market. Ireland, unfortunately, has no trade or manufacture to employ her people, and wherefore is best known to England; but her only staple, agriculture, which all nations, ancient and modern, loved to cultivate, will soon be little more than a name. The causes and effects of this disastrous revolution the philosopher and historian will hereafter do justice to. A preparatory meeting, relative to the above, is now being held, with closed doors, in the county court, Lord Monteagle in the chair. Poor-rate was the monster grievance of discussion. The meeting broke up at 3 o'clock, it having been decided to collect facts from every district of the country in connexion with taxation and valuation of property."Limerick Chronicle, of Saturday, Oct. 26. "THE LAND QUESTION.-A letter from Kilrush, dated the 27th inst., and pub lished in the Clare Journal, says :—' So eager are the country farmers to make sale of their grain, that every day is a market. Two causes seem to influence them; first, their present and urgent necessities press upon them, and, secondly, an opinion prevails, which appears not to be confined to the west, that it is more secure to have the money in their pockets than to leave the crop to become a prey to agent or poor-rate collector; and also that, in the event of no reduction being made in the annual rent, they may have no difficulty in walking off. Such are the feelings operating on the minds of the majority of the farmers in this locality; It is now too plain and obvious, that should a reduction in the rents take place here, it will come two years too late, as the greater number of the farmers (formerly comfortable) have not as much as would support their families for half the coming year. This is a sad but true state of things, in a district where, some few years since, the rents were paid, perhaps, more regularly than in any other part of the south of Ireland. A few have left their holdings, after selling every article, leaving the naked walls of a house to the landlord, and gone to a neighbouring townland, where the quality and cheapness of the land presented a greater encouragement; but such cases of flying tenants have become so common of late, that every paper teems with similar statements. If we are to have the land cultirated here, the rents must not only be reduced to half the former price, but the tenant must be assisted to set the crop, and encouraged to introduce a proper method of cultivation, otherwise the land will be left idle, and the majority of the present occupiers will become inmates of the workhouse."-Times, Oct. 31, 1849. "There must also be taken into account the dire domestic privations endured for the last three years of famine, the general flight of tenants with the landlords' rent, the desertion of the land, impoverished to the last degree by the runaways, yet for whose dishonesty and abuse of solemn contract the unfortunate proprietor is held responsible-the abandoned farms being still subject to accumulation of poor-rate and taxes. Then come the distraint, the impounding, the sale and sacrifice of property; while the home market, swamped by free trade with foreigners, has left landlord and farmer no help or resource whatever to bear up against the intolerable oppression of financial burdens, sanctioned by law, under the free constitution of Great Britain! One case of grievous suffering by a respectable family in this county was communicated to the preparatory meeting present. The possessor of a rent-roll of on Saturday last, by one of the gentlemen £1500 a-year landed estate, which netted £1200 annually four years ago, was absolutely compelled to subsist with his wife and twelve, without the ordinary comfort of a secen children for three months of the past meat dinner; a cup of weak tea or coffee, and the vegetables of the kitchen-garden, commonly furnishing the table of this most wretched household ! Incredible and appalling as this may appear, we have been assured it is not a solitary instance of the excessive want and privation known to exist."-Times, Nov. 4, 1849. trade and a restricted currency in the So much for the working of free Emerald Isle. One would suppose, in reading these melancholy accounts, we were not dealing with any people in modern times, but transported back to those dismal periods, after the fall of the Roman empire, when the contemporary annalists contemplated the extinction of the human race, from the desolation of some of its provinces. This dreadful state of things in Ireland is but a repetition of what, under the operation of these causes, aided by the fatal step of unqualified emancipation, has for some years been going on in the West Indies. We have not room to enlarge on this prolific subject, teeming as it does with facts illustrative of the effects of the free-trade system. They are generally known. Suffice it to say, the West Indies are totally ruined. British colonies, on which £120,000,000 sterling has been expended, and which fifteen years ago produced £22,000,000 worth of agricultural produce annually, have been irrecoverably destroyed. T Free Trade at its Zenith. fee-simple of all the estates they con- free trade enters into them. 66 Belonging to all parties, origins, and creeds, but yet agreed upon the advantage of co-operation for the performance of a common duty to ourselves and our country, growing out of a common necessity, we have consented, in view of a brighter and happier future, to merge in oblivion all past differences, of whatever character, or attributable to whatever source. pealing to our fellow-colonists to unite In apwith us in this our most needful duty, we solemnly conjure