already burthened an additional burthen-imposing shackles upon the free exercise of talent, and industry, and capital, oppressive to all, and really beneficial to none? But, say the advocates of this admirable recipe for getting rich by act of parliament, protection is necessary to secure our industry from foreign competition. What are the effects it has produced in this respect in this country? You see it illustrated at home in a manner which cannot fail to have been present to every man's mind long ere this. Let me ask you what protection has been given to that great manufacture which gives employment to hundreds of thousands-nay, to millions I may say within the great district that encircles your city? What protection has the cotton trade had? I answer, none whatever! Unaided by any legislative enactment-unassisted by the fostering hand of power-unprotected by the customhouse book-this great manufacture has grown from an infant's condition until it has attained a giant's strength. We see it with one arm encircle the conquests of the new world, and with another shower its productions into the very heart of that country, the vast empire of India, which was formerly its successful rival, and extending and pushing forth the fruits of its industry even into the central regions of Africa, where no European foot was ever yet stamped. This, gentlemen, is the success which has attended a manufacture which was not the pet of the legislature. Let me now mark the course of another manufacture fenced round by protections of all kinds, equally a production of a foreign country-the raw material equally brought from a distance-and thus affording a fit comparison with that which I have named. What was the case with silk? Was protection wanting there? Were there no laws which restricted foreign competition-were there no penalties upon those who attempted to introduce it? And did all this protection, amounting to absolute and total prohibition, tend to make this branch of industry flourish and extend itself? Under the auspices of the coast blockade and the search warrant did it realize the theories of the protectionists? Was it found that that manufacture, rivalling and outstripping all its competitors in foreign countries, obtained an extension like its poorer and unprotected, but therefore more hardy brother? No such thingnot only did it not attain the vigour which would enable it to reach foreign climes, but, in spite of your prohibitory laws-in spite of your penalties exacted from the unfortunate smuggler, it was met even in this country at every turn by its foreign competitors. In these two branches then we may read the history of the fallacy of protection. My system, then, is this:

leave to industry a full and fair field-relieve us from our unwise protection-remove from us your well-meant but injudicious care-leave us alone, let our talent, our capital, and our invention follow their free course, and what I see before me to-day removes, if I ever had, any doubt that we shall then have no rivals to fear, no competitors to dread.

"But, gentlemen, is this all? Do I take merely so narrow a view of this great subject as that which I have presented to you? There are other and more important considerations involved in this question. By extending and developing our industry at home-by giving it its fullest extension as regards foreign countries, (and we can only give it that extension by consenting to receive from foreign countries that by which they are able to pay us,) we extend the benefits of a common bond of union. Mankind may be knitted together for a time in various countries by sympathies excited by accidental circumstances, but there can be no common bond of union between nations but one founded upon a feeling of common interest. Make foreign nations dependent upon you for some of their comforts and their conveniences, encourage them in the prosecution of their industry by becoming their customers, give to them the products of your own, in an exchange advantageous to both parties, and you raise up mutual feelings of affection and of sympathy, which will go farther than anything else to prevent that which in my mind has been, and is, the greatest curse that has ever afflicted mankind-war.

"I have perhaps, gentlemen, advanced a step further in some respects than those who preceded me were willing to go; not in their acknowledgment of the principle, but in the avowal of my willingness to act upon it, and I have not hesitated to do so. I contend, and I have contended, that if we consent to take from foreign countries that which they produce, they must of necessity receive from us in payment our production They may raise up libraries of custom-house books-they may surround their territories with custom-house officers-they may fill their seas with cruisers-but, if we are to take anything from them they must take from us in return. The principle, then, which I have advocated, is to follow out, straight-forwardly, our own course, to remove the unnecessary restrictions and prohibitions from the productions of other countries, and to trust to one of two consequences resulting; either a sense of their own folly, which will induce them to adopt a better system of legislation, or to that necessity which I contend must exist if they wish to take advantage of us-that they should admit, somehow or other, what we can give them in payment.”

Mr Thomson's journal contained but a brief record of this brilliant event, but it is worth transcribing.

"Sunday night, 30th December 1832.-This has been a week of prodigious excitement, and I have had no time to set down one word. Monday at the Exchange. Tuesday, Christmas day, quiet. Thursday, the dinner, the proudest day of my life. 1250 people sat down, Heywood in the chair. I spoke an hour and a-half, and, I think, well. Friday, dined at Heywood's, and Saturday night left for town, very ill. To-day sent for Copeland."

SECT. VI.-LIFE OF POULETT THOMSON CONTINUED ALTERATIONS IN THE CUSTOMS DUTIES.

