decidedly in favour of free trade. He | sistency on that head; but his consistency, was not aware of having abandoned them, except as to the silk trade. In all other respects, he was the humble follower of the right hon. gentleman. He differed from him as to the currency, only as to the time. He wished to reach the same point; but he thought the right hon. gentleman was for travelling too fast. He (Mr. Baring) would not start until the country had acquired more steadiness and confidence. As to all other points, he was perfectly of the same opinion as he was in 1820. But what was the case with if consistent he was, proved that he was any thing but a trustworthy pilot in an emergency like the present. The second point on which he should attempt to convict the right hon. gentleman of inconsistency was connected with the opinion which he had advanced in 1815, upon the subject of the Corn-laws. His right hon. friend was then the advocate for advancing the protecting duty on corn from 66s. to 80s. per quarter. He (Mr. Baring) had opposed that advance as strenuously as he could; and, although he had voted his right hon. friend? He would not | in a small minority, upon that occasion, it refer to any trifling or insignificant question; he was about to speak of a subject of great and leading interest. In 1810, when the country was engaged in an arduous struggle for its very existence -God forbid that any man now living should see such another-when we were borne down with an immense expenditure, and had hardly a guinea left in circulation, the right hon. gentleman spoke and voted in that House, and wrote pamphlets in favour of the principle of returning in two years, whatever might happen, to cash payments. Mr. Huskisson.-Yes, whether in war or in peace. Mr. Baring continued: And at that very moment, though the country was in a state of perfect despair as to the return of peace, his right hon. friend, as he had just avowed, was speaking, writing, and voting, for the return to cash payments in two years. Was that, he would ask his right hon. friend a vote which, under the same circumstances, he would give again. Mr. Huskisson. Entirely. Mr. Baring. If such were the case, he would leave his right hon. friend to maintain it as he could; but any man who mixed up a little practical experience with his theory, would see the absurdity of such a position. If any gentleman wished for proof, that his right hon, friend was not a safe pilot for the vessel of the state in a time of commotion and storm, he would find it in his right hon. friend's recent declaration, that he was prepared to assert the entire maintenance of a system in time of war, to which they had compelled the Bank to return with extreme difficulty, and not with any thing like complete success, in time of peace. He had no right, therefore, to charge his right hon. friend with incon was a vote of which he was not inclined to repent. Would his right hon. friend say the same of the vote which he then gave? Would he tell them, that he was prepared to abide by that vote as entirely as he was prepared to abide by his vote on the bullion question? He should be very much mistaken if his right hon. friend did not tell them at an early period, that, instead of advancing the protecting duty on corn, the real question for the consideration of parliament was, how far it could be prudently reduced. He would not press more upon that point at present, as it was one on which he should have occasion to dilate before he concluded. Henow came to a part of his right hon. friend's measures, in which his inconsistency was particularly glaring, and which he alluded to with the greater readiness, as it was connected with the subject of the silk trade, which now formed the question before the House. His right hon. friend, in proposing the reduction of the duty on thrown silk from 14s. 8d. to 7s. 6d. per pound, had said, that it was necessary to continue it at that rate as a protection to the throwster. He (Mr. Baring) stated, that the other branches of the silk-trade would be sacrificed by the protection thus afforded to the throwster, and urged a further reduction. His right hon. friend had maintained a contrary opinion, and carried it by a triumphant majority. His right hon. friend, since that time, had not only seen his error, but by a Treasury minute had reduced the protecting duty from 7s. 6d. to 5s. per pound. What further measures his right hon. friend intended to take with it now, he did not know; for in the speech which he had made last night, there was no declaration as to what extent the throwster was to be protected, or whether he was to be protected at all. He was practical man enough to wish, on a matter of business, to have some information contained in a speech of a minister; but his right hon. friend had scorned to give them any information, and had reduced them to the necessity of getting it from him as well as they could. He therefore again asked his right hon. friend whether, in proposing to keep the duty on thrown silk at 7s. 6d. per pound, he had not acted with a degree of haste and carelessness of which he had since repented? If his right hon. friend had done so and it was impossible to deny that he had-if he had legislated carelessly on a case where the bread of thousands was concerned, he, for one, could not see that character of steadiness in his right hon. friend's measures, which was necessary to induce him to follow his right hon. friend blindly as a guide, and to give up his own opinions as wrong, without being convinced that they were so. He had thought it right to make these observations on the inconsistency of his right hon. friend in return for similar observations which his right hon. friend had made upon him. The petition of 1820, which had been presented by him to the House, and which had afterwards been referred to a select committee, had been productive in its results for which he took no merit of a series of