them, as they desire a successful issue, and the welfare of their country, to enter upon the task, at this momentous crisis, in the same fraternal spirit. "The reversal of the ancient policy of Great Britain, whereby she withdrew from the colonies their wonted protection in her markets, has produced the most disastrous effects upon Canada. In surveying the actual condition of the country, what but ruin or rapid decay meets the eye? Our provincial government and civic corporations embarrassed; our banking and other securities greatly depreciated; our mercantile and agricultural interests alike unprosperous; real estate scarcely saleable upon any terms; our unrivalled rivers, lakes, and canals almost unused; while commerce abandons our shores, the circulating capital amassed under a more facourable system is dissipated, with none from any quarter to replace it! Thus, without available capital, unable to effect a loan with foreign states, or with the [Dec. greatly superior to that which readily mother country, although offering security obtains money both from the United States and Great Britain, when other than colonists are possession of the British crown— our the applicants :- crippled, therefore, and checked in the full career country-stands before the world in of private and public enterprise, this humiliating contrast with its immediate neighbours, exhibiting every symptom of a nation fast sinking to decay. "With superabundant water-power Canada, we have yet no domestic manuand cheap labour, especially in Lower factures; nor can the most sanguine, unforeign parts, of either capital or enterless under altered circumstances, anticipate the home growth, or advent from pily, have not that impress of permanence prise to embark in this great source of national wealth. Our institutions, unhapconfidence, and the Canadian market is too which can alone impart security and inspire limited to tempt the foreign capitalist. ered with a network of thriving railways, "While the adjoining states are covlength, and the stock in two of which is Canada possesses but three lines, which, together, scarcely exceed fifty miles in held at a depreciation of from 50 to 80 overspreading the land."-Times, Oct. 31. per cent a fatal symptom of the torpor evitable results of free trade and a re- British tonnage. Total tonnage in British trade to all countries, * British tonnage to British North American colonies, 1846, 1,076,162 To United States of America, Foreign. 205,123 4,294,733 Deduct Canadian tonnage, 1,076,162 British tonnage after losing Canada, 3,228,571 Foreign tonnage after gaining Canada, 1,076,162 -PORTER'S Parliamentary Tables, 1846, p. 52. 2,882,444 The repeal of the Navigation Laws in 1847 gave such an impulse to foreign ship Free Trade at its Zenith. One would have thought, from the present state of Canada, that our colonial secretary had followed the advice of Franklin in his "Rules for making a great Empire a small one." "If you are told of discontents in your colonies, never believe that they are general, or that you have given occasion for them; therefore, do not think of applying any remedy or of changing any offensive measure. Redress no grievance, lest they should be encouraged to demand the redress of some other grievance. Yield no redress that is just and reasonable, lest they should make another demand that is unreasonable. Take all your informations of the state of your colonies from your governors and officers in enmity with them. "If you see rival nations rejoicing at the prospect of your disunion with your provinces, and endeavouring to promote it-if they translate, publish, and applaud all the complaints of your discontented colonists, at the same time privately stimulating you to severer measureslet not that alarm or offend you. Why should it? You all mean the same thing." -(Rules 16 and 17.) If our rulers had followed the advice of the sages of former times, instead of the theories of modern bullionists and interested parties, they would have avoided this unparalleled accumulation of disasters. Hear the greatest and wisest of men, Lord Bacon, on the subject: "For the home trade I first commend to your consideration the encouragement of tillage, which will enable the kingdom to provide corn for the natives, and to spare for importation; and I myself have known more than once, when in times of dearth, in Queen Elizabeth's days, it drained much coin of the kingdom to furnish us with corn from foreign parts.'. "He added also "Let the foundation of a profitable trade be so laid that the exportation of home commodities be more in value than the importation of foreign, so we shall be sure that the stocks of the kingdom shall yearly increase, for then the balance of trade must be returned in money.' "And Lord Bacon went on to give this wholesome piece of advice :— "Instead of crying up all things which are either brought from beyond sea or 777 wrought by the hands of strangers, let us advance the native commodities of our own kingdom, and employ our own countrymen before strangers.' "-Bacon's Essays. 