Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 63, No. 389, March 1848Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 63, No. 389, March 1848
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
it would not, we apprehend, be entirely foreign to the subject. The
result, however, so far as we have yet seen, has by no means justified
the experiment. Trade, instead of improving under the stimulus of
free-trade, has fallen off, and a year of commercial panic and misery
has been the result of the liberal nostrum. This, no doubt, is very
galling to our friends of the billy-roller. Old stagers like us, who
are sometimes represented as prosy, because we reverence time-honoured
principles, love the constitution of our country, and defend the
memory of those who were the true founders of its greatness, are
supposed to feel some triumph at the aspect of the present depression,
and to exult over the slough of despond in which the Whigs are left to
flounder. If there be any who, judging from their own mean nature, so
think of us, it is hardly worth our while to undeceive them. Bitterly
indeed have we mourned over the spectacle of fraud and imbecility
which the last two years have disclosed in the higher places of the
land, and most earnestly do we hope that, ere long, the true-hearted
people of this country will awake to a full sense of their present
perilous and by no means creditable position. All the difficulties
which are just now pressing upon ministers, and which, for a longer
period than we can venture to calculate, must continue to environ
them, are of their own creating, and are the natural effects of that
unconstitutional policy which would sacrifice every thing for the mere
possession of power. Do we speak truth or not? Let the Chancellor of
the Exchequer answer us. What but free-trade and its concomitant
schemes has lessened the revenue and increased the pauperism of the
country? What but the vicious and yet invincible desire of change,
consequent on a contest for popularity, has struck a blow at the
prosperity, and even the existence, of our colonies, which has already
reacted with fearful effect within the centre of the mother-country?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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