The Sun.
London, England, 1844-11-19 00:00:00

PIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
FROM THE MORNING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.
TIMES.—The various parties particularly charged
with the national burdens have begun by common
consent their annual outcry for remission. A motley
group is already besieging the Treasury, proclaiming
their several woes, and casting malicious side glances
at every fresh competitor. Any attempt to settle
their precedence cannot but be invidious. Each
party has a claim which in itself is undeniable. Yet
it is evident they cannot all be attended to ; for fiscal
remission is by no means that illimitable thing some
people seem to imagine. Tax-payers are a very
grave kind of people, with solid apprehensions, and
not easily put off with a joke; otherwise one might
suggest to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to appoint
one day and hour to all his deputations at this season,
and, when he had fairly got all the heads of the
hydra before him, to read a chapter out of Swift's
" Advice to Servants." The Dean advises the cook,
the butler, the valet, the coachman, and the gardener,
each to spend in his own department his master's
total income of 2,000/. a year, leaving other out-
goings to take care of themselves. In like man-
ner the servants in the national household, the pur-
veyors of meats and of drinks, the clothiers and
other ministers to the public necessities, in the sin-
gleness of their vision towards their own depart-
ments, seem to lose all sense of other demands, and of
the common responsibilities. It may, however, save
disappointment to ascertain what must be done, and
what, on the other hand, may be deferred. There
are some broad lines of difference which must be
attended to. Taxes on luxuries or on mere comforts
stand on a different footing from those on the neces-
saries of life ; and among taxes on necessaries there
is a plain difference between those which only limit
the consumption, and those which press more directly
on industry, find restrict or even prohibit branches
of trade. In a country like ours, whose internal re-
sources are so limited that the Legislature ten years
since found it necessary to pass a sort of declaratory
Act to the effect that the land was not sufficient for
the employment of the population, it is evident that
raw materials for such employment are become ne-
cessaries of life in the highest sense of that term.
When they can be got, they are as so much gained
from the sea, or rather as so much manna from
heaven. Coincident with the growing sense of our
insular straitness of territory, it has become the
policy of the nation to seek adventitious means of in-
dustry. By this time it is an established axiom that
when the duty on raw material is found to exclude us
from competition with foreign manufacturers, we
have no alternative but to remove it. Encumbrances
must be removed when they become destructive.
Once afloat we must either swim or drown. The duty
on cotton wool is an incumbrance of this sort. It has
ceased to be a matter of choice ; the law of self-pre-
servation demands its removal. It is fast extending
a prohibitory influence over the whole of our cotton
manufactures. The cheaper the material becomes and
the more our competitors acquire our manufacturing
facilities—both changes in rapid progress—the more
does a fixed duty become an absolute bar on our in-
dustry. It was at first imposed only as a temporary
measure, in a season of great financial difficulty. Con-
fessedly impolitic at first, its impolicy has con-
tinually increased. The amount of its produce, which
shows of course the amount of its injury, is the only
reason why it has survived other duties of an exactly
similar character. It remains after the duties on
flax and wool and other raw materials have been re-
pealed, only because it is a larger sum to deal with.
But, unfortunately, its yearly continuance entails
more than yearly consequences. While our commerce
is hampered, the commerce of other nations is making
permanent advances. The duty, 5-16ths of a penny
on the pound, was only 5 per cent. on the value of
the material when first laid on, and now is 10 per cent.
Meanwhile, the cost of manufacture has diminished
in a still greater ratio ; so that the duty, which was a
mere trifle at first, is now so great on the coarser
cotton fabrics as absolutely to prevent competition in
them with the American manufactures. !The Ame-
rican has, of course, great advantages over us to
begin with ;—the cotton produced at his very door,
at least in the southern states, where factories are
fast springing up in the very midst of cotton fields.
We must cover in some way the expense of carriage
across the Atlantic, and other charges, amounting,
it is said, to 7-16ths of a penny in the pound, before
we can compete with him in the neutral market.
This unavoidable burden we almost double. The
result is, that in South America and other quarters,
even in China—China, which our own arms have
opened to the commerce of the world,—we are losing
ground, which the Americans, with the assistance of
our financiers, are now fast gaining from us. We
impose ourselves on the produce of our own industry
a differential duty compared with our greatest rival.
