the war with France, and the apparently interminable lease of power acquired by their adversaries from the overthrow of Napoleon. That memorable event, so opposite to that which they had all so long in public predicted, so entirely the reverse of that which many had in secret wished, produced a profound impression on the Whig party. Their feelings were only the more acute, that, amidst the tumult of national exultation, they were forced to suppress them, and to wear the countenance of satisfaction, when the bitterness of disappointment was in their hearts. To the extreme asperity of these feelings, and the universal twist which they gave to the minds of the whole liberal party in Great Britain, the subsequent general change in their political principles is to be ascribed; and, in the practical application of these principles, the real cause of our present distressed condition is to be found.

While one set of causes thus prepared, in the triumph of Conservative and protective principles, the strongest possible reaction against them, and prognosticated, at no distant period, their general banishment from popular thought, another, and a not less powerful set, flowing from the same cause, gave these principles the means of acquiring a political supremacy, and ruling the government of the state. The old policy of England, it has been already observed, for a hundred and fifty years, had been to take care of the producers, and let the consumers take care of themselves. Such had been the effects of this protective policy, that, before the close of the Revolutionary war, during which it received its full development, the producing classes, both in town and country, had become so rich and powerful, that it was easy to see they would ere long give a preponderance to urban over rural industry. The vast flood of agricultural riches poured for expenditure into towns; that of the manufacturers and merchants seldom left it. The great manufacturing and mercantile places, during a century, had advanced in population tenfold, in wealth thirtyfold. The result of this change was very curious, and in the highest degree important. Under the shadow of protection to industry in all its branches,

riches, both in town and country, had increased so prodigiously, that the holders of it had acquired a preponderance over the classes in the state yet engaged in the toilsome and hazardous work of production. The owners of realised capital had become so numerous and weighty, from the beneficial effects of the protective system under which the country had so long flourished, that they formed an important class apart, which began to look to its separate interests. The consumers had become so numerous and affluent, that they were enabled to bid defiance to the producers. The maxim became prevalent, "Take care of the consumer, and let the producer take care of himself." Thence the clamour for free trade. Having passed the labour of production, during which they, or their fathers, had strenuously supported the protective principles, by which they were making their money, the next thing was to support the opposite principles, by which the value of the made money might be augmented. This was to be done by free trade and a contracted currency. Having made millions by protection, the object now was to add a half to every million by raising its value. The way to do this seemed to be by cheapening the price of every other article, and raising the price of money in other words, the system of cheapening everything without reference to its effect on the interests of production.

Parliamentary reform, for which the Whigs, disappointed by long exclusion from office, laboured strenuously, in conjunction with the commercial and moneyed classes, enriched by protection, gave them the means of carrying both objects into execution, because it made two-thirds of the House of Commons the representatives of burghs. The cry of cheap bread was seductive to all classes in towns to the employer, because it opened the prospect of reducing the price of labour, and to the operative, because it presents that of lowering that of provisions. To these two objects, accordingly, of raising the value of money and lowering the remuneration of industry, the Reform parliament, the organ of the moneyed interest and consuming classes, has, through all the changes of party, been

perfectly steady. It is no wonder it has been so, for it was the first-born of those interests. Twenty years before the cry for reform convulsed the nation-in 1810-the Bullion Committee brought forward the principle of a metallic, and, consequently, a contracted currency; and they recommended its adoption in the very crisis of the war, when Wellington lay at Torres Vedras, and when the monetary crisis to which it must have led would have made us a province of France. Reform was the consequence of the change in the currency, not its cause. The whole time from 1819 to 1831, with the exception of 1824 and 1825, was one uninterrupted period of suffering. Such was the misery it produced that the minds of men were prepared for any change. A chaos of unanimity was produced by a chaos of suffering.

