The Sun.
London, England, 1842-08-25 00:00:00

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LONDON:
7IIURSDAY MORNING, AUGUST 25, 1842.

We 'endeavoured to show on Saturday that all
trade is founded on great natural facts, such as
inequalities in the seasons, and differences in the
productions of different countries, while the great
wants of the human race, of food, clothing, and
shelter are comparatively steady, or subject only
to progressive augmentation ; that the great end
and object of all trade is to bring into harmony
these permanent and these varying facts, and
that it mainly accomplishes this great and bene-
ficent end by buying when and where commodi-
ties are cheap, that is not wanted, and selling
them when and where they are dear, that is
comparatively much wanted. We endeavoured,
therefore, to show that trade, instead of being a
cause of fluctuations in the condition of society,
as is continually assumed by Liberals, we regret
to say, as well as by Tories, or peculiarly liable
to fluctuations—like the produce of the harvest
from year to year—is the very means and instru-
ment by which fluctuations in the condition of
society are lessened, and the variations of sea-
sons and climates neutralized, so as to spread an
equal abundance over all the families of man-
kind. We adverted to the influence of legis-
lation in preventing the complete realization
of the natural and necessary results of
trade, but we did not pretend, in the compass
of a single column of a newspaper, to exhaust
such a vast subject, or nicely discriminate the
degree in which ill-considered and ill-contrived
laws have caused these fluctuations in the condi-
tion of our manufacturing community, which we
all deplore, and mome of the consequences of
which now show themselves in a painful disease
in the very heart of society. We propose, there-
fore, now to cast a hasty glance over this im-
portant branch of the subject.
It is, perhaps, hardly worth while to interrupt
the course of our argument by a reference to the
opinions of our Contemporaries—certainly not
with any view to enter into a profitless contro-
versy, but as the discussion has been forced on
by their making some hasty and random asser-
tions, it may not be considered courteous to
omit all notice of them. To our- Saturday's re-
marks the Post objected :
One of our Contemporaries, who no doubt means very
well, and wishes to show us a view of the truth which it
is supposed has escaped our observation, presents us, in
reply, with a very vehement panegyric upon trade,
which is certainly rather stronger and more unguarded
than we are prepared to admit. But, to what purpose
is this panegyric given ? Are we enemies of trade ? Do
we wish to throw any discredit upon trade ? Have we
denied the usefulness of trade ? No ; but we think there
are more ways than one of carrying on the trade of a nation.
It may be carried on for the benefit of many, or only of
a few. It may be carried on in a sordid, selfish spirit, or
in an honourable, generous spirit. Trade is a good thing
-under the gomernment of good principles and generous
feelings ; but trade is not exactly the same thing as benevo-
lence, though one might suppose, from the language of
The Sun, that there are writers who consider the terms
synonymous.

We pass by all the observations except those
'which concern the principle involved in carrying
on trade. Far from thinking trade in any de-
gree synonymous with benevolence, it is, we as-
sert, the very reverse. Benevolence proposes,
however ignorant it may be of the means, to do
good to others. Trade, whatever benefit it may
confer on mankind, is altogether set in motion
by the desire to benefit thu trader. The latter
contemplates self; the fbrmer contemplates
others. What benevolence may have done to
nurture, to feed, to clothe, to civilize mankind, we
will not now inquire—we desire on this occasion
to avoid all sneers against benevolence—but if
the most enlightened benevolence that ever yet
inhabited a human heart, were night and
day, and day and night, to devise schemes of
Human improvement, it never would effect one
tithe of the magnificent benefits which trade,

conducted on the principle of self-interest, has
conferred on mankind. " The individual," says
Dr. SMITH, " neither intends to promote the
public interest, nor knows how much he is pro-
, moting it." '' He intends only his own gain,
and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by
an invkible hand to promote an end which
was no part of his intention. Nor is it always
the worse fur society that it was no part of it.
By pursuing his own interest he frequently pro-
motes that . of society more effectually than
when he really intends to promote it. I have
:ever. known much good done by those who
affected to trade for the public good." We re-
gard trade, therefime, almost as the reverse of
benevolence; it is altogether selfish, and there
is but one way of carrying it on. The principle
froM wide]] it springs must guide it throughout.
To make it advantageous it must be always car-
ried on exclusively with a view to self-advan-