We enter every port of the world with a difference
of 5-16tha of a penny in the pound between English
and American cotton manufactures ; a difference
which we surmount in the finer descriptions, where
skill and labour have more play, but which is quite
insurmountable in the commoner and more domestic
articles. The duty is said to be in effect 30 per
cent. on the cost of " domestics," as they are called,
the chief cotton export to China, among other places.
Under shelter of this " differential duty," the Ame-
rican manufacturers are now making a greater
push than ever, and other natious are following
their example. Of course, they desire nothing better
than its continuance. Indeed, if they had imposed
it on us in the shape of an export duty at the
American port, supposing that otherwise possible,
it would not have been so much to be wondered
at.. The case may be rendered more clear by an
illustration which will come home to many a benevo-
lent mind.ElYears ago there were very great endea-
vours to devise some means of employment for the
idle and half-starved women and children in our
agricultural districts. All kinds of simple, laborious,
and unproductive industries were projected for this
purpose, adapted to the humble strength and expert-
ness, and no less humble ambition of that class ; all
kinds of tedious spinnings, knittings, weavings, and
plaitings. Suppose an ingenious clergyman's wife
had discovered some material out of which rustic
hands, with the assistance of our peculiar national
skill, could procure decent employment and support,
and become the benefactors instead of the burdens of
the earth. The fair inventor would quickly have
been installed in a niche between Mrs. Trimmer, of
school celebrity, Mrs. Montague, the friend of
sweeps, and other worthies of benevolence. Her
cause would have been held sacred, and her proteges
would have been preserved by their country's enthu-
siasm against all competition, but that of their own
increasing numbers. If other nations had taken the
hint, as undoubtedly they would, how jealously
should we have watched the race, and seen that our
own little ones had at least fair play, if not a little sly
help ! If there was to be any difference of facilities, we
should have considered it our place to set the balance
against the foreign rival, and take care that the English
runner had not to carry any weight beside her own. The
much hoped-for vision has been realised, and that far be-
yond all possible anticipations, though not exactly in the
place and manner in which it was schemed. " There
is a Divinity that shapes our ends ;" and the provi-
dential supplement to our agricultural resources has
been achieved, not at the cottage hearths of Bucking-
hamshire and Suffolk, but under the smoky chimneys
of Lancashire—not under the pious attentions of
elderly ladies and their chaplains, but under the
more masculine auspices of Cromptons, Arkwrights,
and Peels. We may not easily recognise the aspira-
tions of youth in the sober realities of age. We miss
the picturesque outline and the Elysian hue. But
there substantially is the thing we desired. Let the
philanthropists of the last generation transfer their
sympathies to the more successful undertakings of
the present. What would they have felt if the Minis-
ter, driven to cruelty and shamelessness by his exi-
gencies, had suddenly put such a duty on the mate-
rial we have supposed the ingenious lady to discover,
as should at once render whole counties of women
and children helpless against foreign competition,
and cut off half their demand ? It would have been
thought madness. The case of our cotton manufac-
tures is only different in that it is vastly larger and
more important, and its women and children, or
rather the whole empire, are more thoroughly em-
barked in it.
CHRONICLE.—It is rumoured that Lord Ellen-
borough is going to the Admiralty. We sincerely
wish he was there. His Lordship is so sure to do the
contrary of what his employers wish and intend, that,
ten to one, he might actively set about putting the
navy into something like an efficient state. Guns,
trumpets, blunderbusses, drums, and thunder have
such eharms for him, that he would probably go to
sea in propria persona, and find himself as much at
home ou the quarter-deck as he was in the tented
field of Gwalior. Lord Haddington some time since
sent four vessels to sea on a cruise of practice and
experiment—a melancholy ghost of what was a British
fleet. But lest they should use powder, or get too
expert, a spare Lord of the Admiralty was entrusted
with the command, a sailor who never smelt powder,
or, we believe, ever got under fire. There was a
second in command who had ; but he would have
been bat too capable of instructing Admiral Bowles,
and consequently of putting him to shame. But, for
fear that anything so very derogatory to the navy
should take place, Captain the Earl of Hardwicke was
sent
down, at the eleventh hour, to air his earldom
on board of a man-of-war, and gather a share of that
instruction which he was incapable of communi-
cating. One thinkwould that the old " hearts of
oak" on our list of admirals, if too superannuated to
fight, might at least be
to in,truct, and
to instil some share of that old use of
which prevailed
in
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