Sir HOWARD DOUGLAS (member for Liverpool): ... This establishes, I think, the truth of what I had the honour of saying in this House on a former occasion: that there is a great difference between that plenty and low price which are produced by abundance of home production, and that which is produced by unlimited foreign importation; that the one quickens, the other deadens the home market; that England is England’s best customer; and that the contemporaneous exportation from England in return for foreign corn would be chiefly in British gold. Perfect free trade consists in the absence of restrictions on both sides.... We cannot combat rival tariffs, directly or indirectly, without subjecting British industry to severe depressions in relation to foreign industry and foreign labour.... To lay suitable duties upon the production of the foreigner, who lays burthens upon yours, does not give the monopoly of the home market to the home producer, nor turn towards any particular employment more capital and labour than would naturally go there. It only hinders that amount of those actually engaged from being turned away into a less natural direction. There cannot be two prices for the same article in the same market. The foreign consumer will not pay more for a British than for a domestic article of equal quality. The exporter cannot pay the rival duty, for, if so, he would sell at a loss or be undersold by the foreign rival: and therefore to compete with foreign protected markets British articles must be produced so much cheaper as to enter into this competition. The cost of production must therefore be reduced. This is most immediately and readily done by reducing the wages of labour, and it is most important to remark that it is precisely in times of pressure, when profits are most bare and labour most in want of employment, that this takes place and that mechanical labour is most extended. This not only displaces manual labour in times of pressure, but by so much precludes it from participating in future prosperity. It is difficult to trace the various uses of the money produced by the bills drawn on Great Britain by the exporters of foreign productions, for which they will not take British produce in return.... Whatever be the end of the circuitous transactions, the money payments made by us must first afford profitable investments to the rival interests of foreign nations and employment of foreign labour.... The noble lord, the member for the West Riding, observed forcibly, the increase of population requires additional means and sources of subsistence. But can we not find, do we not possess in our Colonies unbounded sources, rich fields of virgin fertility, from which we may derive unlimited supplies of British food? ... I have imagined that it might really be possible to treat the Colonies like counties of the country, not only in direct trade with the United Kingdom, but in commercial intercourse with each other,