x

tage, and statesmen must trust—which is war-
ranted by experience—that the invisible hand
which brings it into life, which places the mo-
tive in man's breast, and instructs him in the
means of gratifying it, will always, as hereto-
fore lead the individual, though that is no part
of his intention, to promote the public happiness.
We repudiate for trade all notion of guiding it
by benevolence. We demand for it the most free
competition amongst all classes; and we rely
confidently—though we cannot see through the
dark futurity what is to be the destiny of nations,
on the principle of self-interest, the guiding
principle of mankind—to work out the public
happiness.
Benevolence, it is presumed, is at the bottom
of all legislation. At least, it is continually and
loudly proclaimed by all the law-makers, and
especially by the landlords, that they think not
of themselves, they only aim at benefiting others.
They do not wish to raise rents or preserve their
ascendancy in society ; they only wish, by all
their laws to promote the public good. They
restrain the full development of the self-interest
of the corn and sugar importer, and the calico
and cutlery exporters, from no selfish motive,
but the purest benevolence. The great practical
question which these adverse principles bring
before us is this—Are the fluctuations in the
demand for labour in Manchester the results of
the self-interest of the Manchester manufac-
turers, or of that benevolence which shows itself
in making laws for the public good? The Times,
like the Post, concludes, but we must say without
a searching inquiry, that the operation of
self-interest is the cause of the fluctuations, and
must be corrected by benevolence. That jour-
nal said on Thursday, and the observations have
found no inconsiderable favour with a part of
the public—
With respect to the real mischief, which occasions,
not present distress alone, but this distress continually
and periodically recurring, and which must continually and
periodically recur, under the present system, whenever
the demand for manufactured goods happens to be in-
sufficient to employ the manufacturing population—is it
sufficient to say, that that evil wholly consists in the
tact, that at any one given time the supply of labour
exceeds the demand ? The evil which we have to re-
medy is not simply a fact, but a system. It consists in
the circumstance, that the whole manufacturing popula-
tion are systematically dependent for their bread upon a
source of employment which is continually fluctuating.
It is not enough to say that the mischief is this or
that glut of the market, and the obvious remedy is
to take off the superfluous labourers, as often as
they happen to be thus thrown out of employment.
This would be only cutting off the cancer as often
as it would grow, without permanently extirpating
the malady. The real mischief is, that the source of
employment is a fluctuating one ; if the surplus hands
occasioned by the present case of stagnation of trade
were all shipped off to-morrow, and matters thus set
right, in another month or two the same evil might occur
again ; or, on the other hand, the demand might increase,
and new hands be employed, and these might be again
thrown off (and again emigrate, we suppose), and so on
ad infinitum. Be the manufacturing population large or
small, the evil would still exist. The mischief, then, is
the fluctuating nature of the source of employment.
What is its cause ? And what is its remedy ? Its cause
lies of course in the very nature of trade, but its remedy,
we think, is with the master-manufacturers themselves.
They might do much to mend the matter. In conse-
quence, we may suppose, of the increase of trade, a mill
is built, which is capable of giving support and comfort
to hundreds of labouring poor. Work-people, of course,
are to be found ; a little colony of cottages rises round
the f'actory, built by the master ; and if anything can be
created by man, that village, with its horde of inhabi-
tants—men, women, and children—has been created, is
absolutely maintained, and is kept continually increasing
by, and through the sole agency of the man who built the
mill. On the strength of t::e hope of subsistence held
out by that mill, its in-dwellers marry and are given
in marriage, just as by it also they themselves
were, in their day, called into existence. This
is the doing of the master-manufacturer, and as-
suredly he is responsible for what he has done—
surely, he has undertaken, if people would but think so,
to maintain those unhappy creatures of his prosperity,
or, it may be, of his avarice, not only through fair
weather but through foul--through employment and
through the want of it—through bad times as well as
the good. He has summoned them into being : is it
enough to employ them when work is plenty, and then
to desert them, as he must well know, and when only,
they can find elsewhere no sort :of employment what-
ever ? We do not hesitate to say that he is bound to
employ them, and that too though it be at a loss, even at
every loss. We do not disguise our opinion that the
relation of the master and workman--of rich and poor—
has been, and is, fearfully misunderstood. And that is
the cause of much of the present mischief : the spirit of
trade is too much the spirit of profit and loss. ;1
These remarks strike at the very principle of
trade, namely, carrying it on for a man's own
advantage, and not for the advantage of others.
At first we thought, in common with several of
our Contemporaries, that they were the off-
spring of the most greenhorn ignorance, but
further reflection taught us, that they are the
logical deductions of the principle that the
State is bound to provide for the welfare of all
the people. Our Liberal Contemporaries, who
advocated Lord ASHLEY'S interference with the
colliers, have no right to complain of the
Times for advocating an interference with the
master manufacturers, by which it supposes an
incomparably greater degree of misery, and of
danger to society, will be prevented, than by
Lord ASHLEY'S Act. His law, springing from
benevolence, is to control the operations of self.
interest; the recommendations of the Times
have the same origin, aim, and scope. Opposing
Lord ASHLEY, we can oppose the Times. We
deny that the fluctuations in the demand for em-
ployment are caused by the operations of the
self-interest of the masters. We deny that
fluctuation is the nature of trade, and we assert
that the fluctuations which have actually taken
place have been caused by the benevolence of
the legislator.
The writer in the Times takes a purblind view
of the whole matter, and writes as if no other
person in the world were concerned in stimu-
lating the building of mills and the employment
of hands than the mill-owner. According to his
observations the mill-owner created the demand
for his goods, found a market for them, and grew
the cotton he was to work up, as well as make
cloth. But the mere mill-owner is only one
agent, or one part, of the great system of pro-
duction, and far from being the willing author of
the derangements, he is quite as much their victim
as the labourers themselves. The spinner is no-
thing withont the weaver, the weaver nothing
without the dyer, the dyer nothing without the
merchant to buy his goods, and each and all of
them are closely connected with the machine-
maker, and must all have his assistance before
they can complete a single piece of printed ca-
lico for the market. It betrays great ignorance
in the writer of the ordinary process of produc-
tion, to fix the blame of fluctuation, if blame there
be, exclusively on the mill-owner, when it must be
shared by scores of other manufacturers or traders,
all of whom contribute to the result.