measures which, under the guidance of his right hon. friend, had been more effectual in improving the commerce of the country than any series of measures which had ever been proposed by any former administration. The manner in which they had been carried into execution reflected great credit on his right hon. friend. He was fully sensible of his merit, and took that opportunity of publicly acknowledging it. His right hon. friend seemed to have an idea that some of his measures had produced an hostile feeling towards him among the merchants of the country. Let him dismiss it from his mind as unworthy of him and as unworthy of them. If they did not feel grateful to him for the great measures he had introduced on their behalf, they must be the most ungrateful of men. He had relieved them, with the assistance of his colleagues, from all that was objectionable in the navigation laws; he had relieved them from the ancient formalities and charges of the Custom-house; he had relieved them from transit duties, from bounties, from prohibitions; he had reduced the port charges in the port of London, and had rendered it of all the ports in Europe, that to which foreign vessels could come with the least possible charge. To sum up all in a word, it was impossible to say how much praise was due to his right hon. friend and the government, for the improvements they had introduced into our commercial system. At the same time that he said this, he felt bound to say, that the whole practical effect of their arrangements, however beautiful it might be in theory, could not be precisely known, until it was carried into execution. For instance, however fair and desirable, the reciprocity charges on shipping might appear in theory, some mistake might reasonably be suspected, when we saw how American shipping was gaining upon our own in the port of Liverpool, and Dutch and Prussian shipping in the river Thames. He did not pretend to say to what this change was to be attributed. It would appear, that if the regulation had been properly adapted to our interests, the result would have been, that at least we should have had an equal share of our own shipping employed; but the fact was, that at present it was mostly American. Under the circumstances in which the country was placed, he thought his majesty's government were pushing the abstract principles of theorists, too far. In the case of the one and two pound notes, they manifested a disposition to drive forward to their object at once, without condescending for a moment to listen to what practical men might say. A metallic currency was to be had, whatever might be the consequence. same was the case, as to the silk trade. There also was the same disposition shewn at all risks, at the imminent hazard of throwing a large population out of bread, to rush at once to the end in view. If, on the other hand, the merchants came forward with a claim for assistance, the same spirit pervaded the councils of the Crown. No relief was to be granted, because it was contrary to the doctrines of the political economists and to right principles. The experience of practical men was as nothing in the scale. There was to be no mitigation of the pressure resulting from great changes-no exception whatever allowed. Principles were to be pushed to extremities in every case. Now, he contended, that this course was altogether wrong. There was no absurdity, to which principles, abstractedly right, would not The lead, if they were applied without any reference to the state of things in which they were to operate. On the finest principles in the world every interest in the community might be plunged in the greatest difficulties. He could not help referring to some of the extravagancies and absurdities of the writers, who were, on all hands, admitted to be among the ablest professors of the science of political economy. His late friend, Mr. Ricardo, had some of the most fanciful theories that could possibly be imagined. His notion of a compensation between the property of the country and the public debt was to be classed under that head. Yet that gentleman had always treated it seriously, as a remedy for all the evils of the country. It was a thing utterly impracticable, as every practical man in the city of London knew. Again, when Mr. Ricardo treated of the extent of capital requisite for a national bank, what could be more absurd than his scheme? He begged to be understood as casting no reproaches on the memory of that eminent individual. He wished only to show the difficulties to which too rigid an adherence to theoretical principles might lead the country. Mr. Ricardo's notion of a bank was now justly exploded; and so was his compensation between property and debt. Though there was great truth in the theory, the design was admitted to be totally incapable of execution. In the same way Mr. Malthus-a great authority in matters of political economy-had written a pamphlet to prove, that the state of the Corn-laws had nothing to do with the question of rents. This was to be paralleled only by Mr. M'Culloch's doctrine respecting Absenteeism from Ireland. Surely, if ever an absurdity had been sent forth by a learned and intelligent man, it was the doctrine-that the residence of the landlords of Ireland abroad was no injury whatever to that country. Nay, Mr. M'Culloch was of opinion, that his absence was rather a be- | nefit than otherwise-that whether the of the doctrine glaringly. What was to become of a nation if its legislation was guided by theorists of this description? He trusted that the House would take these points into consideration, and would reflect on them before they consented to allow ministers to guide them entirely upon theory. He was bound, however, in candour to confess, that the errors of practical men were sometimes as absurd as those of theoretical. If the theorists would add to their theory a little practical experience; if the practical men would look a