The Sun.
London, England, 1834-01-03 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

In describing on Monday last the nature,
and pointing out the extent, of the new com-
mercial league of Germany, we were obliged,
from want of room, to postpone some remarks
which we had intended on the additional politi-
cal influence which it would confer upon Prussia,
on the effect which it would produce on the
German States, and on its ultimate operation on
the trade, manufactures, and shipping of Eng-
land. As Prussia has been the founder of this
new commercial confederation, as she has ex-
pended much diplomacy in bringing some of
her confederates to adopt it—as she has been
obliged, first, to gain over the greater States to
her scheme, and then to employ them as decoys
for entrapping the smaller—and as she has
pursued her object for years, under all varieties
of circumstances, and amid many forbidding
discouragements, it cannot be doubted that she
expects from its establishment extensive and
valuable results. Being at the head of the
league, and commanding herself two-thirds
of the population which it will embrace, she
is entitled to expect that her voice will be.
paramount in all its deliberations and proceed-
ings. The political Diet of Germany may still
continue at Frankfort, but Its more important
commercial Diet will be transferred to Berlin.
The tariff will naturally, therefore, be formed to
suit Prussian interests, rather than the interest
of the smaller principalities, or those of fo-
reigners. It would have been too barefaced to have
proposed that Prussian Custom House officers
should collect the duties or enforce the proliihi•
tions of the treaty on the frontiers of her less
powerful allies. This, therefore, has not been
attempted under the present convention, which
assigns to each State the guardianship of its own
boundaries, when they form the extreme limits
of the union. Thus, Bavaria will protect the
Custom House line, and collect the Custom
House dues, on the side of Austria, the Tyrol,
and a part of France. Wirtemberg will watch
the contraband trade from Switzerland, Baden,
and the Prussian provinces on the Rhine, and in
Westphalia will collect the revenue on the side
of Alsace, Belgium, and Holland ; and to
Saxony will be intrusted the guardianship of the
northern and north-eastern frontier. But in all
these cases Prussian commissioners may he
united with the custom-house officers of the
other States ; and, in fact, may watch and con-
trol their movements. Prussia, being almost the
only member of the Confederacy which has ports
and shipping of her own, will acquire additional
influence by opening her commercial towns to
merchants from the other States, and conferring
upon them the same advantages as on her own
subjects—nay, by the stipulations of the general
treaty, her Consuls will act for them in foreign
ports as well as for Prussian citizens. Prussia
at present raises a considerable portion of her
revenue from custom-house duties. By the
last financial accounts of her condition which we
have seen, that portion amounted to nearly
one-third of her whole income, or more
than 2,500,0001. sterling. This source of taxa-
tion cannot easily be dispensed with in a country
which already complains of the weight of its
direct imposts, and which labours under the
burden of a considerable foreign debt. pier
great object will be, therefore, to maintain her
present tariff as against importations from
abroad, and to impose that tariff on all her con-
federates. The revenue thus levied, is, indeed,
to be divided among them all, in proportion to
their population, and thus again Prussia may
appear to be nominally a sufferer by sharing with
her poorer neighbours a fund raised chiefly on
her own subjects ; but by this means she secures
herself in the monopoly of a more extensive
market, and pays the smaller principalities for
their acquiescence in her views. She will thus
stretch her power over all the Governments and
people, which the league embraces—she will
detach them from other nations, so far as
restrictive duties form a line of separation
—and will, in particular, strengthen her hold
over her own Rhenish provinces, by teach-
ing them to look to Germany, and not
to France, for their future supplies. The
custom-house system of Prussia, to a certain
extent, is extremely judicious. In order to en-
courage her domestic manufactures, nearly every
article which is employed as a raw material is
admitted duty free. Thus, in her tariff we find
that no tax is imposed upon raw silk, upon
cotton, upon wool, or upon other articles used
in manufactures. Even cotton-yarn, of which
she receives a great quantity from this country, is
subjected to only a small tax ; and cast-iron is
allowed admission on equally advantageous terms.
On the other hand, heavy duties are imposed
on the produce of foreign manufacturing indus-
try. Thus, though raw silk is admitted duty
free, a tax of 100 rixdollars is levied on the
hundred weight of some kinds of silk fabrics.
