The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-06-27 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORNING, JUNE 27, 1848.

A PERFECT Godsend for our politico-economical
01iilosophers has been the potato rot of 1846. For
whatever has gone wrong with us, the universal plea
is, this visitation of Providence. If we ask, where
is the fulfilment of all the magnificent promises
which were made to us at the outset of our free-trade
enreer ; why it is that, instead of universal prospe-
aity, we see only universal prostration; why our
exports are declining, our mills are standing idle,
our
_labouring population is only half employed,
and bankruptcy is staring our trading community in
the face; why we have a revenue deficient by seve-
aal millions, and increased taxation becoming inevi-
table;—the answer comes trippingly fromthe tongue
of whatever political sage we address ourselves to,
and, as he speaks, he elevates his eyebrows as if in
alieer wonder at our amazing obtuseness—" My
dear sirs, you quite forget that we have had a dis-
;tea e in the potatoes, and been compelled to raise
eight millions sterling for the support of the people
el Ireland." Turn which way we may, this rotten
potatoe argument is poked in our eyes at every step.
It does duty, either as a plea of not guilty, or a plea
in mitigation of their sentences for every conceivable
sort of political impostors.
We have just had placed before us the finding of
a Select Committee of the House of Commons,
appointed to enquire into the causes of the recent
and present commercial distress, and especially into
as connexion with the working of the Bank Charter
Act ; and here, once more, we have the same into-
erable nuisance foisted upon us. The Report,
'which has had the advantage of having been drawn
tip by our present most talented Chancellor of the
Exchequer, states that :

" There has been a general concurrence of opinion
amongst the witnesses examined before your committee,
that the primary cause of the distress was the deficient
karvest, especially of the potato crop, in the year 1846, and
the necessity of providing the means of payment in the
year 1847 for the unprecedented importations of various
descriptions of food which took place in that year."

So much for the "primary cause." We were
forced suddenly, by a dispensation of Providence,
to do precisely what the Free-trader had been telling
as that it was our interest to do permanently, viz.:
to import a large portion of our food. We sent
out some thirty millions of money into the markets
of the world to buy corn; and, as a nation, we are
poorer by so much of that thirty millions as we have
not paid for in labour. The thing is palpable
enough. The whole case may lie in a nutshell.
We arc precisely in the position of the farmer who
goes to the green grocer's for the vegetables he
ought to grow in his own garden; or, of the work-
ing man, who spends threepence a-week for shaving,
though he has a razor and soap at home. The
foreign grower of corn has not taken our manufac-
tured goods in payment, at least in the first instance.
Ile has taken a considerable portion of the value of
our imports in specie ; and now let us see how the
case stands.

We are poorer as a nation by, say half of the
thirty millions which we have had to pay for food,
the other half having been paid in labour. We
have lost directly fifteen millions of our capital.
What is that to set against the depreciation which
bas taken place in every description of property,
amounting, at the most moderate estimate, to two
or three hundred millions ? It does not more than
equal the aggregate losses in foreign produce of in-
dividual merchants during the last twelve months.
In itself such a sacrifice of the nation's capital
would be utterly incapable of creating the mass of
suffering which we see around us ; but when we
look at that sacrifice in connexion with our existing
system of currency, and, above all, when we turn
back the page of history thirty or forty years, and
observe how, year after year, we lavished double
this sum in war expenses and subsidies to foreign
powers, without creating anything like the present
state of commercial disorganization, the cause and
effect stand out in bold relief, and must be palpa-
ble to every man not utterly infatuated with the pet
theory of the bullionists, or not dishonest enough
to wish for a share of the periodical plunder which
it affords the capitalist, at the expense of the in-
dustry and the enterprise of the nation. To pro-
cure the required supply of food for our people, we
parted with that gold which we have declared
should always be pledged with the bank as a se-
curity for the circulation of the country; and we
placed ourselves in the position of a community
without change. We had goods and property
enough of all kinds to sell amongst ourselves, but
none of us could give cash for his neighbour's five
pound note. We could not balance our transac-
tions ; and we had therefore to set about getting
back our gold from the foreigner to relieve our-
selves, or rather to unloose the knot with which
Sir Robert Peel and the bullionists had tied up the
bands of the bank. How was this to be achieved ?
Bow was our gold to be got back ? How has it
keen got back ? By an indiscriminate sacrifice of
British products in every market of the world; by
paying thirty shillings zn materials and labour for
every sovereign we received.
The failure of the potato crop was the " primary
cause" of all the suffering we have had to go
through during the past two years. True, most
excellent philosophers ! Perhaps a few more pri-
mary causes might be discovered in the legislation
of the last six years. But what was the great, the
main machinery which crushed us ? When a
Itnan pushes his neighbour under a cart wheel he
may be called the primary cause of his neighbour's
loss of limb or life ; but the wheel must be taken
into consideration. Admit, then, the potato rot as
the primary cause of our commercial suffering, and
let the currency measures of Sir Robert Peel be the
wheel, and we have a tolerably fair solution of the
whole question at issue.
Of course the whole spirit of the Report is directed
to the task of whitewashing the Currency Bills; and
in their bungling effort to do so, the Committee has
had to cast about, on every side, for ad captandum
reasons for the distress of the country. They state
That

" Among other causes, the deficient supply of cotton,
the diversion of capital from its ordinary employment in
commercial transactions to the construction of railroads,
the undue extension of credit, especially in our transactions
with the East, and exaggerated expectations of enlarged
trade, have been stated, by some of the witnesses, as hav-
hig contributed to the same result.
"Your committee see no reason to doubt that these
causes have in different degrees, in different parts of the
country, produced the effect thus ascribed to them."
Now, first, with respect to the deficient supply of
cotton, we ask,—ls cotton, at this moment, dear ?
Have we, at this moment, any deficiency of it ?
No. We want orders and consumption for our
goods; not the raw material. We want remunera-
ting prices for those goods. We want those markets
which we have destroyed, and that commercial con-
fidence which has been shattered, in the effort to
prop up a system of currency, which one day drives
the community to extravagant and mad speculation,
and the next robs industry and well-directed and
prudent enterprise of its fair' reward. Again, with
respect to our alleged unwise expenditure in rail-
ways, and our undue extension of credit in our
transactions with the East—these are results, not
causes. We speculated and gave credit, because we
had a plethora of currency; because the Bank, in its
griping eagerness for profit, would discount any-
thing in the shape of a bill.
The Bank led us into error; perilled the credit of
the nation; rushed, in its infatuation, to the very