CHAPTER II.

THE DEFENCE OF THE CORN LAWS.

THE principal arguments which were alleged in favour of protection to British industry, and especially to British agriculture, are contained in the first of the two protests which were drawn up after the third reading of the Corn Importation Bill in the House of Lords. The author of this protest was, I presume, the late Lord Derby, then known as Lord Stanley, and sitting in the Lords by summons during his father's lifetime. The protest is subscribed by eighty-nine spiritual and temporal peers, for a few bishops gave their signatures to the document. Some of the bishops, however, voted in favour of the repeal, and were not obscurely rebuked for having intruded upon secular business in the House of Lords. But the remonstrants did not disdain the names of those prelates who agreed in the protest.

The protest consists of twelve counts, and as it presents a summary of the reasonings which influenced the seceders from the party of Sir Robert Peel, and as it contains the essence of the speeches which were delivered in favour of protection, I shall quote it at length. The eighty-nine peers are dissentient

'I. Because the repeal of the Corn Laws will greatly increase the dependence of this country upon foreign

THE PROTEST OF THE PROTECTIONISTS.

37

countries for its supply of food, and will thereby expose it to dangers against which former statesmen have thought it essential to take legislative pre

cautions.

2. Because there is no security nor probability that other nations will take similar steps; and this country will, therefore, not only be exposed to the risks of failure of supply consequent on a state of war, but will also be exclusively subject to an unlimited influx of corn in times of abundance, and to sudden checks whenever short crops shall reduce the ordinary supply from the exporting countries, or their Governments shall deem it necessary to take precautionary measures for their own protection, thus causing rapid and disastrous fluctuations in the markets of this country.

3. Because under a system of protection the agriculture of this country has more than kept pace with the increasing demand of its increasing population, and because it is to be apprehended that the removal of protection may throw some lands out of cultivation, and check in others the progress of improvement which has led to this satisfactory result.

4. Because it is unjust to withdraw protection from the landed interest of this country, while that interest remains subject to exclusive burdens imposed for purposes of general and not of special advantage.

5. Because the loss to be sustained by the repeal of the Corn Laws will fall most heavily on the least wealthy portion of the landed proprietors, will press immediately and severely on the tenant farmers, and through them, with ruinous consequences, on the agricultural labourers

6. Because indirectly, but not less certainly, injurious consequences will result to the manufacturing interest, and especially to the artisans and mechanics, from competition with the agricultural labourers thrown out of employment, but principally from the loss of the home market, caused by the inability of the producers of grain, and those dependent on them, to consume manufactured goods to the same extent as heretofore.

'7. Because the same cause will produce similar evil results to the tradesmen, retail dealers, and others in county towns, not themselves engaged in agricultural pursuits, but mainly dependent for their subsistence on their dealings with those who are so engaged.

8. Because the effect of a repeal of the Corn Laws will be especially injurious to Ireland, by lowering the value of her principal exports, and by still further reducing the demand for labour, the want of which is among the principal evils of her social condition.

9. Because a free trade in corn will cause a large and unnecessary diminution of annual income, thus impairing the revenue of the country, and at the same time that it cripples the resources of those classes on whom the weight of local taxation now mainly falls.

10. Because a general reduction of prices, consequent on a reduction in the price of corn, will tend unduly to raise the monied interest at the expense of all others, and so aggravate the pressure of the national burdens.

II. Because the removal of differential duties in favour of Canadian corn is at variance with the legis

THE PROTEST OF THE PROTECTIONISTS.

39

lative encouragement held out to that colony by Parliament, on the faith of which the colonists have laid out large sums on the improvement of their internal navigation; and because the removal of protection will direct the traffic of the interior from the St. Lawrence and the British ports of Montreal and Quebec, to the foreign port of New York, thus throwing out of employment a large amount of British shipping, severing the commercial interests of Canada from those of the parent country, and connecting those interests most intimately with the United States of America.

12. Because the adoption of a similar system with regard to other articles of commerce will tend to sever the strongest bond of union between this country and her colonies, will deprive the British merchant of that which is now his most certain market, and sap the foundation of that colonial system, to which, commercially and politically, this country owes much of its present greatness.'

Another protest, drawn up apparently by the Duke of Richmond, but much less numerously signed, commented on the burdens of land, and the injury which would ensue to those whose incomes were regulated by the Tithe Commutation Act. It may be added, too, that while the eighty-nine peers who signed Lord Stanley's protest signed all its clauses, the signataries to the second protest selected special clauses as the reasons for their dissent from the action of the Legislature.

The opinions of Lord Stanley in 1846, and indeed in 1852, when Mr. Disraeli brought forward the last

Protectionist Budget, and was defeated, were the opinions of Sir Robert Peel in 1841, and would probably not have been wholly repudiated by Lord Melbourne and Lord John Russell, when their Government gave way to that of Peel. But they were wholly false and fallacious. They have been refuted by experience, and would be admitted at the present day to be utter delusions. The theoretical refutation of these opinions was first supplied by Cobden and his associates in the Free-trade agitation, and this refutation was accepted by an increasing number of those who listened to the speeches which were made at the instance of the League, or read them when printed and published. Now in the progress of political science, the labour which induces the public mind to reject as false and mischievous a system in which it previously acquiesced as necessary and permanent, though originally artificial is exceedingly onerous, while the service is of the greatest possible value. And furthermore, it is to be remembered that the United Kingdom is the only civilised community which has accepted commercial free trade, though the acceptance and maintenance of this policy has incontestably been the cause of its great industrial and commercial developement, just as the establishment of a system of protection, partial or general, has been followed in the countries which have adopted it by an arrest of economical progress, or at least by its retardation. No country affords a more striking proof of this fact than the United States of America do.

It will be seen that the protest of Lord Stanley does not attack free trade in the abstract, does not