The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-06-25 00:00:00

MONOPOLY. WHAT IS IT?

(For the Liverpool Standard.)
A word more frequently used than rightly understood.
A term of reproach ever in the mouths of those who are
stirring heaven and earth to accomplish measures for their
own aggrandisement, under the specious plea of sympathy
for the distresses of their poorer country men.
A cry which has been caught up and re-echoed by the mi-
nistry of this country when, in articulo mortis, with the
same desperate eagerness with which dying men clutch at
straws ; not improbably too, with the same result.
An expression which, however successfully it may have
been used by the designing to tickle the ears of the unskilful,
has ever been estimated by the judicious at its true value
of but " sounding brass and tinkling cymbal."
A very brief consideration of the real meaning of the word,
and of the signification to which it has lately become the
fashion to twist it, will, we think, serve to abuse the minds
of the unprejudiced of what we conceive to be a very gross
misconception of the idea represented by this term.
The derivation of the word from two Greek words, signi-
fying sole (right of) selling, indicates its meaning to be an
exclusive privilege of buying or selling, possessed either by
an individual, or, in its widest sense, by a small body of in-
dividuals, and entirely loses its force when attempted to be
applied to great and influential classes of the community—
how utterly meaningless, when the rights of the greatest, the
most numerous, and the most influential class of all, those
interested directly or indirectly in the prosperity of agricul-
ture, are summarily narrowed down to the comprehension of
an epithet of so essentially limited an application.
Monopoly may be defined to be a privilege granted to the
few, sometimes, no doubt, to the prejudice of the many, but
cannot, without doing violence to its real meaning, be wrested
so as to indicate that salutary protection considered essential
to the prosperity, nay to the very existence, of the most im-
portant of all our national interests. Monopolies have, from
time to time, been granted by all nations to individuals, or
to incorporated bodies, either to remunerate them for useful
discoveries, or eminent past services, or to stimulate them,
by the hope of ultimate profits, to embark their skill
and property on the uncertain ocean of human events.
Of :this description, are the patents granted to discoverers or
inventors in the paths of science and art, the privileges
granted to the East India and other Companies, to the Bank
of England, to railway companies, and a host of others ; and
though some of these have doubtless outlived the period
originally intended for their existence, and have consequently
been annulled, and thrown open to public competition, this
is no reason why all others should be sacrificed at one fell
sweep, or why even new charters, under peculiar circum-
stances, should not be granted. We all thought that when
the trade to the East Indies and China was thrown open,
and the exclusive privileges of the East India Company
withdrawn, that there was an end to the cry of monopoly
in that qnarter at least; and so there was for a time, when
the temporary purpose which gave it birth, or rather breath,
was served ; but, strange to say, this word, camelion-like,
has changed its hue, and when another purpose was to be
served, such as on the late occasion of the agitation of
the sugar duties question, it was still the same cuckoo-
note. in the mouths of the same ever-restless faction.
Verily this monopoly is a word of of wondrous powers of ex-
pansion and contraction : it quite rivals the stretch of the
very elastic fancy of Polonius. Now it is almost in shape
like a camel, anon it is dwindled down to the pigmy propor-
tions of a weasel, and then again it has expanded to the di-
mensions of a whale—aye, indeed, very like a whale. A
word endowed with such slippery powers, is, however, quite
as likely to elude the grasp as bend to the wishes of those

who endeavour to twist it into all imaginary shapes, to suit
their own purposes.
If by the term monopoly, those who use it mean (as seems
very probable) every description of trade which enjoys the
benefit of protection, who shall we say are not monopolists ?
Is the wealthy manufacturer, with his protective duty of
from 20 to 50 per cent., to keep out the competition of
foreigners, less a monopolist than the landowner or farmer
who enjoys a protection nominally of 20 per cent. for the
same purpose ? The proposition to break down the agricul-
turtsts' bulwark of protection, comes then with a good
grace truly, from those whose interests require a yet higher
line of circumvallation to ensure their security from the
same common danger—foreign competition.
The true object of attack, then, seems to be the principle of
protection under the specious guise of an assault on mono-
poly, and if this wild crusade should prove successful in the
present instance, there is not a single protected interest in
this great nation—and what interest is not more or less so—
which must not bow its head to the same influence, which,
like the devastating blast of the desert, will leave the coun-
try over which it is permitted to sweep, a naked, leafless plain,
one wide waste of desolation. M.

[Another correspondent suggests a mode of exposing the
absurdity of the monopolists' cry, by calling attention to the
fact of the corporation having purchased the only two situ-
ations suitable for docks on the other side of the river, to se-
cure the revenues of the town against rival docks in the hands
of other parties.]