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

"Nottingham, November 6 . – In lace we have no improvement to notice this week in the general sale of goods, and, with very few exceptions, there is a great falling off in demand; but, as many of the manufacturers are wisely lessening their production, we do not anticipate any serious losses resulting from the present temporary stagnation. Many are stopping their frames to make fresh designs altogether; which, if done with good taste, some advantage may result from present difficulties. In hosiery our trade is not so much depressed as we had reason to anticipate. There is still a fair business doing in wrought hose, and a little increased demand for 'cut-ups,' as well as gloves made of thread and spun silk. The price of yarn is low, which is in favour both of the manufacturer and merchant.

"Leicester, November 6 . – The unsettled state of the price of workmanship for straight-down hose has caused a great depression in that branch, and led to nearly a total cessation of work, many hosiers declining to give out until prices are settled. In wrought hose a better business is doing, though not so good as usual at this season. Yarns continue dull of sale."

Now, why do we insist upon these things? For two reasons. In the first place, we wish you to observe that the cheapness of manufacturing products does not of itself induce consumption. There must be buyers as well as sellers in order to constitute a market, and the tendency of our late legislation has been to diminish the means of the former. It by no means follows that, if we have cheap food and cheap manufactures, the relative position of all classes can be maintained. Never forget that our burdens all the while remain at a fixed money rate , and that, as the value of produce is lowered, the weight of those burdens is aggravated. This consideration, which is now well understood, is beginning to tell strongly against the doctrines of the Free-Traders, even with some of those, who were once their ardent supporters. Mr James Harvey of Liverpool, late a member of the Anti-Corn-Law League, but now a strenuous opponent of their system, thus chronicles the leading cause of his conversion. We quote from his pamphlet just published, Remunerative Price the Desideratum, not Cheapness . He says: – "My suspicions were first awakened by the blind devotion of the Manchester school of political economy to the doctrine of CHEAPNESS; for it struck me as a self-evident proposition, that to buy cheap is to sell cheap, in which case there can be no possible gain, but a positive loss, arising from the necessary aggravation of all fixed charges." In order to place the producers of this country in the same position as before, it would be necessary to reduce all fixed charges, the interest of debt both public and private, the expenses of government, and all salaries and annuities, to an amount corresponding to the forced decline of prices. This would be called a war against property; but, in reality, the war against property began when the Legislature admitted foreign untaxed produce to compete with the produce and labour of our tax-paying population at home.

Our second reason for drawing your attention to the cheerless prospect of manufactures, has reference to the sacrifices, not only indirect but direct, which the other classes of the community were called upon to make in order to prop them up. In the first place, the Property and Income Tax, which we are still called upon to pay, was imposed by Sir Robert Peel expressly for the object of effecting "such an improvement in the manufacturing interests as will react on every other interest in the country." He admitted that it was an unjust and partial impost, and therefore promised that it should be only temporary – however, we have endured it for ten years, and the Whigs will no doubt make an effort to continue it still longer. Here, then, you have a sum of five millions and a half annually confiscated for the benefit of the manufacturers, who were relieved from taxation to that amount. So far for sacrifice the first. Then came sacrifice the second, in the shape of Free Trade, mulcting the productive classes of this country to the extent of at least five-and-thirty per cent of their annual returns. Then came sacrifice the third, which handed over the carrying trade to the foreigner.

Now, considering that all these sacrifices have been made for the encouragement of manufactures, or at least with that professed object, is it not, to say the least of it, extraordinary that they have not thriven? How are we to account for a result so wholly contrary to the avowed anticipations of our statesmen? The explanation is, after all, not very difficult. All these sacrifices have been made, not for the great body of the manufacturers, but for a mere section of them. We possess no authentic official information as to the amount of manufactures consumed at home; but we have records, more or less trustworthy, of the amount of our exports, and these are used to mislead the minds of the multitude as to the actual extent and relative importance of our trade. England has no more title than France has to the character of the workshop of the world. We are driven from the markets of civilised countries by the protective duties imposed by their governments for the righteous and prudent purpose of fostering native industry, and we are compelled to seek our marts among people who are not yet so far advanced in political economy as to detect the enormous discrepancy between our principles and our practice. Listen to Mr Harvey's sketch of our foreign trade: —

