Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 70, No. 434, December, 1851

The sum of twenty millions lost by the failure of the potato-crop – a single event, not one of annual occurrence – was taken from the country's power of produce; and therefore , said the Free-Traders, there was stagnation. But they, of course, could not help it. Of course they could not; but what about the ninety-one millions of annual loss, which is equally deducted from the internal expenditure of the country? About that we do not hear a word. And yet ask yourselves, and that most seriously – for it is time that we should get rid of all such pitiful paltering – whether there is any difference whatever between the two cases, except that the one was an isolated casualty, and that the other is an annual infliction to which we are subjected by statute? Weigh the matter as you will, you cannot, we are satisfied, be able to detect any difference. If the grower of grain at present prices has no remuneration for his toil, or return for his capital, he cannot buy from you, any more than could the farmer whose crop perished by the potato disease. What caused the stagnation? The failure of the power to purchase, because there was no return for produce. What causes the stagnation? Precisely the same thing perpetrated by Act of Parliament.

Do not, we beseech you, allow yourselves to be fooled any longer by the jesuitry of these political economists, but apply your own reason to discover the cause of the present depression. Do not believe them when they talk about exceptional causes, affecting temporarily the industry of the nation, but certain immediately to disappear. If you were to live as long as Methusaleh, no one year would elapse without furnishing those gentlemen with a special and exceptional cause. One year it is the potato disease; another the French Revolution; another the Great Exhibition. Heaven only knows what will be their excuse next year – perhaps the new Reform Bill, or some other similar godsend. You are the particular class upon whom the deception is to be played, and for whose especial benefit the fraud is concocted. The producers know very well how they stand, and what they have to expect. They can be no longer cajoled by assurances of higher prices, by vague promises of profit after the disappearance of "the transition state," or by impudent averments that, by an entire change of system and the expenditure of more capital, they will be able to maintain themselves in affluence. To do the Free-Traders justice, they have for some time desisted from such attempts. They now address their victims, through their organs, in a fine tone of desperado indifference, telling them that, if they do not like the present arrangement, the sooner they go elsewhere the better. And the people are taking them at their word and going. Hundreds of thousands of tax-payers are leaving the country as fast as possible, carrying with them the fragments of their property, and bequeathing to those who remain behind their share of the national burdens. But in your case, the Free-Traders cannot yet afford to pull off the mask. They are apprehensive that you should see them in their real character; and therefore, so long as you are likely to be amused with "specialties" and "exceptional causes," these will be furnished to you gratis, and in great variety. There seems, however, to be an apprehension among their camp that you are beginning to evince suspicion. Recent elections have not been quite as they should be; and in the seaport and large commercial towns there are evident symptoms of mutiny. So, by way of diverting your attention, you are likely to have a measure of Reform next year, possibly as satisfactory in its result as the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, upon which Ministers cleverly managed to concentrate the whole public attention throughout last session, and then, having carried it, allowed its provisions to become a dead letter, almost before the ink, which made the measure complete, was dry! We say this, not as opponents of an extension of the suffrage – for on that point we reserve our opinion until the details are fully before us – but as enemies and loathers of a miserable system of chicane and deception which has now crept into the public counsels, and which threatens very speedily to destroy the independence of public opinion, by opposing state obstacles to its free and legitimate expression. We ask any of you, fearlessly, to look back at the records of last session, and then say whether the country was not degraded and stultified by the act of the Prime Minister? Right or wrong, at his invitation and call, the Protestants of Great Britain demanded a security against what they considered an intolerable instance of Romish insolence and aggression. They received it from Parliament; and the moment it passed into the hands of the executive power, it became as worthless as the paper upon which it was written! And why was this? Simply because the object was gained – you had been amused for a whole session. If nothing was intended to be done in the way of repelling aggression, and if Ministers durst have told you so a year ago, there were many points affecting your more immediate interests which would have been forced upon their attention. But they were very glad to escape from such discussions under cover of a Protestantism which they did not feel, and an affected indignation of Papal claims, which they had done everything in their power, by diplomatic agency, to encourage; and, having escaped the perils of one session upon that ground, they will strain every effort to turn your attention from your own position, during the next, by bringing forward some measure which they hope may enlist your sympathies, or provoke controversy, so far as to render you indifferent to the real nature of your position. The selection of the battlefield is the oldest trick in strategy. Get up the appearance of a battle, and people will flock from any distance to witness it, regardless of their own interest. Lord John Russell is famous for bloodless fields, which resolve themselves into reviews – shall we have another such in the course of the approaching session?

That manufactures are now exceedingly depressed, and have been so for a long time, notwithstanding the reduction in the price of food consequent upon foreign importations, is an admitted and notorious fact. We have from time to time kept this before the public view by quoting from the trade circulars; and though further evidence may be unnecessary, we shall subjoin extracts from the last accounts received from three seats of industry, two of which are represented in Parliament by Colonel Peyronnet Thompson and Mr Feargus O'Connor. Gloomy as they are, they are by no means the worst which we have had occasion to cite during the last two years.

"Bradford, November 6 . – The market here does not show any symptom of improvement in the demand for any kind of combing wools. All seem in wonder and anxiety as to what may be next expected, for to buy none are willing, whether with stock or without. The staplers appeared to expect that the spirited buying of colonial wools would give a tone of confidence, but that appears to have no effect. The spinners pause when they contrast the comparative high prices of English wool, especially those of the finer class, with what they were in 1848, when yarns were at the present prices, and will not buy with the certainty of making so great a loss as a purchase would entail. The supply of Noils and Brokes was never so limited as at present, and the small quantity making brings full prices. The business doing in yarns is certainly small, and the transactions confined to immediate delivery. No one seems inclined to enter into engagements for distant delivery. For to go on at the present prices of yarns is worse than madness, the price for low numbers of good spinning and standing having reached 8s. per gross, and those of a secondary class sold, if reeled, for what may be the instructions to the commission houses, who have needy parties pressing sales. The quantity so offering is not so great, but the sacrifices which have now for so long been made render the position of the trade exceedingly embarrassing. The production continues to be daily curtailed, and from the whole district the same cheerless tidings are received. Some large houses, who have never reduced their operations before, have adopted it, their loss being so immense, and the whole condition of the trade so thoroughly disjointed. In pieces the business during the week has not shown any feature of increased activity, and the stocks in the manufacturers' hands are somewhat increasing, but not so fast as last year at this period, and especially in Coburgs and fancy goods: the former are chiefly made in this district, and not in Lancashire, for the ruinous price has driven them on to other classes of goods adaptable to their looms; and for some months several large houses have been engaged in making Bareges for the American market. This has prevented mousselines-de-laine being made to stock, and, perhaps for many years, this branch of the trade has not opened with so small a stock on hand.