In the course of the following session, many valuable alterations were effected by Mr Thomson in the customs duties. Besides the entire abolition of the duty on hemp, an absurd and mischievous burden on all British shipping, a great reduction was made in the duties on dye-stuffs used in our manufactures, and on medicines consumed largely by the poor. He likewise introduced for the first time a methodical and rational classification of all the customs duties retained in our tariff. At a later period in several successive years Mr Thomson carried out still further this simplification of the duties on imports, and their reduction where the revenue would admit of it. The attention of fiscal reformers had hitherto been directed principally, if not wholly, to a few of the larger articles, such as sugar, coffee, timber, wool, and cotton. But Mr Thomson saw clearly, that while considerations of revenue or of party policy might forbid the sound principles of finance being at once applied to these, it was yet in the power of government to afford extensive and very sensible relief, both to a variety of branches of native industry, and to the consumer at large, by reduction of the heavy duties imposed on some hundreds of small, and apparently insignificant, articles, which brought in little to the revenue, while the high duties on them were a grievous obstacle to their use in the arts of manufacture, or their direct consumption.

In bringing before parliament these successive measures, Mr Poulett Thomson, with great tact and judgment, avoided any boasting display, anything like heralding them with a flourish of trumpets, which he rightly considered would only draw the attention of the combined monopolists, his habitual opponents, to their value, and lead them to thwart his scheme. He always confined himself on these occasions to a very brief

and simple statement of the alterations he proposed, printing and laying before the house a schedule of the amended duties. And he thus generally succeeded in disarming opposition, and passing his customs bills without serious difficulty. But, modestly as these changes were introduced, passing almost in silence through the house-the little discussion they occasioned being confined to the committee on the bill, when the proceedings are rarely at all reported by the public press— it may be questioned whether the practical benefits conferred in this unassuming and unpretending manner on the public, did not infinitely outweigh, in real and permanent value, many of those more ambitious and more prominent measures of the same or other periods, the announcement and discussion of which resounded through both hemispheres, and were agitated by every political coterie in the empire.

His practice was to ascertain from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, at the proper period in each session, the largest sum that he could be permitted to dispose of for this purpose. He then applied himself, by careful and searching inquiries, to determine how the boon could be most advantageously bestowed; in other words, what reductions could be made in the multifarious articles of the tariff, so as to secure the greatest benefit to the productive and consuming classes, without risking any larger amount of revenue. The result was an annual improvement sensibly felt by the public throughout the minutest ramifications of trade, while the effect upon the revenue was comparatively trifling.

Mr Poulett Thomson reduced the duties in all to a very considerable extent, in many cases from a prohibitory amount to a trifling per centage, upon

217 articles of commerce in 1832

373 articles in the whole.

These articles comprised, among others

Almonds.

Hemp.

Hides.

Furniture woods.

Coffee from British possessions, Chemical oils.

India, &c.

Gums.

Sago.

Seeds of various kinds.

Drugs and Dyes-a numerous Pot and Pearl Ashes.

list.

Oils of various kinds.

Ivory and Teeth.

Asphalt.

Besides a reduction of one half the duty upon all unenumerated goods or merchandise.

Even where financial or political considerations stopped him from carrying his reductions further, Mr Thomson had established principles and set an example of system in the arrangement of our tariff, which his successors at the Board of Trade have found it necessary to carry on to still further improvements of the same nature.

The records of the Board of Trade, and the evidence of the able officers permanently employed there, such as Mr Macgregor and the late Mr Deacon Hume, attest that the more recent enlarged alterations of the tariff effected by Sir Robert Peel and Mr Gladstone, are, to a great extent, but the realization of projects and the carrying out of principles laid down by Mr Poulett Thomson during his official connection with that board, as desiderata to be secured whenever the government had the power to do so.

The main principles, for example, of the abolition of all prohibitions on imports, the reduction of duties on raw materials employed in manufactures to a nominal amount, and on manufactured articles and objects of consumption to a per centage which would defy the competition of the smuggler, were specifically laid down by Mr Thomson as the true principles of our tariff, in more than one speech and document.

In the session of 1833, and indeed for more than one of the succeeding years, the attention of parliament was chiefly taken up by debates on Ireland and the Irish church. In these Mr Thomson took but little part, although out of the house his influence was continually exerted with his colleagues in office to obtain as large a concession as possible to the principles of religious liberty.

It was, indeed, proposed to him at this period to undertake the office of secretary for Ireland; but he wisely declined the offer, preferring to remain in that department where his