industry of foreign countries, whilst they shut their gates to ours; and we destroy our national industry in those articles in the production of which foreigners excel us, without their becoming, in their turn, customers for ours. The fallacy of such reasoning lies in this these gentlemen misunderstand the nature of trade. In order to buy, we must also sell. We may open our ports to the silks and wines of France-to the corn of Germany and Russia-to the drugs of Asia and of India-but we can get no pound's worth of any commodity without giving in return a pound's worth of our own productions. Our manufacturers will give away nothing; they will not send their goods to foreign ports without getting an equivalent in return; and I will venture to say that the producers of foreign commodities, of French silks, and German cloths, with which, according to the statement of these gentlemen, this country has been and will be overwhelmed, are as little likely to make a present to the British consumer of their hardly-worked produce without taking in return the staple articles of British produce. Foreign nations may, as we have seen, and as we are told, be inclined to meet our liberal policy by tightening still more their restrictive system. The effect can only be the prevention of their own export trade, the curtailment of their own commerce, and the suffering of their own people. If by some magic wand the nations of the Continent could suddenly surround their dominions with the wall of brass fabled by Bishop Berkeley-if they could effectually exclude every article of British produce, whilst their ports opened to permit the free egress of all their own-not a vessel of theirs could find its way to our shores, or if it did, its cargo must be made a present of to our people. They would deprive their own subjects of the benefit of mutual interchangethey would deprive us likewise of it, but they could do no more. They would impoverish and ruin their own country -they would injure us in a less degree they would reduce us to what I consider an unhappy condition, but which the honourable member for Coventry, and those who think with him, have described as a happy and a prosperous state-the necessity of producing within ourselves all that we stand in need of. But, thank God! it is not in the power of governments to carry into effect so desolating, so pernicious a principle. There is in economical as in political affairs a point beyond which it is not possible to go-a point at which legislation becomes ineffectual, and power powerless. Governments may enact laws, but mankind will successfully resist them. Thus it is with these attempts. The smuggler becomes, in such a case, the corrector of faulty legislation, and the friend and the

defender of mankind. Under his exertions, the acts of the legislature become void, and the laws of your ports and your custom-houses are dead-letters. Do we want the experience of mankind to illustrate the truth of this great principle? You have it within your own times. The man whose power was never surpassed in modern, and scarcely equalled in ancient times-he whose career of victory the bounds of Europe could scarce restrain-whose word was a law-in vain attempted to counteract this great principle. Buonaparte, when, at the height of his power, he fulminated his decrees from the palace of the Duomo of Milan, which was to annihilate his only rival, thought but little that his orders could be contested or his will disputed. And yet, what was the result? He, whose armies successively occupied every capital of Europe-who made and unmade kings with a breath-was set at nought by the lowest of his subjects. The smuggler bearded him in the streets of his capital, and set his power at defiance in his own ports and cities. The goods which he refused to admit found their way through the Frozen Ocean into the heart of France. I speak from personal knowledge when I say that an uninterrupted line of communication was established between Archangel and Paris; and goods-even the bulky articles of sugar, coffee, and manufactures were conveyed with as much ease and safety, though at a proportionally increased cost, as from London to Havre. Insurances were then as currently effected at Brody and at Leipsic as at Lloyd's or at New York.

"But need we go further than the very trade before us for an illustration of what I say? Do gentlemen, who make no difficulty respecting the importation of raw silk, (whatever they may think of thrown,) know that most of the states of Italy rigidly exclude all our manufactures from their ports; and yet we take from them annually the value of L.2,000,000 sterling? How do we pay for it then? Their custom-houses are shut to our produce, and the objects of our industry are as strictly prohibited as the works of Voltaire or of Gibbon. I have had the curiosity to endeavour to trace this, and what will the house think of the result? Upon a careful examination of the bills which are drawn from Italy in payment of this silk, by several houses in the trade, I find at least three-fourths of them remittances from Austria and the German States, which have been made to Manchester and Glasgow for British manufacture. It is hopeless, then, for any nation to attempt to exclude the productions of another. They may injure their own subjects by enhancing the price, but exclude they cannot. But the advantage to a country in first adopting the principle

of freedom of trade is not merely relative but positive. Under a system of restriction with us, other nations may make and uphold corresponding restrictions, but if we set the example of free intercourse they may make, but I defy them to uphold them. They may struggle for a time to comply with the wishes of the ignorant and interested producers in their own country, but they cannot do so long. The ruin of their own trade, the destruction of the property of all those who are not immediately interested in the monopoly, the outcry of the whole mass of consumers, will drive them into a better and wiser course. If we wait till they grant reciprocity we are the slaves of their will; if we give free admission to their produce they become the servants of ours.