The same scale of duties will, no doubt, be
imposed on the confederate States by their new
tariff, and as Prussia is the chief manufac-
turing kingdom in the association, she will
more than make up by her monopoly
of manufacturing industry for the trifling
loss of a part of her custom-house re-
venue. To the smaller principalities, whose
taxes were chiefly derived from landed property
or excise duties, and whose external commerce
was comparatively unincumbered, this league
must occasion great loss and embarrassment, if
the high Prussian tariff is to be maintained.
The people of Wirtemberg and Bavaria, instead
of receiving their silks from France and Swit-
zerland or their cottons from England, will be
obliged to depend for their supply on the dearer
markets and worse commodities of Prussia.
Nay, even the internal freedom of trade, and
the removal of all obstacles to the circulation of
Prussian produce among all the States, independ-
ently of external tariff's, is looked upon with
some jealousy or alarm by some of the State
Thus the corn of Prussia will come into com-
petition with the corn of Wirtemberg, and the
iron of Silesia with the iron of the latter king-
dom. This drawback on the good fortune of
some of the States, and even on that of soma
of the Prussian manufacturers themselves, 13
honestly enough expressed in the following ex-
tract from one of the German Papers which ar-
rived yesterday; the article is dated Berlin
The freedom of commerce, which has just beers so
greatly extended, fills the manufacturers with joy and
hope, and it is anticipated with pleasure that the trade
and manufactures of Prussia will receive a favourable im-
pulse. This joy, however, is not wholly free front appre—
hensions, for the manufactures of the neighbouring
countries of Germany, especially of Saxony, may raise a
dangerous competition. People are at a loss to understand
how the diminution which must necessarily ensue in the
receipt of taxes by the adoption of the general tariff cars
be made good ; and as it is almost impossible to increase the
direct taxes, it is believed that a very rigorous prohibitory
system will be adopted towards foreign countries."
That some of the smaller States will feel it an
extreme hardship to be obliged to pay for foreign
articles at the high rate of a Prussian tariff, can-
not for a moment be doubted. The free city

of Frankfort, for instance, will now find its treaty
with England scarcely worth the parchment on
which it is written, and will be obliged to
abandon an English for a Prussian commercial
alliance, unless, indeed, the British Government
interferes to prevent a result as offensive, if not
as injurious to England as to its humble ally.
Its inhabitants have lately, as we observe by the
German papers, taken alarm at the circle of
douans with which they will be surrounded if
they do not join the league, and have addressed
petitions to the Senate praying their magis-
trates to subscribe to tie Confederacy. 'We are
still in hopes that Prussia, which is at the head
of this extensive association of States, will follow
better counsels than raise its tariff so high as to
exclude English manufactures or Colonial pro-
duce, though the clamours raised on the subject
of our reciprocity treaty with that powerful Go-
vernment, and our almost prohibitive duties im-
posed upon its corn and timber, might warrant
such an attempt at retaliation. It was said by a
Parliamentary wiseacre, in a late endeavour to
pour contempt on our trade with Prussia, that
she only took from us goods to the amount of
about 786,0001., while Germany, by the return
of 1831, consumed English produce and manu-
factures to the value of 10,213,3361. This is,
no doubt, true, as it appears on the face of our
official statements ; but Hon. :Members who dis-
cuss such a question ought to have known that
the former account includes only goods sent
to the Prussian ports in the Baltic, and that
a great part of the supply of Prussia is carried
to her provinces by the Rhine or the Elbe, and
is entered as for Germany. But granting
that such an explanation could not be admit-
ted, what will such illiberal reasoners, such ene-
mies of commercial freedom and of reciprocity
treaties, say now ? Prussia, whose produce is
nearly excluded from our markets by prohibitory
duties,—whose timber and corn are obliged to
take the circuit of the Atlantic, and to be
smuggled from Canada, instead of coming direct
from the Baltic, in order to be admitted at a
reasonable rate into England, has now the power
of making a tariff for the whole of that great
German market of which they boasted as a con-
trast to that of Prussia ! Germany is not only
our best European customer, but consumes
nearly one-third of our exports to all Europe.
Her trade is of more value to us than that of
Russia, Sweden, Denmark, France, Spain, and
Portugal, and some half-dozen of other states
put together ; and yet, unless we amend our
commercial system, this market may be entirely
shut, or extremely limited by that Power whose
produce we exclude, and of whose commercial
influence we speak with contempt. No time should
he lost in revising our commercial system, so as to
remove all pretext on our part for the adoption
of a policy by which we must so immediately and
enormously suffer.—Times.