66 Trade," says Locke, "is necessary to the production of riches, and money to the carrying on of trade. This is principally if this be neglected, we shall in vain, by to be looked after, and taken care of; for contrivances among ourselves, and shuffling the little money we have from one hand to another, endeavour to prevent our wants: decay of trade will quickly waste all the remainder; and then the fall of interest, to raise the value of his landed man, who thinks, perhaps, by the land, will find himself cruelly mistaken, when, the money being gone, (as it will be if our trade be not kept up,) he can get buy, his land." neither farmer to rent, nor purchaser to in trade were locked up or gone out of authority with the Free-traders, Mr the Morning Post, which has consis- "If the price of corn were to fall to 50s. ping, that, in the first year after the loss of Canada, the foreign shipping employed in our trade would exceed the British, even supposing we only lost two-thirds of Canadian trade by its independence. a quarter, and labour and other commodities nearly in proportion, there can be no doubt that the stockholder would be benefited unfairly at the expense of the industrious classes of society. During the twenty years, beginning with 1794, and ending with 1813, the average price of wheat was about 83s.; during ten years, ending with 1813, 92s. ; and during the last five years of this same twenty, the price was 108s. In the course of these twenty years, government borrowed near £500,000,000 of real capital, exclusive of the sinking fund, at the rate of about five per cent interest. But if corn shall fall to 50s. a quarter, and other commodities in proportion, instead of an interest of five per cent., the government will really pay an interest of seven, eight, and nine, and for the last £200,000,000, of ten per cent. This must be paid by the industrious classes of society, and by the landlords; that is, by all those whose nominal incomes vary with the variations in the measure of value; and if we completely succeed in the reduction of the price of corn and labour, this increased interest must be paid in future from a revenue of about half the nominal value of the national income in 1813. If we consider with what an increased weight the taxes on tea, sugar, malt, soap, candles, &c., would in this case bear on the labouring classes of society, and what proportion of their income all the active, industrious middle orders of the state, as well as the higher orders, must pay, in assessed taxes and the various articles of custom and excise, the pressure will appear to be absolutely intolerable. Indeed, if the measure of value were really to fall as we have supposed, there is great reason to fear that the country would be absolutely unable to continue the payment of the present interest of the national debt."-Malthus's Essays. This was Mr Malthus's anticipation of the effect of wheat falling to 50s. What would he have said of it at 40s., its present average price? We recommend the concluding paragraph to the notice of the fund-holders, by whose influence the late changes have mainly been introduced. But let the Free-traders be of good cheer-they have done marvellous things. They have accomplished what no British statesmen, since the days of Alfred, have been able to effect. They have stopped the growth of our population, and, for the first time for four centuries, rendered it retrograde. They have sent from two hundred and fifty to three hundred thousand people yearly out of the country, for three years, in search of food. They have lowered the Irish circulation of notes a half. They have, with one blow, swamped the Poor-law Amendment Act in England, and rendered rates higher, even with prices extremely low, than they ever were in English history. They have extirpated 200,000 cultivators in Ireland. They have cut £80,000,000 a-year off from the remuneration of cultivation and the encouragement of the home market to our manufactures in Great Britain. They have lowered railway property more than a half. They have destroyed, at least, a half of the whole commercial and trading wealth of the manufacturing towns. They have made the nation dependant, in two years, for a fourth of its subsistence on foreign states. They have rendered the maintenance of the national independence, if the present system is persisted in, impossible. They have destroyed £100,000,000 worth of property in the West Indies. They have sown the seeds of revolt in Canada, and rendered its separation, at no distant period, from Great Britain a matter of certainty. have repealed the Navigation Laws, and thereby cut off the right arm of our naval strength. They are fast laying the seeds of dismemberment in our colonial empire. They will soon reduce, if unchecked in their career, the immense empire of England to two islands, oppressed with taxes, eaten up by paupers, importing a third of their annual subsistence from foreign states, brought in in foreign bottoms. These are the effects of FREE TRADE AT ITS ZENITH. What will they be at its Nadir? They INDEX TO VOL. LXVI. Abercromby, Mr, in Sardinia, 587. Eneas, Payne Knight's criticisms on, 375. Agriculture, alleged injury from the game Anne, Queen, national debt under, 666. Atala et Réné, Chateaubriand's, 301. Austria, the contest between, and Hun- MOIRS, 292. Bacon, Lord, on the principles of trade, Bad temper, Christopher on, 5. Baltic shipping, increase of, under the Bank, danger of the, in 1823, 675-char- ter act of 1844, the, 758. Barton, Bernard, letters of Lamb to, 149. Bawr, Madame, tale by, 609. Blair, Dr, on Virgil's description of thun- Blanc, Louis, his "Protest," 234. Blind, one of the Baden insurgents, 208. Boswell's Life of Johnson, on, 296. Botany Bay, effects of the transportation Braybrooke Lord, his edition of Pepys' Bread stuffs, importation of, 766. Bright, Mr, motives of, in his anti-game- Brown, Dr Thomas, on Gray's elegy, 241. Bute, Lord, bribery under, 666. Byron, on a passage from, 367-his de- Cabrera, the last insurrection of, 707. Canaanites, presumed relics of the, in Canada bill, debates on the, 131-com- Cape, commerce of, in relation to the con- vict system, 527-resistance in, to its Carlist movement, the late, in Spain, 707. |