little more to first principles, and if each would act with a little less contempt for the other, he believed they would speedily come to very useful and beneficial results. He begged pardon for obtruding upon their notice these observations, which some might think foreign to the question, but which he conceived necessary to it, as the general principles on which they ought to legislate upon commercial interests had been introduced by his right hon. friend into this discussion. The government were evidently actuated by a dislike to look at practical conclusions, and by a passion for legislating upon principles alone. He wished, therefore, to caution the House upon the point, and having done so, he should now proceed to the more immediate question of the day. His hon. friend the member for Coventry, in asking them to refer this question to the consideration of a committee, disputed the principle on which the late regulations for the silktrade were founded. That trade had been in an artificial state, and under peculiar protection, in consequence of the superiority which it was long known that France enjoyed over us respecting it. The late regulations threw away the restrictions imposed upon it, and established a free trade insilk with a protecting duty of 30 per cent. It was said, that we had been labouring, until the present day, under complete ignorance of the mode in which this trade was conducted in foreign countries. We had been told, for some years a landlord spent his income in or out of Ire- past, that the abundance of our capital, land, was the same thing to his tenants? and the excellence of our skill, would give Why, then, it followed irresistibly, that if us an advantage which, when the restricthe residence of the Irish landlord at Paris ❘tions on the trade were removed, would was no injury to the people of Ireland, be sufficient to ensure our superiority. neither would it be harmful to them if the rent of Ireland was sent yearly, as tribute to the king of France, and was by him expended in his good city of Paris. This reductio ad absurdum displayed the folly VOL. XIV. The persons carrying on the trade in this country were as ignorant upon the point as the government itself appeared to be. They sent, however, a deputation of wellqualified individuals into foreign countries, 3 G for the purpose of acquiring information | made to him. It was possible that some of the unimportant facts and details might have been exaggerated, or misrepresented, to those gentlemen; but, in the main, he was satisfied they would be found to be correct. This led him to the important topic of the Corn-laws, which was inseparably connected with this subject. It was to be found in the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of every question in which the price of labour was concerned. Every body knew that the price of labour must depend on the price of subsistence. In the countries of which he had been speaking, the price of the ordinary necessaries of life was from a half to onethird less than in great Britain. He had asked a workman at Basle, what were the common wagesgiven to good workmen, and he was told that 4s. per week was considered sufficient. There was, besides, another advantage which the foreign manufacturers had, which those of England could never hope to share in; namely, the easy and plentiful supply of the raw material. The manufacturers of Lyons were backed by the silk of Provence, and those of Switzerland by the silk of Italy. The foreign labourer, too, could live upon much less than was required by the English artisan. Not only bread was at a much lower price, but the labourer lived in a very different way. He had heard that the manufacturers of Lyons lodged and fed their workmen; and, upon inquiry of a man employed in a manufactory there, he learnt that the master crammed forty of his workmen into a long garret over his workshop, where they slept upon straw. This, he knew, was a state of things which English workmen would not endure; but it was another proof, in addition to the many which already existed on the same subject-so many indeed, that, in his opinion, they proved, beyond the possibility of doubt, that it would be impossible for the English manufacturers ever to bring into the extent and quality of the silktrade in those countries; and those individuals found, to their surprise, that the silk-trade in this country had no superiority of capital-that our workmen were inferior to theirs in skill that we were behind them in machinery-and that with an inferiority of skill, disadvantage of machinery, and no superiority of capital, it was not likely that we should drive their silk manufactures out of any market. He had heard the observations made in the House last night with regard to the capital employed in the silk trade, and from the inquiries he had since made, he was convinced that the capital employed in the town of Basle alone beat that employed in the town of Coventry out and out. That was a new feature in the case. It proved that we had all along been mistaken, and that we had acted upon representations which were incorrect and erroneous. The hon. member referred to an inquiry which had been made respecting the prices of silk manufacture at Zurich, and at other places in Switzerland, the result of which tended to confirm the fact he had before stated. It appeared upon the whole, that at Lyons those manufactures were 45 per cent lower than in England, and that in Switzerland the average difference in favour of that country was from 50 to 60 per cent on plain goods, and from 60 to 100 per cent on figured goods. It was, moreover, a fact perfectly familiar to all persons acquainted with these subjects, that the protecting duty of 30 per cent which it was proposed to put upon all imported silk manufactures, would in practice be reduced considerably below that amount. The goods brought in would be so undervalued and managed, that the nominal 30 per