CHAPTER VI. FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE.

The facts to which we have alluded relate to the methods resorted to, by the oligarchy which governs Great Britain, in order to render London the commercial and financial centre of the world, and to render all other nations tributaries to the British.

Great Britain is an island of moderate extent, raising corn enough to support the inhabitants. Her enormous wealth has been accumulated by manufactures of cloth and iron, the sale of which she has made it the object of her policy to thrust upon other nations to the ruin and destruction of their own manufacturing industry.

If a nation is possessed of natural advantages equal or superior to those of Great Britain, it is her duty to protect her mechanics against foreign influence, and thus enable them to manufacture for themselves. If a nation has iron ore, and a climate and soil fit for the raising of wool and cotton, she ought never to import a yard of cloth, a rod of rail for her iron roads, or a single article of hardware from Great Britain, at the risk of preserving the financial ascendancy of London and enslaving or starving her own mechanics.

In order to blind foreign nations to the nature of the imposture, by which she cheats and robs foreign nations, she calls her policy free trade. People love the very name of freedom, and they are gulled by this specious name into their own ruin. In order to make it more palatable to foreign nations, she hires writers and buys up newspapers to cry down the opposite policy of protection to national industry as a narrow minded and illiberal system, opposed to freedom.

Where Great Britain applies her system to a country under despotic rulers, she buys up the government or cheats it by a commercial treaty, with all the real advantages on her own side, as in the case of Portugal and Turkey. Where the country is barbarous or half civilized, she conquers and enslaves it, annexing it as a colony of her own, and forcing her free trade system on the people at the point of the bayonet, as in India. Where her immediate object is to poison and demoralize the people of a foreign nation with a view to their future subjugation and annexation, she first employs her commercial marine in smuggling the poison into the country, and when the government resists this measure, she declares war, burns their seaports, murders a few thousands of their people, and compels them to permit the free trade in poison to go on, as in the case of China, forced into submission by what is called the “opium war.” When the nation to be cheated and enslaved is powerful and free, she works by secret influence on the government, bribes executive officers and legislators, buys up newspapers and pays needy scribblers for decrying the policy of protection to the national industry, as in the case of the United States at the present time.

To show that we are not without ample support from history in the assertions we make, we will now cite a few pages from a writer of our own country, whose works are treated with, marked respect in every country of Europe not under British influence, and whose name is detested in England on account of the tremendous array of facts by which he has assailed the British system of free trade. We mean, of course, Henry C. Carey. In a recent work, he thus sets forth the operations of British free-trade in Portugal and Turkey. Let Americans consider and read the facta, and compare them with what has been going on in this country recently, and what is the state of facts at the present time.

“In point of natural advantages. Portugal is equal to any country in Western Europe. The soil is capable of yielding largely of every description of grain, and her climate enables her to cultivate the grape and the olive. Mineral riches abound, and her rivers give to a large portion of the country every facility for cheap intercourse, and yet her people are among the most enslaved, while her government is the weakest and most contemptible of Europe.

“It is now a century and a half since England granted her what were deemed highly important advantages in regard to wine; on condition that she should discard the artisans who had been brought to the side of the farmers, and permit the people of England to supply her people with certain descriptions of of manufactures. What were the duties then agreed on are not given in any of the books now at hand, but by the provisions of a treaty made in 1810, cloths of all descriptions were to be admitted at merely a revenue duty, varying from ten to fifteen per cent. A natural consequence of this system has been that the manufactures which up to the date of the Methuen treaty had risen in that country, perished under foreign competition, and the people found themselves by degrees limited exclusively to agricultural employment.

“Mechanics found there no place for the exercise of their talents, towns could not grow, schools could not arise, and the result is seen in the following paragraph.

“It is surprising how ignorant, or superficially acquainted, the Portuguese are with every kind of handicraft; a carpenter, awkward and clumsy, spoiling every work he attempts, and the way in which the doors and wood work even of good houses are finished, would have suited the rudest ages. Their carriages of all kinds from the fidalgo’s family coach to the peasant’s market cart, their agriculturist implements, locks and keys, etc., are ludicrously bad. They seem to disdain improvements, and are so infinitely below par, so strikingly inferior to the rest of Europe, as to form a sort of disgraceful wonder in the middle of the nineteenth century.” — Baillie.

