The result is a loss on these articles alone of THREE MILLIONS in six
months, and we are to set that against doubled imports, free of duty,
and displacing British employment! Here are the glorious effects of Sir
Robert’s commercial legislation!
What, then, _has_ gone out to meet the import which is rapidly promoting
Chartism among us, by impoverishing the poorer classes? Just what we
predicted long ago—GOLD; the idol without which men must starve, but
which free trade periodically sweeps from out our grasp. The lowered
tariffs have operated peculiarly unfavourably at the present crisis—not
perhaps so much in the branch of silk manufactures as in others; for it
is remarkable that the increase of import in 1847, over that of 1846, is
quite as large as the increase of the present over the former year; and
had Lord John Russell been alive to the duties of his situation, or
capable of comprehending the effects which a glut of foreign goods must
produce on the home market, he ought instantly to have brought in a bill
augmenting the customs duties, and hurried it through Parliament without
a moment’s unnecessary delay. The madness of encouraging increased
imports, whilst exports are falling, is utterly inconceivable to any who
have not eaten and drunk with Cobden; and it is quite possible that some
who have been admitted to that precious privilege, may agree with us if
they will take the trouble to consider the foregoing tables. We are not
the only sufferers. America is beginning to understand that increased
imports are by no means decisive symptoms of a healthy commercial state;
and the following extract from Transatlantic correspondence, which we
copy from the money article in the _Sun_ newspaper of 16th August last,
is pregnant with meaning in the present posture of affairs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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