Thus, by a singular and most interesting chain of causes and effects, it was the triumph of Conservative and protective principles in the latter years of the war, and the entire demonstration thus afforded of their justice and expedience, which was the immediate cause of their subsequent abandonment, and all the misery which has thence arisen, and with which we are still everywhere surrounded. For it at once turned all the intellectual energies of the great liberal party to oppose, in every particular, the system by which their opponents had been glorified, and concentrated all the energies of the now powerful moneyed classes to swell, by a change of policy, the fortunes on which their consequence depended, and which had arisen from the long prevalence of the opposite system. For such is the tendency to action and reaction, in all vigorous and intellectual communities, that truth itself is for long no security against their occurrence. On the contrary, so vehement are the passions excited by a great and lasting triumph of one party, even though in the right, that the victory of truth, whether in politics or religion, is often the immediate cause of the subsequent triumph of error. The great Roman Catholic reaction against the Reformation, which Ranke has so clearly elucidated, and Macaulay has powerfully illustrated, has its exact

SO

counterpart in the great political reaction of the Whig party, of which Macaulay is himself the brightest ornament.

That this is the true explanation of the strange and tortuous policy, both in domestic and foreign affairs, under which the nation has so long suffered, is apparent on the slightest survey of political affairs in the last and present century.

The old principle of the English constitution, which had worked itself into existence, or grown up from the necessities of men, during a long course of years, was, that the whole interests of the state should be represented, and that the House of Commons was the assembly in which the representatives of all those varied interests were to be found. For the admission of these varied interests, a varied system of electoral qualifications, admitting all interests, noble, mercantile, industrial, popular, landed, and colonial, was indispensable. In the old House of Commons, all these classes found place for their representatives, and thence the commercial protection it afforded to industry. According to the new system, a vast majority of seats was to be allotted to one class only, the householders and shopkeepers of towns. That class was the moneyed and consuming class; and thence the whole subsequent course of British policy, which has been to sacrifice everything to their interests.

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The old maxim of government, alike with Whigs and Tories, was, that native industry of all sorts, and especially agricultural industry, was to be protected, and that foreign competition was to be admitted only in so far as was not inconsistent with this primary object. The new philosophy taught, and the modern liberals carried into execution, a different principle. They went on the maxim that the interests of the consumers alone were to be considered: that to cheapen everything was the great object; and that it mattered not how severely the producers of articles suffered, provided those who purchased them were enabled to do so at a reduced rate. This policy, long lauded in abstract writings and reviews, was at length carried into execution by Sir R. Peel, by the

tariff of 1842 and the free-trade measures of 1846.

To protect and extend our colonial dependencies was the great object of British policy, alike with Whigs and Tories, from the time of Cromwell to the fall of Napoleon. In them, it was thought our manufacturers would find a lasting and rapidly increasing market for their produce, which would, in the end, enable us equally to defy the hostility, and withstand the rivalry of foreign states. The new school held that this was an antiquated prejudice that colonies were a burden rather than a blessing to the mother country that the independence of America was the greatest blessing that ever befell Great Britain; and that, provided we could buy colonial produce a little cheaper, it signified nothing though our colonies perished by the want of remuneration for their industry, or were led to revolt from exasperation at the cruel and unnatural conduct of the mother country. The navy was regarded by all our statesmen, without exception, from Cromwell to Pitt, as the main security of the British empire; its bulwark in war; the bridge which united its fardistant provinces during peace. To feed it with skilled seamen, the Navigation Laws were upheld even by Adam Smith and the first free-traders, as the wisest enactments which were to be found in the British statutebook. But here, too, it was discovered that our ancestors had been in error; the system under which had flourished for two centuries the greatest naval power that ever existed, was found to have been an entire mistake; and provided freights could be had ten per cent cheaper, it was of no consequence though the fleets of France and Russia blockaded the Thames and Mersey, and two-thirds of our trade was carried on in foreign bottoms.