The population, which, half a century since, was three million six hundred and eighty three thousand, ig now reduced to a little more than three millions, and we need no better evidence of the enslaving and exhausting tendency of a policy that limits a whole people, men, women, and children, to the labors of the field. At the close of almost a century and a half of this system, the following is given, in a work of high reputation, as a correct picture of the state of the country and the strength of the government.

“The finances of Portugal are in the most deplorable condition, the treasury is dry, and all branches of the public service suffer. A carelessness and a mutual apathy reign not only throughout the government, but also throughout the nation. While improvement is sought every where else throughout Europe, Portugal remains stationary. The postal service of the country offers a curious example of this, nineteen to twenty-one days being still required for a letter to go and come between Lisbon and Braganza, a distance of four hundred and twenty-three and a half kilometres, (or a little over three hundred miles) all the resources of the state are exhausted, and it is probable that the receipts will not give one-third of the amount for which they figure in the budget.” Annuaire de I’ Egonomie Politique 1849, p. 322.

Some years since an effort was made to bring the artisan to the side of the farmer and wine grower, but a century and a half of exclusive devotion to agriculture had placed the people so far in the rear of those of other nations, that the attempt was hopeless, the country having long since become a mere colony of Great Britain.

If we turn to Madeira, we find there further evidence of the exhausting consequences of the separation of the farmer and the artisan. From 1836, to 1842, the only period for which returns are before me, there was a steady decline in the amount of agricultural production, until the diminution had reached about thirty per cent, as follows.

At this moment (1853) the public papers furnish an “Appeal to America,” commencing as follows:

“A calamity has fallen on Madeira unparalleled in its history. The vintage, the revenue of which furnished the chief means of providing subsistence for its inhabitants, has been a total failure, and the potato crop, formerly another important article for their food, is still extensively diseased. All classes, therefore, are suffering, and as there are few. sources in the island to which they can look for food, clothing, and other necessaries of life, their distress must increase during the winter, and the future is contemplated with painful anxiety and apprehension. Under such appalling prospects, the zealous and excellent civil governor, Senor Jose Silvectre Ribeiro, addressed a circular letter to the merchants of Madeira, on the 24th of August last, for the purpose of bringing the unfortunate and and critical position of the population under his government to the notice of the benevolent and charitable classes in foreign countries, and in the hope of exciting their sympathy with, and assistance to, so many of their fellow creatures threatened with famine.”

Such are the necessary consequences of a system which looks to compelling the whole population of a country to employ themselves in a single pursuit — all cultivating the land, and all producing the same commodity; and which thus effectually prevents the growth of that natural association so much admired by Adam Smith. It is one that can end only in the exhaustion of the land and its owner. When population increases and men come together, even the poor land is made rich, and thus it is, says M. de Jonnes, that “the power of manure causes the poor lands of the Seine to yield thrice as much, as those of the Loire.”*

*Statistique de 1′ Agriculture de la France, p. 129.

When population diminishes, and men are thus forced to live at greater distances from each other, even the rich lands become impoverished; and of this no better evidence need be. sought than that furnished by Portugal. In the one case, each day brings men nearer to perfect freedom of thought, speech, action, and trade; in the other, they become from day. to day more barbarized and enslaved, and the women are more and more driven to the field, there to become the slaves of fathers, husbands, brothers, and even of sons.

Such, according to our authority, is the condition of Portugal and her once flourishing colony of Madeira, after enjoying, in the fullest manner, for a century and a half, the advantages of free trade with her beloved ally Great .Britain. It is true Great Britain buys her Port wine and makes it the principal article of consumption in the way of wine; but this is done to make a show of reciprocity. The result of the free trade system has brought to Portugal ruin and prostration in all her material interests. The natural consequence that the country which conquered and held one third of India, in the time of Albuquerque, when England had not a colony in the world, has now sunk to such political insignificance that the presence of a British frigate, more or less in the harbor of Lisbon, is sufficient to determine a change of dynasty for that wretched country.

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