Various

“ Should it be successful, it would be the beginning of a grand and universal scheme of commercial emancipation. Let England—that nation so extensive in her relations, and so powerful in her influences—let England adopt a more liberal policy, and it would remove the only obstacles now in the way of a complete freedom of industry throughout the globe. It is the apparent unwillingness of nations to reciprocate the advantages of mutual trade, that has kept back this desirable reform so long. ”

“ It is that man, the missionary of peace, who forms the true link of alliance between nation and nation, making all men of one kindred and of one blood,—that man upon whose brow the sweat is falling,—that man whose hands are hardened by labour,—that is the man of whom England has a right to be proud— (hear) —that is the man whom the world ought to recognise as its benefactor.' (Cheers.) ”

“ When we read of thousands of miserable wretches, in all the cities and towns of a great nation, huddled together like so many swine in a pen; in rags, squalor, and want; without work, bread, or hope; dragging out from day to day, by begging, or the petty artifices of theft, an existence which is worthless and a burden; and when, at the same time, we see a system of laws, that has carefully drawn a band of iron around every mode of human exertion ”

“ On the other hand, we do not produce as much wool or food as we consume, and have every year to import large quantities of each to make up the deficiency. Whatever duty, therefore, is put on the import of the quantity thus required, will enable the producers at home to maintain their price so much above the natural level of the world. By this state of things the country at large is injured in two distinct and prominent ways:—first,—those articles which we can make in excess, and export, must ever be the chief means of absorbing the increasing capital and labour of the country ”

“ They are recognised by the black man as giving him many sources of enjoyment which he had not before; by the red man as having reached his fields and forests, and brought to him in his daily life enjoyments of which his ancestors had no notion; by all tribes and tongues throughout the wide expanse of the earth, as the allies of improvement, and the promoters of happiness. Sure I am that England—emancipated England—the labourers—the artisans of England, may do more for the honour and reputation of our country than was ever done by all the Nelsons and Wellingtons of the day. ”

“ For even if the law be strong enough to maintain an artificial high price at home, it has no power of making other countries pay that price; and if everything we possessed commanded a higher price at home than other countries could supply the same for, we should have nothing which we could exchange for the produce of other countries, and thus no more foreign trade could exist, than in a poor country which had no surplus produce. ”

“ If this, then, is the true cause of the agricultural distress,—if the corn, sugar, and other monopolies are so injurious to the manufacturing and commercial classes, who are the agriculturists' best, and, indeed, their only customers, as to render them unable to consume, it is not to class legislation that we can look for relief. In order to relieve the agricultural distress there is no other way than to relieve the distress of those on whom they depend for a market for their productions. ”

“ Let us start in an honest rivalry—let us get rid of the drawbacks and impediments which are in the way of our progress, and sure I am that the virtues, the energies, the industry, the adventurous spirit of the manufacturers and merchants of England, which have planted their language in every climate and in every region, would make them known as benefactors through the wide world. ”

“ It is therefore essential that every country should bear in mind, in adopting a system of protection to manufactures or other produce, that they thereby effectually debar themselves from all foreign trade to neutral countries in such articles; for if they require high duties at home to protect them from the produce of other countries, which could only come at considerable expense to compete with them at home, how can they withstand that competition when they meet on the same terms in every respect in a neutral market? ”

“ While the tendency of opinion, under an aristocratic monarchy, is towards the loosening of the restraints under which the labour of the people has long suffered, a large and powerful party in a nation, whose theory of government is nearly a century in advance of the world, is clamouring for their continuance and confirmation. Monarchical England is struggling to break the chains that an unwise legislation has forged for the limbs of its trade ”

“ Whatever amount of credence people may be disposed to place in this willingness to abandon slavery, nothing can be more clear than that the higher rate of wages paid in our colonies, attributable solely to the high and extravagant price which, by our differential duties, their produce commands, must ever form a strong and conclusive reason with these slave-holding countries against their entertaining the question of emancipation. ”

“ If individuals entertain conscientious scruples against the use of slave produce—let them, if they please, act upon them themselves, but do not let them seek to inflict certain punishment, and the whole train of vice and misery consequent on starvation and want of employment, upon their poorer neighbours, for the purpose of conferring some speculative advantage on the slaves of the Brazils or elsewhere: no man can be called upon as a duty to do so great a present evil, in order to accomplish some distant good, however great—or however certain. ”

“ We firmly believe that free labour, properly exercised, is cheaper than slave labour; but there is no pretence to say that it is so at this moment in our West India colonies; and we undertake to show, in an early number, in connexion with this fact, that the existence of the high protecting duties on our West India produce has done more than anything else to endanger the whole experiment of emancipation. ”

