The Sun.
London, England, 1840-11-10 00:00:00

such a law is the prohibition of at least an inno-
cent and perhaps useful occupation. It is at least
palpable from what takes place in Germany, that
sugar might he profitably made in England from
potatoes or from beet-root. The chemical extraction
of sugar from these substances—or perhaps, con-
version, as in the case of malt, of the non or little
nutritive and crude vegetable into sugar, might be
extremely advantageous to fatten cattle, and in
various other applications ; but those branches of
human industry and human research are at once
put an end to by the law, which, because a heavy
revenue is derived from the import of sugar, pro- ,
hibits the manufacture of that article from beet-
root and potatoes. With singular inconsistency,
just as caprice or momentary expediency has in-
fluenced the Legislature, it has stimulated and en-
couraged, as it supposed, native industry by the
prohibition of foreign competing products, and it
has impeded or prohibited that industry, as in the
above cases, by positive laws.
The preceding remarks apply to the principle of
levying duties for a revenue, and to the blind and
lumping system of our present tariff. On ex-
amining that in detail, as is done by several wit-
nesses, particularly by Mr. IVPGREGOR, who has
suggested an elaborate scheme of duties, it is proved
to be complicated, destitute of any regular prin-
ciple, productive of smuggling far more injurious
to the public than is necessary to raise the
revenue required, that in fact a larger revenue
might be obtained by reducing the whole
tariff to 20 heads, and levying a duty not exceed-
ing 10 per cent., and that the whole system is more
cumbrous and costly than is consistent with the
object for which it is established. All these ob-
jections, however, arise on merely considering import
duties levied for a revenue, to which, on principle,
no objection is generally made. To the principle
of levying duties on foreign commodities for the pro-
tection of native industry the very strongest objec-
t tion exists on principle, and objections of the
highest moral and political character. They tax
one class of the people for the benefit of another.
They. violate the principle of equal protection to all,
which is the sole ground on which Government is
theoretically defended and obedience claimed. They
strike at the root of interchange, for they say a cer-
tain trade shall not take place. They are opposed,
therefore, to the principles of division of labour,
both individual and territorial, to which the pro-
sperity of society is so much indebted. The con-
demnation of protective duties, on principle, is called
by those who support sinister interests theoretical,
but it is in fact the wisdom of experience, learned
through many ages, condensed into one or two
most significant and expressive sentences. Those
duties are morally wrong, for they are partial and
unjust ; they are impolitic, for they impede division
of labour. In a series of articles on this subject—.
for it is most important, and deserves the public
attention—we shall show that the progeny of
this violation of principle confirm the character we
have given to the parent. They constitute an in-
numerable host of social evils entailed on the com-
munity by the Legislature, at whose hands it has
expected protection and benefit.
We cannot, however, leave this part of the sub-
ject without expressing our regret that all those
gentlemen, such as Messrs. IYl'Gregor, J. D.
Hume, and Bowring, who have so clearly demon-
strated the evils of our present system, would keep
alive many of them for an object which we must
believe to be more puerile than levying a revenue
or giving protection to our manufactures. They
want, being statesmen, statistical information ; and
to obtain this—to procure a register of all articles
imported, they would levy on them a nominal duty.
They would make our merchants still undergo all
the trouble of registering every thing they bring in,
and, as they would not voluntarily undergo such a
trouble, they would keep alive much of the coercive
1 machinery now in use in our custom-house, for the
purpose of merely getting statistical information.
For our parts, we are so insensible to the value
and importance of numbering all the pigs and
sheep and pounds of sugar brought into the country,
that we would not impose the slightest restriction
on trade, or the slightest tax on the public, to accom-
plish it. It has little or nothing to recommend
it but the delight of those who pursue that branch
of science. To the public it is of no more bene-
fit than any other portion of natural history.
To give the utmost extension to botany
or mineralogy, the professors of those sciences
would never induce the trading world to submit to
,
1 the smallest restriction ; and we cannot, therefore,
for one moment approve of the plan to subject all
trade to a system of noxious restrictions, and the
public to a heavy tax, for the purpose of promoting,
however useful, the science of statistics. Customs
regulations to collece a revenue or protect home in-
dustry are scarcely bearable, but Customs restric-
tions to gather a little information for the pro-
fessors of the exact science of statistics are
wholly intolerable. if this sort of information is
now of no considerable importance, it is because it
carries with it a refutation of the system which sup-
plies it. It enables us to show the injury of cus-
tom-house regulations. Were they done away,
little or nothing for the public benefit could be
gained by it, and for its sake to keep in existence
the smallest part of those injurious regulations,
seems to us more like folly than wisdom.