The Sun.
London, England, 1829-09-30 00:00:00

altered : and if we would prosper as we have done,
our measures must change in the same degree.—
Hitherto our productive powers have been behind
the demands even of our own market. We have

_ _ •
desired, notwithstanding, to protect this from intru-
sion, as a sphere for our trade to which we had a
peculiar claim,—we have so protected it by duties,—
theoretically this may have been false policy, as by
raising costs, and creating a variety of direct impe-
diments to communication, it sent us into foreign
markets under a disadvantage,—but practically, we
were not dependent on foreign markets, unless for
supplies of raw produce for our home consumption,
or to he wrought up in our manufactures,—our capi-
tal, skill, and activity, with our bounties and draw-
backs, enabled us to procure these without loss,—
the rather, that the returns themselves acquired a
factitious value immediately on importation, through
the operation of the same restrictive policy which
protected other branches of domestic speculation,--• '
we were nowhere met by any strong competition,—
profits, consequently, were every where high,—and
these, although they were thus chiefly, or rather en-
tirely, taken in the home market, and from one por-
tion of our own community to be given to another,
were favourable to the accumulation of capital in
the hands of the more industrious portion, which
reacted in turn on their productive powers, and
accelerated their growth. It seems by no means
certain, then, that up to a given point in our pro-
gress to opulence our protecting duties were disad-
vantageous to us. When the system was first or-
ganised, there was a virtual choice before our prede-
cessors whether they would accumulate capital by a
great trade and low profits abroad, or by a compa-
ratively limited trade at home; and in the unsettled
times in which their choice was made, with their
inability at that period to maintain a great trade, and
the moderate competition which they then also en-
countered, it may be presumed that they chose not
unwisely, economy- against speculation, filling one
pocket out of another, but the hoarding and repro-
ducing pocket out of the spending one, the Savings
Bank fund out of that destined for current expences.

But it is essentially necessary for us, their succes-
sors, to observe, that as there is a point in all eco-
nomy when mere saving ceases to be prudence, so
there is a crisis in the political progress of a mer-
cantile community like ours, when the home market
cannot thus entirely supply the place of the foreign
one ;—when,as the Savings Bank refuses to make a
return for more than a limited sum, so the home con-

sumption becomes inadequate to employ capita
swelled beyond a limited amount ; and in both cases
investments must be sought elsewhere. And this
is just the point at which we have now arrived; and
the fact cannot be too firmly grasped, as supplying
the principle upon which all measures of relief must
be founded. It is scope that we want, extended
scope of action. In the infancy of our growth, the
bars by which we surrounded ourselves protected
us; but now we have filled our cage, and they con-
fine us : and we exhaust our strength in vain and
impotent struggles with their fastenings.
And our great misfortune at present is, not that
we have reached this point (for, if the emergency be
rightly met, this may be to our great advantage, even
like the young trader, who, driven from his Savings
Bank, commences a prosperous business, and soon
learns to despise his previous petty gains) but that
we have come to it suddenly. Had we approached
the crisis by degrees, our minds would have been
prepared for the change of system which it im-
poses : and one obstacle would have disappeared
after another, till we should scarcely have felt the
transition. But first the immense consumption
caused by the war, and afterwards the fever of spe-
culation with which we were seized four years ago,
kept up the value of the home market, and main-
tained our prepossession in favour of old maxima and
institutions : and they still cling even to those most
anxious to shake them off,—as witness that system
which has been of late years called free trade, but
which, by merely removing certain prohibitions, and
lowering certain duties, on import, has rather faci-
litated the entrance of foreigners into our market,
than materially assisted our merchants in penetrating
into theirs. It has thus begun at the wrong end;
and the result, indeed, has proved, that in this or
some other way (but we think in this) its views are
inadequate to the occasion. Besides admitting
competition, provision must be made to meet it, and
also to find a vent for the excessive production
which, by stimulating the powers of the country, it
necessarily occasions. The costs of that production
must be therefore reduced as much as possible, and
consumption fostered by facilitating communication
in every possible way. And thus, we are persuaded,
can health still be restored to our commercial system.
Such, then, are the conclusions to which an at-
tentive consideration of facts bearing on the present
state of the country, seems to lead ; and, if rigo-
rously followed up, they obviously suggest a variety
of deviationi from existing maxims and institutions.
In taxation, for example, as a source of necessary
revenue to Government, they recommend direct im-
posts on person and property, in preference to taxes
on consumption : and they are especially opposed to
those which impede the circulation of goods and
capital from hand to hand, or make it unnecessarily
expensive, by means of customs, excise, and stamp-
duties, or by tolls. In protecting domestic industry
again, in so far as this might be necessary at all
were the wheel once properly revolving (which
would probably be to a very limited extent, for
even with our present burdens and impediments, we
maintain a considerable export trade, and if these
burdens were lightened, our powers in this way
would be indefinitely increased, and in our own mar-
ket we might require little or no favour), they ad-
vise bounties on home production, making labour
cheap even at the joint expense of the community,
rather than duties on foreign production, making it
dear at still the same, or even a greater expense;
and this in harmony with what has been found the
unavoidable operation of an unavoidable burden, the
poor laws, and in opposition to the policy which ex-
plodes bounties, and continues duties. (It is here,
however, to be distinctly understood, that bounties
on production are meant, not bounties on exporta-
tion ; the latter, as tending to raise prices at home,
appearing quite inexpedient; but the former, which
give the home market equally with the foreign one,
the benefit of the encouragent bestowed, seeming in
many eases, if required, even a debt at our hands.
and fully warranted either by the direct benefit to
be derived from them, or by particular circumstances
making out a strong claim on the consideration of a
paternal government*.) Farther, the views above
explained are averse to every thing that discourages
our intercourse with foreignerS, by making it either
insecure or expensive :—and, on the contrary, in
regulating private speculation, they especially re-
commend, for the present at least, the improvement
of the domestic communications of other countries,
as a field still in great measure unexplored, without
successfully cultivating which, however, the means
of distributing our manufactures must always remain
essentially imperfect. And in thus suggesting one
beneficial investment of capital abroad, they open
up the question how far a yet more extended emi-
gration of it (an emigration kept moderate by in-
creased facilities for its profitable employment at
home, but in so far as it may go, directed abroad to
the developement of the resources of other coun-
tries) would not be far more beneficial to us than
any emigration of onr labouring population, inas-
much as it would multiply transactions between

* The domestic fisheries, which keep up a valuble
nursery for seamen, home corn, which maintains a yeo-
manry population, and prevents our all turning manufac-
turer, and West India sugar, which is the staple produc-
tion of a portion of our fellow-suljects labouring under se-
vere difficulties partly of our own creation, seem to be
cases strictly in point. But there are also others ; and in
all, we are persuaded, protection could be much more
cheaply and effectually bestowed by direct bounties to
themselves, than by duties on competing articles. And
fraud could thus, too, be made almost impossible; and as
extracting
i money from Government, instead of contri-
buting to t, the continued claim to protection, as circum-
stances vary, would be more rigorously scanned,—an
especial advantage when the public makes a direct sacri-
fice to favour individual interests, Ste.