Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 416, June 1850Various
General
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 416, June 1850
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
have a kind of interest in the thing? Public liberty is carried
to a great length in some portion of her Majesty's dominions.
But the question, 'Are we to continue subjects of her Majesty,
or start rebelling against her? So many as are here for
rebelling, hold up your hands!' Here is a public discussion of
a very extraordinary nature to be going on under the nose of a
Governor of Canada? How the Governor of Canada, being a British
piece of flesh and blood, and not a Canadian lumber-log of mere
pine and rosin, can stand it, is not very conceivable at first
view. He does it, seemingly, with the stoicism of a Zeno. It is
a constitutional sight like few."
With Earl Grey at the head of the Colonial Department, backed and
assisted by that pattern of candour, Mr Hawes--with Lord Elgin in
Canada, and Lord Torrington in Ceylon--the integrity of the British
empire is certainly exposed to peril. But a more dangerous symptom
is the spirit which of late years has prevailed in the councils of
the nation, and owes its origin to the false views and perverse
unpatriotic doctrines of the political economists. They refuse to
admit into their calculations any element which may not be reduced
to the standard of money-value, and they consider that the worth of
a colony is to be measured solely by the returns of its traffic.
This is a leading dogma of Free Trade; and no doubt, were Free Trade
capable of entire realisation, if the nations of the earth had no
other ambition than to buy and sell, after the manner recommended
by Mr Cobden, and if reciprocity were a thing universal, a good
deal might be urged in its favour. If we apply the same test to
Ireland, we shall find that it is greatly for the advantage of
the people of Great Britain to pronounce in favour of Repeal, and
to allow the young patriots of the Emerald Isle to enter into any
kind of relationship which they may choose with the sympathising
republicans of France. This is Free Trade in its plain, undisguised
form; and to some such consummation as this we must come at last,
by virtue of the grand experiment, should that, like Sir Robert
Peel's temporary Income Tax, be extended to a limitless perpetuity.
At present, in so far as regards the welfare of a great portion of
the inhabitants of the country, it is difficult to perceive what
advantage they derive from the boasted character of Britons, except
the privilege of contributing to the heaviest load of taxation that
was ever laid upon the industry of a people. We acknowledge that the
Free-traders have planned their scheme with consummate adroitness
and dexterity. If their object was, as we believe it was, to sap
those principles of high morality, rectitude, honour, and patriotism,
which carried Great Britain successfully through the dangers of wild
European revolution, anarchy, and war, they could not have hit upon
a better or a surer method. Many a disheartened agriculturist has
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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