Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 393, July 1848Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 393, July 1848
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
Free trade will soon have done its work, so far, at least, as the
House of Commons is concerned. It is gradually but unceasingly
advancing, and swallowing up successively all the great interests of
the empire, save that of the capitalists, as it moves forward. The
agricultural interests will find themselves deprived, in February
next, of all protection; and the British cultivator exposed to
the competition, without any shield save a nominal duty of 1s. a
quarter, of states where wheat can be raised, with a fair profit
in average years, at 18s. a quarter, and brought to this country
for 10s. at the very utmost of freight. As soon as we have two fine
harvests in succession, it will be seen to what state this system
will reduce British rural production. The West India interests have
been next assailed; and our colonies, upon whom free labour has
been forced, upon a compensation being given to the proprietors on
an average of a fourth of the value of their slaves, are speedily
to be exposed, with no protection but a differential duty of 5s.
6d. a hundredweight, diminishing 1s. 6d. a-year, till, in 1854, it
disappears, to the competition of slave colonies, where sugar can be
raised for £4 a ton, while in the British colonies the measures of
government have precluded its being raised for less than £10 a ton.
As a natural consequence, cultivation is about to cease in those
noble settlements; the forest and the jungle will speedily supplant
the smiling plantations, and £100,000,000 worth of British property
will be lost beyond redemption.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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