Let us, however, come to specific facts. There
was a great demand for manufacturing labour
from 1834 to 1838, or great prosperity in the land;
since 1838 there has been a slackened demand;
what was the cause of the brisk demand in the
former four years and the slackened demand in
the last? To ascribe the fluctuation to the mill-

_
owners is to confound cause and effect. They
built mills, they engaged hands, they manufac-

_ .
tuned largely, to supply a demand which they
did not create. Whence came it ?

It had several sources, foreign and domestic.
Of the foreign we shall content ourselves with
noticing one. The inhabitants of the United
States, stimulated partly by the abundance of
capital here which overflowed on them, en-
gaged in a great variety of improvements,
some of them speculative ; to carry them on,
they borrowed largely in Europe, particu-
larly in England; so borrowing they had the
means of purchasing, and they purchased very
extensively of our manufactured articles. Every-
body knows that to the end of 1836 the trade
with America was most flourishing. In fact, by
filr the larger portion of the loans were made in
goods, tbr which the lender paid the manufac-
turer. Hence arose a great demand for manu-
factures, and mills and other works were erected
to supply it. The demand in America gave ad-

ditional employment and wages to our people,
and the demand increasing at home as well
as abroad required still more mills. In fact,
at that period, the manufacturers could not

execute the orders they received, and it was
no uncommon thing for iron-masters and ma-

chinists to have orders for work more than they

could execute in two years. The manufacturers
who erected mills to comply with that de-