It is fortunate for the manufacturing powers of the second andthird rank, that England after the restoration of the general peacehas herself imposed a limit to her main tendency (of monopolisingthe manufacturing market of the whole earth), by imposingrestrictions on the importation of foreign means of subsistence andraw materials.Certainly the English agriculturists, who hadenjoyed a monopoly of supplying the English market with productsduring the war, would of course have painfully felt the foreigncompetition, but that only at first; at a later period (as we willshow more particularly elsewhere), these losses would have beenmade up to them tenfold by the fact that England had obtained amonopoly of manufacturing for the whole world.But it would havebeen still more injudicious if the manufacturing nations of thesecond and third rank, after their own manufacturing power had justbeen called into existence, in consequence of wars lasting fortwenty-five years, and after (in consequence of twenty-five years'
exclusion of their agricultural products from the English market)that power has been strengthened so far that possibly it onlyrequired another ten or fifteen years of strict protection in orderto sustain successfully free competition with English manufactures-- if (we say) these nations, after having endured the sacrificesof half a century, were to give up the immense advantages ofpossessing a manufacturing power of their own, and were to descendonce more from the high state of culture, prosperity, andindependence, which is peculiar to agricultural-manufacturingcountries, to the low position of dependent agricultural nations,merely because it now pleases the English nation to perceive itserror and the closely impending advances of the Continental nationswhich enter into competition with it.
Supposing also that the manufacturing interest of Englandshould obtain sufficient influence to force the House of Lords,which chiefly consists of large landed proprietors, and the Houseof Commons, composed mostly of country squires, to make concessionsin respect of the importation of agricultural products, who wouldguarantee that after a lapse of a few years a new Tory ministrywould not under different circumstances again pass a new Corn Law?
Who can guarantee that a new naval war or a new Continental systemmay not separate the agriculturists of the Continent from themanufacturers of the island kingdom, and compel the Continentalnations to recommence their manufacturing career, and to spendtheir best energies in overcoming its primary difficulties, merelyin order, at a later period to sacrifice everything again at theconclusion of peace.
In this manner the school would condemn the Continental nationsfor ever to be rolling the stone of Sisyphus, for ever to erectmanufactories in time of war in order to allow them to fall to ruinin time of peace.
To results so absurd as these the school could never havearrived had it not (in spite of the name which it gives to thescience which it professes) completely excluded politics from thatscience, had it not completely ignored the very existence ofnationality, and left entirely out of consideration the effects ofwar on the commercial intercourse between separate nations.
How utterly different is the relation of the agriculturist tothe manufacturer if both live in one and the same country, and areconsequently really connected with one another by perpetual peace.
Under those circumstances, every extension or improvement of analready existing manufactory increases the demand for agriculturalproducts.This demand is no uncertain one; it is not dependent onforeign commercial regulations or foreign commercial fluctuations,on foreign political commotions or wars, on foreign inventions andimprovements, or on foreign harvests; the native agriculturist hasnot to share it with other nations, it is certain to him everyyear.However the crops of other nations may turn out, whatevermisunderstandings may spring up in the political world, he candepend on the sale of his own produce, and on obtaining themanufactured goods which he needs at suitable and regular prices.
On the other hand, every improvement of the native agriculture,every new method of culture, acts as a stimulant on the nativemanufacture, because every augmentation of native agriculturalproduction must result in a proportionate augmentation of nativemanufacturing production.Thus, by means of this reciprocal action,progress is insured for all time to both these main sources of thenation's strength and support.
Political power not merely secures to the nation the increaseof its prosperity by foreign commerce and by colonies abroad, italso secures to it the possession of internal prosperity, andsecures to it its own existence, which is far more important to itthan mere material wealth.England has obtained political power bymeans of her navigation laws; and by means of political power shehas been placed in a position to extend her manufacturing powerover other nations.Poland, however, was struck out of the list ofnations because she did not possess a vigorous middle class, whichcould only have been called into existence by the establishment ofan internal manufacturing power.
The school cannot deny that the internal market of a nation isten times more important to it than its external one, even wherethe latter is in the most flourishing condition; but it has omittedto draw from this the conclusion, which is very obvious, that it isten times more important to cultivate and secure the home market,than to seek for wealth abroad, and that only in those nationswhich have developed their internal industry to a high degree canforeign commerce attain importance.