"What is the case with France at the present moment? No one can more deeply regret than I do the illiberal policy which guides, and, I fear, for some time must continue to guide, the commercial councils of that great people; and I speak in sorrow, not in anger, when I refer to it. But I am induced to do so, not only because I think it a happy illustration of the errors of such a system, but because I find, if not in the speeches of honourable gentlemen, at least in the petitions of the silk-throwsters, especially that from Macclesfield, her example is quoted, and her conduct held up as wise and just, and worthy of imitation by us. She continues,' say the petitioners, wisely her prohibitive laws. Look,' they say, at France under her wise regulations her manufacture of cotton has increased tenfold, her industry has flourished, her prosperity has augmented.' How does the case stand? I refer to it with deep regret-I lament it, because I consider her interests as identified with our own-because I think that we have run too long the race of competition in the arts of destruction-because I think that the time is come when we should run that course for which nature intended us—the race of competition in industry, in wealth, and in civilisation-I lament it, because, from my soul, I believe that one country cannot improve without benefiting her neighbour-because I feel sure that no gale can pass over France, fraught with wealth, with prosperity, or with happiness, without bearing a portion of those blessings to Britain. I will not speak of her cotton millsshe may raise printed cottons at a dear rate-she may raise iron instead of taking it from us at double the cost; but what effect does this have upon the general industry of the country? What do those classes of producers say to this system, who find that there is no longer any demand for their produce? Are they satisfied? Do they find that other nations can buy their produce of them, when France refuses to take anything

in return? Are they not, with one voice, besieging the doors of the chambers to induce them to return to a system less ruinous to their interests? It is a case so completely in point that I cannot help referring to it. What is the situation of the wine-growers-an interest five times as great as any other within the French dominions, employing 3,000,000 of people, and a capital ten times greater than any other in France? Listen to their language; thus it is they address the chamber:- What,' say they, is the basis of the prohibitive system? A chimera. To sell without buying. A secret still to be discovered! If we shut our ports to the productions of other countries, it is good, at least, to know that theirs must be shut on our industry: this kind of reciprocity is inevitable -it is in the nature of things; and what are the results? The destruction of the power of interchange, the destruction of all emulation, the obtaining of a worse article at a dearer cost.' And how is this statement supported? By a document shewing that the decrease in the export of wines from Bordeaux and other places has been from 10,000 to 30,000 hogsheads. They must follow our example. It is no more in the power of governments to uphold for long than it is for the interests of nations to suffer such a system.

"I am no rash theorist-I am not desirous of carrying a favourite principle into operation at the expense of existing interests; but I maintain that your only course is a gradual, a progressive, but a steady approach to a free system; and I maintain, without fear of contradiction, that the very essence of manufacturing and commercial industry is freedom from legislative interference and legislative protection. Attempt to assist its course by protective enactments, by fostering careyou arrest its progress, you destroy its vigour. Unbind the shackles in which your unwise tenderness has confined itpermit it to take unrestrained its own course-expose it to the wholesome breezes of competition, you give it new life, you restore its former vigour. Industry has been well likened, in my opinion, to the hardy alpine plant-self-sown on the mountain side, exposed to the inclemency of the seasons, it gathers strength in its struggles for existence, it shoots forth in vigour and in beauty. Transplanted to the rich soil of the parterre-tended by the fostering hand of the gardenernursed in the artificial atmosphere of the forcing-glass, it grows sickly and enervated-its shoots are vigourless, its flowers inodorous. In one single word lies the soul of industry-competition. The answer of the statesman and the economist to his sovereign, inquiring what he could do to assist the industry of his kingdom, was- Let it take its

own course.' Such is my prayer.

Relieve us from the chains in which your indiscreet tenderness has shackled us-remove your oppressive protection-give us the fair field we ask, and we demand no more. The talent, the genius, the enterprise, the capital, the industry of this great people will do the rest; and England will not only retain, but she will take a yet more forward place in the race of competition for wealth and improvement, which, by the nature of things, she is destined. to run amongst the nations of the world. Place us in that condition is our prayer-not by any violent change, but by slow and easy transition. Here we shall find security for our enterprise and reward for our labours

Hic patet ingeniis campus: certusque merenti
Stat favor: ornatur propriis industria donis.

"For these reasons, sir, I shall give my decided opposition to the motion of the honourable member for Coventry, and my earnest, though I fear feeble, support to the amendment of my right honourable friend."*

SECT. III.-LIFE OF POULETT THOMSON CONTINUED.

It may appear to some to have savoured of boldness, if not of presumption (says Mr Poulett Scrope), in so young a member as Mr Thomson, to have selected for his first and most studied efforts of parliamentary display the precise questions on which Mr Huskisson was naturally expected to make his most brilliant speeches, since the entire merit of his system of policy was on its trial in the two great debates of this and the preceding year on the shipping and silk questions. It was not, however, in any spirit of rivalry towards that wise and liberal minister-whose noble exertions in favour of sound principles of international trade were amply appreciated by Mr Thomson-that the choice was made, but from his anxiety to second those exertions and defend that policy, with the energy inspired by strong conviction, and the power derived from a practical knowledge of mercantile transactions. It is, moreover, well known, that even in the first of these two years the health of Mr Huskisson was so failing and his frame so weakened by laborious devotion to public business, that he might well be expected to require all the aid that could be

In what period of parliamentary history-in what orations of public speakers, is there a more forcible combination of fact. argument, illustration, and eloquent expression, than in this masterly effusion? In none It is a perfect study.