers.

COLONIAL.