“ We believe most sincerely that an equalization of these duties—that an entire free trade would do more than any other act to encourage an adoption of our example everywhere: while the maintenance of monopoly and high prices as an essential to the carrying out of the experiment of free labour successfully—must be the strongest reason against its adoption with all those countries who have no means of commanding this accompanying confessed essential. ”

“ That like the sovereign, the Parliament, in protecting or giving privileges to a class, gave nothing which they possessed themselves, but granted only the power to such classes of raising a contribution from the remaining portion of the community, by levying a higher price for their commodity than it would otherwise command. As with individuals, it was equally necessary to make scarcity to secure price, and that could only be done by restricting the sources of supply by prohibiting, or by imposing high duties on, foreign importations. ”

“ No cautious man who well understands the subject will ever hazard his capital in any trade exposed to so many evils and to so much uncertainty as restriction and protection infallibly introduce into it:—but the great error which misleads all men in cherishing such trades is, that they mistake high prices for high profits, which usually, instead of being synonymous terms, are quite the reverse. ”

“ The standing argument of the friends of exclusiveness—their defence under all assaults, their shelter in every emergency—has been that one nation cannot pursue a free system until all others do, or, in other words, that restriction is to be met by restriction. ”

“ That is a very doubtful humanity which exercises itself on the uncertain result of influence indirectly produced upon governments in the other hemisphere of the globe, and neglects, nay sacrifices, the interests of the poor and helpless around our own doors,—not only by placing the necessaries of life beyond their reach, but at the same time destroying the demand for their labour by which alone they can obtain them. ”

“ The nations of Europe are seeking to extend their commercial relations, to expand the sphere of their mutual intercourse, to rivet the market for the various products of their soil and skill, while the "model republic" of the new world is urged to stick to the silly and odious policy of a semi-barbarous age.
We look upon the attempt which is making in Great Britain to procure a revision of the tariff laws, as one of the most important political movements of the age. It is a reform that contemplates benefits, whose effects would not be confined to any single nation, or any period of time. ”

“ We are far indeed, from undervaluing treaties of reciprocity; but to make them a sine qua non in the policy of a country whose condition is that of an overflowing population, a deficient supply of the first necessaries of life, and a contracted market for its artificial productions, is an error of the first magnitude. ”

“ Yet, this is the very policy that a certain class of politicians in this country would have us imitate. Misled by the selfish and paltry arguments of British statesmen, but unawed by the terrible experience of the British people, they would fasten upon us a system whose only recommendation, in its best form, is that it enriches a few, at the cost of the lives and happiness of many. They would assist a constrictor in wrapping his folds around us, until our industry shall be completely crushed. ”

“ Sir,—I have read your preliminary number and prospectus, and the first number of your new periodical, the Economist, and it gives me pleasure to see the appearance of so able an advocate of free trade, the carrying out the principles of which is so necessary for the future welfare and prosperity of the country, and the relief of the distress which is more or less felt in all the different departments of industry. ”

“ With a free trade the farmer would never be exposed to such reverses. In that state, if the demand and price increased, it would be checked by an increase of imports from other countries; if the demand and price diminished, that would also be checked by a reduction or cessation of the usual imports, and, if necessary, by an export of any surplus which pressed upon the market;—and, if our space allowed, it would not be difficult to show that, with prices at the natural rate, all parties connected with land would not only be in a safer but a much better condition. ”

“ In order to make them dearer it is absolutely necessary to make them scarcer; for quantity being large or small in proportion to demand, alone can regulate the price;—protection, therefore, to any commodity simply means that the quantity supplied to the community shall be less than circumstances would naturally provide, but that for the smaller quantity supplied under the restriction of law the same sum shall be paid as the larger quantity would command without such restriction. ”

“ From the ominous newspaper paragraphs, announcing the liberality of landlords to their tenants, which have lately become so numerous, we rather suspect that most of those farmers who are retiring from business do so to avoid greater evils. It is worthy of remark, however, that, amidst all this agricultural depression, which has now lasted some twelve months at least, the "home trade"—which the advocates of the corn law always describe as entirely dependent on the farmers obtaining high prices for their grain—is in a healthier state than it has been for several years past. ”

“ Consistency, therefore, requires equally the abandonment of all export trade to slave-producing countries, as it does of the import of their produce; and the effect will carry us even further. We know it is a favourite feeling with Mr Joseph Sturge and others of that truly benevolent class, that in eschewing any connexion with slave-producing countries, we have the better reason to urge free-trading intercourse with such countries as use only free labour,—with the Northern States of America, with Java, and other countries similarly circumstanced. ”