Karl Marx

The New Treaty between France and England

From the English.

[New-York Daily Tribune, No. 5868, 14 February 1860]

London, 28 January 1860

The commercial treaty with France will not be laid before the House of Commons before the 6th of February. Nevertheless, despite Mr Gladstone’s solemn warnings, one may already venture a general estimate of this “sweet changeling” from what was said in the debate on the Address, from what the French newspapers hint, and from the rumours current in London and Paris. On Monday, 23 January, the treaty was duly signed in Paris. Rouher, the Minister of Trade, and Baroche, ad interim (provisional) Minister of Foreign Affairs, were the French godfathers; on the side of England Lord Cowley and Mr Cobden performed that function. That M. Michel Chevalier—the former Saint-Simonist—had a hand in it, and that the whole of France regrets that Louis Napoleon did not possess the tact to allow that eminent personage (namely M. Chevalier) to put his name alongside that of his English confrère (colleague) on the treaty, is a piece of news which that “eminent personage” himself has deigned to send to London and to have inserted in various free-trade organs. What the papers do not know, however, is that Père Enfantin, the onetime high priest of Saint-Simonism, was the principal actor on the French side. Is it not simply astonishing how these Saint-Simonists, from Père Enfantin down to Isaac Pereire and Michel Chevalier, have transformed themselves into the economic pillars of the Second Empire! But let us return to M. Chevalier’s “English confrère”, the former Lancashire manufacturer, who naturally felt himself not a little flattered by the honour of being allowed to affix his signature in person to an

international treaty. When one considers that reciprocity treaties and commercial treaties in general, excepting those with barbarians, were always decried at the top of their voices by the English free-traders under the leadership of Mr Cobden as the very worst and most perfidious form of the protective system; when one considers furthermore that the present treaty, even from the standpoint of reciprocity, appears a pretty laughable arrangement; and when, finally, the political objects and purposes which the treaty is intended to camouflage are duly weighed, people might be inclined to pity Mr Richard Cobden as the innocent victim of a Palmerstonian machination. There is, however, another side to the medal. At that time, as is generally known, Mr Cobden received from the grateful manufacturers, for his success in carrying the repeal of the Corn Laws, some £60,000. Mr Cobden invested the greater part in American stocks, and lost almost everything through the crisis of 1857. The hopes he still cherished when he set out on his journey to the United States proved delusive. Mr Cobden returned to England a ruined man. In order to raise a national subscription, a national pretext was necessary, some undertaking for which the tom-tom of advertisement could be beaten, an undertaking that would make Mr Cobden appear again as the guardian angel of the United Kingdom, “securing opulence and comfort to millions of simple families.” Now the Anglo-French treaty was exactly

the right

thing for that, and, as may be seen from the provincial papers, a new subscription to the amount of £40,000, intended to indemnify the great free-trade apostle for his American losses, is under way and meets with great “sympathy”. Beyond doubt, however, if Disraeli, for example, had laid such a treaty before the House of Commons, Mr Cobden would have risen at the head of the free-traders to move a vote of no confidence against a cabinet that attempted to make the legislation fall into the most fatal errors of the unenlightened past.

The following table shows the amount of protective duties levied by England on French goods in 1858:

Article												£
Baskets												2,061
Butter												7,159
China and china ware									1,671
Clocks												3,928
Coffee												4,311
Eggs												19,934
Embroidery											5,572
Artificial flowers										20,412
Fruit												7,347
Lace												1,858
Boots, shoes and other leather goods							8,883
Gloves												48,839
Musical instruments										4,695
Chemical oil											2,369
Paper hangings											6,713
Straw plait for hats, etc.									11,622
Silk												215,455
Brandy and other spirits									824,960
Sugar												275,702
Tea												14,358
Tobacco												52,696
Watches												14,940
Wine												164,855

Most of the duties thus levied were protective duties, like those on baskets, clocks, lace, boots, gloves, silk, etc. Others, as the duties on brandy, etc., were higher than the English excise on British spirits, and were therefore protective duties. Even duties of a purely fiscal character, like the duty on wine, might be considered by a consistent free-trader as protective duties, because it is almost impossible to levy a duty on a foreign commodity without thereby protecting some similar, if not identical, article on the home market. Thus, e.g., a duty on foreign wine may be considered as a protective duty in favour of home-brewed beer, etc. In consequence of the treaty just concluded, all British duties on French goods are abolished forthwith, while the duties on brandy, wine and other articles are assimilated to the English excise, or to the duties now payable on similar articles (as wine) when imported from the British colonies. On the other hand, the changes in the French tariff will not be completely carried out before October 1861, as will be seen from the following data, taken from a French government organ:

July 1, 1860 – abolition of import duties on cotton and wool.
July 1, 1860 – application of the Belgian tariff to English coal and coke.
October 1, 1860 – duty of 7 francs per 100 kg. on iron in place of the present duties.
December 31, 1860 – reduction of import duties on machinery.
June 1, 1861 – abolition of the prohibition on the import of hemp yarn and hemp fabrics, and establishment of duties not exceeding 30 per cent.
October 1, 1861 – abolition of all other import prohibitions, which for five years are to be replaced by protective duties ad valorem (by value), and afterwards must not exceed 25 per cent.

With the exception of the reduction of the duty on English coal to the same amount now paid for Belgian coal, all the concessions seemingly made by France bear a very ambiguous character. The price of a ton of pig iron of the first quality (Wales) is, for instance, at present £3 10s., but the French duty on iron will amount to almost another £3. That the 30 per cent. duties ad valorem on formerly prohibited goods are in substance protective duties is conceded by the London Economist. So long as the real or apparent reductions of duty on English goods are postponed to later times, the English government in fact plays the part of an insurance office for Louis Napoleon’s power during this interval. The true secret of the commercial treaty, namely, that
“it is no commercial treaty at all”,
but a simple sham to bewilder John Bull’s commercial mind and disguise a cunningly devised political scheme, was masterly laid bare by Mr Disraeli during the debate on the Address. The gist of his revelations was as follows:

“Some years ago the Emperor of the French made a communication similar to the letter he recently addressed to the Minister of the Interior, in which he proposed the total abolition of the protective system and the introduction of measures similar to those in his last manifesto. In 1856 a bill of this tenor was laid before the Corps Législatif. Before its adoption, however, it was submitted to the 86 departmental councils of France, all of which, with the exception of six, agreed to the proposal on the condition that a certain lapse of time should be allowed before the new system came into operation. Consequently, as the Emperor agreed to this proposal, his decree to carry this system into effect was set forth in a public document, and July 1861 was fixed as the time for its commencement. Consequently, everything France proposes to begin in July 1861 under this treaty was already provided for by French law.”