To provide a CURRENCY equal to the wants of the nation, and capable of growth in proportion to the amount of their numbers and transactions, was one main object of the old policy of Great Britain. Thence the establishment of banks in such numbers in every part of the empire during the eighteenth century, and the introduction of the suspension of the obligation to pay in gold in 1797,

when the necessities of war had drained nearly all that part of the currency out of the country, and it was evident that, unless a substitute for it in sufficient quantities was provided, the nation itself, and all the individuals in it, would speedily become bankrupt. The marvels of British finance from that time till 1815, which excited the deserved astonishment of the whole world, had no effect in convincing the impassioned opponents of Mr Pitt, that this was the true system adapted for that or any similar crisis. On the contrary, it left no doubt in their minds that it was entirely wrong. The whole philosophers and liberal school of politicians discovered that the very opposite was the right principle; that gold, the most variable in price and evanescent, because the most desired and portable of earthly things, was the only safe foundation for a currency; that paper was worthless and perilous, unless in so far as it could be instantly converted into that incomparable metal; and that, consequently, the more the precious metals were withdrawn from the country, by the necessities of war or the effects of adverse exchanges, the more the paper circulation should be contracted. If the last sovereign went out, they held it clear the last note should be drawn in. The new system was brought into practice by Sir R. Peel, by the acts of 1844 and 1845, simultaneously with a vast importation of grain under the freetrade system-and we know the consequence. We were speedily near our last sovereign and last note also.

To establish a sinking fund, which should secure to the nation during peace the means of discharging the debt contracted amidst the necessities of war, was one of the greatest objects of the old English policy, which was supported with equal earnestness by Mr Pitt and Mr Fox, by Mr Addington and Lord Henry Petty. So steadily was this admirable system adhered to through all the dangers and necessities of the war, that we had a clear sinking fund of £15,000,000 a-year, when the contest terminated in 1815, which, if kept up at that amount, from the indirect taxes from which it was levied during peace,

would, beyond all question, as the loans had ceased, have discharged the whole debt by the year 1845. But the liberals soon discovered that this was the greatest of all errors: it was all a delusion; the mathematical demonstration, on which it was founded, was a fallacy; and the only wisdom was to repeal the indirect taxes, from which the sinking fund was maintained, and leave posterity to dispose of the debt as they best could, without any fund for its discharge. This system was gradually carried into effect by the successive repeal of the indirect taxes by different administrations; until at length, after thirty-three years of peace, we have, instead of the surplus of fifteen millions bequeathed to us by the war, an average deficit of fifteen hundred thousand pounds; and the debt, after the longest peace recorded in British history, has undergone scarcely any diminution.

Indirect taxation was the main basis of the British finance in old times-equally when directed by the Whigs as the Tories. Direct taxes were a last and painful resource, to be reserved for a period during war, when it had become absolutely unavoidable. So efficacious was this system proved to be by the event, when acting on a nation enjoying protected industry, and an adequate and irremovable currency, that, before the end of the war, £72,000,000 was, amidst universal prosperity, with ease raised from eighteen millions of people in Great Britain and Ireland. This astonishing result, unparalleled in the previous history of the world, had no influence in convincing the modern liberals that the system which produced it was right. On the contrary, it left no doubt in their minds that it was entirely wrong. They introduced the opposite system: in twenty-five years, they repealed £40,000,000 of indirect taxes; and they reintroduced the income tax as a permanent burden during peace. We see the result. The sinking fund has disappeared; the income tax is fixed about our necks; a deficit of from a million and a half to two millions annually incurred; and it is now more difficult to extract fifty-two millions annually from twenty-nine millions of souls,

than, at the close of the war, it was to raise seventy-two millions from eighteen millions of inhabitants.

