The Express.
London, England, 1847-12-13 00:00:00

exciting distrust as to the contiammas and permanence of
the bee-trade principle here. Nee that I think it will be
em obstacle long; for though burping as that tame we
dukes, and great lon'a, sad MEW INESIONO-411Ongli
time may be some men of great hiss and of 14*
rank arrayed against us—though theirumenarlbleo
OM aide, they must perceive that all the glle
Eat intellect, and the taleLt of the opratry, b tho
of free trade. (Loud cheers.) And as they know,
brains in the end do prevail—tamers and lenclion)
—why I think they are hat contiag. to the oonelopen
that we are not likely to go back again under the rule or
the blockheads, (Renewed cheering and laughter.) Per
I must say that in my travels on the continent I mode this
observation, in every country in which I went—in la
Prance, in Italy, in Germany, in Russia—er I
found every man of intelligence on the side of our
(Cheers.) I found among the statesmen and
everywhere that the ablest moo were the men most dimsead
to imitate the English example and carry out the ftrieltitilas
principle. And I saw there was everywhere on the pert of
the cleverest men in the country a conspiracy to deb die
vigilance of the protectionists, and establish the filo Inds
principle if they could without their knowing it. (Laiestarig.)
Why, I believe if our bad example in England had met leg
almost everywhere else to the establishment of this bad prin-
ciple—if the government/ of the continent, instead of their
present absurd, complex, and injurious tariffs, bad now sheets
of white paper on which to write their tariffs, and had to write
Man over spin, I believe there ia not a country on the con-
tinent of Europe would establish a restrictive system at all;
because now the disposition is everywhere to establish free
Made, and to undo the mischief tint has been dune by
their predominate. (Hear, hoar.) We have had the taunt
Brown out spinet us, I say, in this country, of our net
having Melia other countries to follow our example : and
see gaol/ homes gentleman in the House of Commons has
la& 'firm an show me one country that has followed our
example I will become a free trader. Well, I take him at
his word: I'll show him a country that has followed our ex-
ample—(cheep and laughter)—and it is the country which
it is of the most importance to this oouutry should have
bees indaced to do so : it is the United States of America.
(Hear, hear.) Within sit months of the passing of the bill
repealing the corn law, by our government they remodelled
their tariff, and established a tariff for the admission of our
manufactures on a considerably lower scale than they had
fixed it at before. (Hear, 'near.) And I look at it as a
moat fortunate thing that Sir Robert Peel made the
change at the time be did, because it gave them the oppor•
tunity of making provision for our wants. The Americans
had just one season in which to prepare before our famine
came upon us; and had it not been that Sir Robert Peel had
changed the rate of duties to a scale ranging from 10i. to Is.,
so that the merchant could calculate on more steady prices,
and could venture to import corn with more certainty of a
reiaunerotion, I believe that we should have had thousands
and tens of thousands of our people starved to death. (Hear,
hear.) Because it is well kaowu, gentlemen, that under the
old sliding scale the Americana never would move their corn 1
from the interior for this market, that they never would start '
it from the interior down the Mississippi and Ohio with a view
to sending it here, because they could never calculate that
the prises would remain low sufficiently long to enable them
to introduce it to all, (Hear, hear.) The same arirtmont
applies to Ruleill ; for it the duty on foreign corn had not
been fixed within a moderate limit at the time it was, we
should sot have had a quarter of the corn we had to supply
our wants with from tne corn-growing districts of Russia.
(Hear, bear.) It may be an interesting fact to know that so
great is the distance of the corn-growing districts of Russia
from the port of St. Petersburg, from which the great bulk
of it is shipped, that the Russian corn we have been eating
this year is not the crop of last year, but of 1846. (Hear.)
I was told in Russia that the earn they had shipped was the
crop of 1845; that it takes two mamas to bring it from the
interior fm the purpose of being hipped, it being frozen up
half a year on their great rivers, and one year being lost be-
fore it can arrive at its destine:ion. Now when you recollect
these circumstances, when you consider that but for the
establishment of this free-trade policy, the growers of corn
would not have speculated with a view to supplying us,
you will see the vast adventure, the immense and almost
providential advantages, we halo derived from Sr Robert
Peel repealing the old sliding scale and establishing the
corn law of last year. (Loud cheers.) I believe we could net
have been supplied with corn if we bad depended upon the
ordinary sticks in the ports of Hamburg, Leghorn, and
Odessa, and if we had not had the stimulus which was given
by that measure aril which led to the ettraordinary supplies
we drew from the vast prairies of the interior of Russia and
America. Now, gentlemen, these are the justifications I
offer for the policy we have proposed with regard to the
corn-laws, and that it has not prevented great calamities
from overtaking us no one can wonder. Why no one could
have expected that we should have to purchase ten millions
worth of grain for Ireland, and twice as much for this
country, making in all thirty millions worth of corn to meet
an unexpected and unexampled scarcity : no man could
expect we should go through such an ordeal as that without
some suffering. (Hear, hear.) But whet shall we say of
the men who try to palm upon their too credulous hearers,
the belief that we have been suffering all these evils from
the effects of free trade, contemporaneously with a large
importation of corn ? hy, gentlemen, we have had an
increase of exportation to America. During the last nine
months of the present 3 ear the exportation of our manufac-
tured goods from Liverpool t i Americo has been 90,000
packages more than we exported there is the same time last
year. You hate had an increase! demand, but you cannot
suppose that you will have that increased demand to meet