cent would not amount to more than 20 per cent upon the actual value of the goods. He had no hesitation, therefore, in saying, that with such a competition as he had stated, their goods down to such a price as would by the foreign manufactures, this protec-enable them to compete with the workmen tion would be wholly insufficient; and of other nations. He did not believe his that it would be impossible for the manufactures of this country to carry on trade, or to afford employment to their workmen, under the manifest disadvantages which would then attach to them. What he had said upon this subject he stated from the information of very sensible and honourable men, whose ability and veracity he knew to be such, that he implicit y believed the representations they had right hon. friend opposite was so great an advocate for all the dogmas of political economy, that he meant to set up the rigid doctrine, that if the trade could not support itself it ought to be destroyed; but he had expressed his belief, that a duty of 30 per cent would be enough to protect it against the competition of other nations; which was going quite far enough. After a trade had been fostered and nursed up to this state-after it had been protected, for so many years, by a system of prohibition, would the House now consent to a measure which must have the effect of driving all the workmen connected with it to the poor-rates for subsistence? He was sure his right hon. friend would be as slow as any man to agree to such a proposition if it were made openly, and yet such must be the result of the present law if it were carried into execution. In the whole of his right hon. friend's speech he had never touched upon the question of the possibility of carrying on the trade. In the whole course of his declamation, he had said much about the freedom of trade, but he had avoided this particular point of the question, and had left the House quite in the dark as to the means by which the English manufacturers were to be enabled to enter into a competition with those of other countries. Now, the fact was, that the situation of this manufacture opened a very serious case as concerned the country at large, and all the other manufactures which it contained. For what, was now done with the silk, might be, and must be, done hereafter, with respect to the cotton and woollen manufactures. If things should remain in this state, the inevitable consequence must be, that the manufactures would leave us, and those which were most advantageous would lose the home-market which they enjoyed at present. The people of England were much too apt to look with indifference at subjects of this nature, and to believe, when distress and danger threatened any particular interest, that every thing would come right after a little time. This argued a very agreeable | peace seldom lasted so long as for ten Holland, and after having there been established for a long time, the manufactures were driven out of Holland by the tax upon bread. They had thence formed a station in England; and if the same causes were allowed to prevail, the same result must ensue; and they must go on to America, or some other country, in which they could be carried on with comfort and in prosperity. We were losing a little every now and then; and, if the progress of our loss was not quickly and satisfactorily arrested, we should be left in the most miserable of all possible conditions - that of a nation, from which the wealth it once possessed had departed. It was true that this country might exist, that it might even flourish, with one-half or onethird of the wealth it enjoyed at present. It had done so before, and was then as perfectly happy as a country could be. But, there was a great difference between great a rising and a sinking state. He had no wish to draw on any question respecting the Corn-laws, especially that night. He was sensible that it involved a great difficulty; but, however great that might be, and whatever might be the consequences, the country must some day, and that no distant one, look at it with a serious eye. He knew that the abolition of those laws could not be effected without doing great injustice to some particular classes of the people; but, nevertheless, if it should become necessary, it must be done. The naval superiority which this country had so long maintained was another source of the prosperity of the manufacturing interests. The history of Europe, for the last two centuries, presented a constant alternation of peace and war; the and cheerful disposition, and he had no inclination to check it, but the causes of the present depression in this particular trade were perfectly obvious, and the effects that had sprung from them could not be mistaken. It would not be prudent because we were now a wealthy and important nation, enjoying extensive trade, and filled with useful and important manufactures, to permit the introduction of a system which must undermine the most | abundant sources of our wealth. If this should be begun, the government would one day find the country in a situation which they were now far from thinking of. It was well known that the seat of manufactures had several times changed. It had gone from the Mediterranean to years at a time. The power which had the command of the sea must, in such times, have the command also of all the markets which could be reached by her ships. She enjoyed also the opportunity of getting the raw material from all such countries as produced it, and from the very beginning of the contest the enemies' harbours were blocked up, so as to prevent any competition of supply by sea. Another fact which bore strongly upon the subject in this point of view was, that the conviction of this would cripple manufactures of a particular sort in France; for men would not enter very ardently into the establishment of them, when, after embarking the whole of their capitals, they might be thrown into utter |