"From the theories and systems I turned my attention to passing events and recorded facts: I saw the West Indies prostrated; Canada thrown into a state of revolt, succeeded by a smothered feeling of discontent; Ireland depopulated; the magnificent resources of India undeveloped; and the British farmer reduced to the dire necessity of paying rent out of capital. I also perceived that the change in our commercial policy had substituted a cosmopolitan cant in the place of patriotism and nationality. To become the friend of every country but his own had become the pride and the glory of statesmanship. Foreign goods were admitted, duty free, into our ports, in the vain hope of reciprocity being established; but our manufactures were subjected to heavy imposts on the Continent of Europe, and in the United States. China, unversed in the mysteries of political economy, only levies five per cent upon our goods, whilst, in direct contravention of our pet notions of Free Trade and reciprocity, we impose a tax of 300 per cent upon her teas. Our hopes have been disappointed, our calculations falsified. We are the dupes of our own fantastic ideas and Quixotic concessions. We are the laughing-stock of the Old and the New Worlds. The Germanic Zollverein shuns our overtures; the American excludes our ships from his seaboard."

Can these things be controverted? We defy the ingenuity of mankind to do it.

So much for the foreign trade; but there still remains the home trade, in which by far the largest portion of our manufacturing capital is embarked, and which furnishes a much greater amount of employment to British labour than the other. You see what is the state of that trade, notwithstanding the savings which may have been effected by the lowered price of food, and also notwithstanding that partial protection which several branches of it are still allowed to retain. One word as to that incidental point. Mr Cobden is reported to have said, that he did not care how soon these remnants of protection were abolished. Let him be as good as his word, and, IF HE DARES, rise up in his place in the House of Commons, and make a motion to that effect. We shall then have an opportunity of testing the exact nature of his principles. To what cause can such a depression as this, so long and continuous, be attributed, except to a general curtailment of demand on the part of the consumers, arising from the insufficiency of their means to make purchases as before? You are probably aware that what is called strict economy in families is not favourable to the interests of manufacture or of trade. Of manufactures of all kinds there must be a certain yearly consumption, based upon the necessities of the people. Besides food, men require clothes to cover them, and houses in which to dwell, and those houses must be more or less furnished. But between the bare supply of such necessities, and that point which is considered by persons, according to their tastes, education, or habits, as constituting comfort, there is a wide interval. Nothing is a more sure criterion of the wealth and income of a people than the ordering of their homes, and the manner of their living; and the traveller who passes from one country into another can at once form an estimate, from such appearances, of their respective wealth or poverty. Diminish income, and a reduction is immediately made. All superfluities are lopped off and renounced. The broker, who deals in second-hand articles, drives a larger business than the man who is the vendor of new ones; and even in domestic labour there is a large economy practised, by reducing establishments. That this must be so, will be evident on the slightest reflection. Reduce a man's income from £1000 to £800 or £600, and he will, if he has any wisdom or prudence, cut down his expenses to meet the fall. It is upon the home manufacturer in the first place, and upon the shopkeeper secondly, that these reductions tell. The one finds that his amount of production is much greater than the demand; the other does not turn over his capital nearly so rapidly as before. Add to this that the home manufacturer, in many branches, is exposed to strong foreign competition. Sir Robert Peel, in his last alterations of the tariff, did indeed continue Protection – more largely than is generally understood, for the mere amount of revenue-duty drawn from importations of foreign articles, adapted to compete with ours in the home, is no criterion of the Protective value – to some branches of industry; but others were exposed without shelter, and have since suffered accordingly. It is undeniable that a very large amount of foreign manufactures, which have paid no duty at all, or merely an elusory one, are consumed within this country – thereby inflicting extreme injury upon British labour, and depressing trades which, though severally not important, give in the aggregate, or ought to give, the means of employment to thousands. Regard the subject in any light you will, this cheapness, of which we have heard so much, just amounts to a diminution of the income of every class, except the annuitants and fund-holders, while it consequently renders the payment of the fixed burdens more grievous to every one of us.