To discourage revolution, both abroad and at home, and enable industry, in peace and tranquillity, to reap the fruits of its toil, was the grand object of the great contest which Pitt's wisdom bequeathed to his successors, and Wellington's arm brought to a glorious termination. This, however, was ere long discovered to be the greatest error of all. England, it was found out, had a decided interest in promoting the cause of revolution all over the world. So enamoured did we soon become of the propagandist mania, that we pursued it in direct opposition to our planned national interests, and with the entire abrogation of our whole previous policy, for which we had engaged in the greatest and most costly wars, alike under Whig and Tory administrations. We supported revolutions in the South American states, though thereby we reduced to a half of its former amount the supply of the precious metals throughout the globe; and, in consequence, increased immensely the embarrassment which a contracted paper currency had brought upon the nation: we supported revolution in Belgium, though thereby we brought the tricolor standard down to Antwerp, and surrendered to French influence the barrier fortresses won by the victories of Marlborough and Wellington: we supported it during four years of carnage and atrocity in Spain, though thereby we undid the work of our own hands, in the treaty of Utrecht, surrendered the whole objects gained by the War of the Succession, and placed the female line upon the throne, as if to invite the French princes to come and carry off the glittering prize: we supported revolutions in Sicily and Italy, though thereby we gave such a blow to our export trade, that it sank £1,400,000 in the single month of last May, and above £5,000,000 in the course of the year 1848.

To abolish the slave trade was one of the objects which Whigs and Tories had most at heart in the latter years of the old system; and in that great and glorious contest Mr Pitt, Mr Fox, and Mr Wilberforce stood side by side.

But this object, so important in its results, so interesting to humanity from its tendency to alleviate human suffering, ere long yielded to the enlightened views of modern liberals. It was discovered that it was much more important to cheapen sugar for a time than to rescue the African race from perdition. Free trade in sugar was introduced, although it was demonstrated, and, indeed, confessed, that the effect of it would be to ruin all the free-labour colonies, and throw the supply of the world into the hands of the slave states. Provided, for a few years, you succeeded in reducing the average retail price of sugar a penny a pound, it was deemed of no consequence though we extinguished the growth of free-labour sugar-destroyed colonies in which a hundred millions of British capital were invested, and doubled the slave trade in extent, and quadrupled it in horror, throughout the globe.

It had been the constant policy of the British government, under all administrations, for above a century and a half, to endeavour to reclaim the Irish population by introducing among them colonies of English who might teach them industry, and Protestant missionaries who might reclaim them from barbarism. The Irish landlords and boroughs were the outposts of civilisation among a race of savages; the Irish Church the station of Christianity amidst the darkness of Romish slavery. So effectual was this system, and so perfectly adapted to the character of the Celtic race-capable of great things when led by others, but utterly unfit for self-government, and incapable of improvement when left to itself, that even in the ruthless hands of Cromwell, yet reeking with the slaughter of stormed cities, it soon

spread a degree of prosperity through the country then unknown, and rarely if ever since equalled in that ill-starred land. But the experience of the utter futility of all attempts, during a century and a half, to leave the native Irish Celts to themselves or their own direction, had no effect whatever in convincing our modern liberals that they were incapable of self-direction, and would only be ruined by Saxon institutions. On the contrary, it left no doubt in their minds that the absence of self-government was the sole cause of the wretchedness of the country, and that nothing was wanting but an entire participation in the privileges of British subjects, to render them as industrious, prosperous, and loyal as the yeomen of Kent or Surrey. In pursuance of those principles, Catholic Emancipation was granted: the Whigs had effected one revolution in 1688, by coalescing with the whole Tories to exclude the Catholics from the government; they brought about another revolution, in 1829, by coalescing with a section of the Tories to bring them in. In furtherance of the new system, so plausible in theory, so dangerous in practice, of extending to all men, of all races, and in all stages of political advancement, the same privileges, the liberals successively gave the Irish the command of their boroughs, the abridgment of the Protestant Church, and the abolition of tithes as a burden on the tenant. They encouraged agitation, allowed treason to be openly spoken in every part of the country, and winked at monster meetings, till the community was wellnigh thrown into convulsions. Meanwhile, agriculture was neglected-industry disappeared-capital was scared away. The land was run out, and became unfit for anything but lazy-beds of

VOL. LXV.-NO. CCCXCIX.

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