an import pion of corn, which arises from a sudden and un-
expected deficiency, which you would have had under a
regular and growing trade. (Hear, hear.) If there had
been some sudden calamity in America, through the destruc-
tion of all their clothing, cutlery, ploughe, harrows, spades,
axes, and other implements of agriculture, contempo-
raneously with our famine here, then you might have ex-
reed a sudden demand from them just the same as we had
here for their food. (Cheers) I have spoken of the dis-
tress you have suffered in the cotton districts through the
want of the raw material, but there is great consolation in
looking to the other parts of the kingdom to find that in
those places, where other descriptions of manufactures are
carried oa, they have not suffered so much as in like periods
of high-priced food before. Yeas will recollect that I have
been engaged in this controversy for something like 10 years,
and that during that period I have had many opportuni-
ties, whilst visiting other districts, of witnessing the condi-
tion of the working classes there. You may remember that
in the years 1839, 1840, and 1841, we were suffering from
the high price of food, and that very great calamities re-
sulted from the stagnation which followed to our trade. I
was visiting other manulacturing towns, such as Bir-
mingham, Sheffield, Wolverhampton, and the Potte-
ries, and I remember, then, that they suffered to
the same extent u we did in the cotton district. Nay,
I remember that there was more suffering in Sheffield
and Leeds than in Manchester. (Hear, hear.) There were
20,000 people in Sheffield, and 60,000 dependent upon paro-
chial relief in Leeds; and Wolverhampton, and Birming-
ham, and the Potteries, suffered in the same way. And yot
may recollect that Paisley was converted into one genera:
workhouse ; but that is not the case now. It is worthy of
remark, that whilst you have been going through great ref- '
firings here, they have had comparatively none in those
places. (Hear.) As I have told you, you have been suffering
here from the want of the raw material for cotton manu-
factures as well as high-priced food ; but in Sheffield, Bir-
mingham, and Wolverhamplon, they have been sustained by
the manufacture of the goods peculiar to those places—goods
intended 'chiefly for the American market, and bought in
exchange for the corn brought over to supply our wants. ,
(Cheers.) I lay give to this district an abundant'
supply of the raw material, and you would have had
comparatively little suffering. And now that we have seen
that in America they will have an abundant crop of cot- '
ton, and now that we have the price down in Liverpool
almost at as low a rate as ever, and that you have corn at a
reasonable price ; you are not paying touch more than three.
half-pence a pound now—(hear, hear) ; and seeing that
indigo and drugs for dyeing purposes were never lower than
they are now—l say this district has a good chance for a
state of prosperous trade, as you have ever had here since
Stockport was Stockport. (Loud cheers.) Give you these
elements—abundance of raw materials, an ordinary price o
food, and money at an ordinary rate of interest, and you never
can have bad trade long in this district. (Hear, hear.) With
those elements to help as, I don't despair of seeing a revival
of trade. But it must he borne in mind we have not got out
of our railway difficulties yet. (Hear, hear.) Yoe see wears
at a dead lock with trying to do too much at mote. Some
men have tried to mystify these things by talking of a paper
currency, but if you made all the table cloths and goods in
the country into bank notes, it would not enable you to
make all the railways that have been attempted. Now
only last year, before I went abroad, I peened myself a
petition for our Manchester Chamber of Commerce, in which
I predicted all that has now happened in consequence
of these railway schemes. (Hear hear.) You may say, wby
dld I not raise my voice in the House of Commons ? Why,
gentlemen, we were all engaged In the House of Commons in
these very 'chemise; we had aff some constituency to repre-
sent with railway interests at stake, and we were all so rail-
way mad in the House of Commons, and carried away with
thous enterprises, that I believe if anarchangel from heaven
had come down amonget us, be would not have been listened
to. (Laughter.) But, gentlemen, the evil is curing itself;
something is being now done by arliament to relieve the
immediate pressure arising from the attempt to make all
these railways at once ; we are going through a penitential
process; and at all events, if we do not apply a
complete remedy, we shall prevent a great deal of mis-
chief. With abundance of the raw material of our
manufactures, with abundance of food, which means cheap
cotton and cheap food, we should also have cheap money, and
we shall have a return to a better state of things ; but if you
have these railways bidding for the money at seven or eight
per cent., they will come into competition with the nmonfee-
turer in the money market, and will be a disturbing element
to keep back that prosperity which awaits us. (Hear, hear.)
But, gentlemen, let it be remembered that some of our pro-
tectionist friends have been helping ta get us into this, mew
—this railway difficulty—and do not let them now turn
mug moo yon and say that it is the result of tree trade.
(4. Vase: "The taxation has something to do with it."
Teti the taxation has a good deal to do with it. (Laughter.)
WIE sow, upon the subject of taxation. It is too much lost
Voot, that subject of taxation; and I ham often been sw-
eat it 'honk], be with the Emilia people, who ere SO
ponied ; but somehow they do not seem to bring the same
6111111110 a soli to bear upon it al they do upon their own
prima anikoal affairs. 'What wradhed economy you are
silty or in beneath slain. I'll be baud to say that if my
Mina the Wm dark were to ta tax yen a halfpenny
Wet he 19•11118 yes eleomer •• street you would
raise a rebaUlem gambol .) When your elec-
time take place for mnsieipal oasis you always support
these who will vote for emmeny in bmwagh affairs. Now tell
ma why It is you do net airy the tame tialUlialk mom into
the oloollese be
wishes of podimmoit (riere.)
empire& wit those Your
bps Wang of the
samosa. Tea take mete ekes the spirts and Par IN