On Thursday, June 9, in the House of Commons, Mr. Monk 
(Gloucester) proposed a resolution to the effect that 

“no commercial treaty with France will be satisfactory which does not tend to 

the development of the commercial relations of the two countries by a further 

reduction of duties”.* 

A debate of some length ensued.*° Sir C. Dilke, on behalf of 
the Government, offered the mild resistance required by diplomatic 
etiquette. Mr. A. J. Balfour (Tamworth) *? would compel foreign 
nations, by retaliatory duties, to adopt lower tariffs. Mr. Slagg 
(Manchester) would leave the French to find out the value of our 
trade to them and of theirs to us, even without any treaty. 
Mr. Illingworth (Bradford) despaired of reaching free-trade 
through commercial treaties. Mr. Mac Iver (Birkenhead) declared 
the present system of free-trade to be only an imposture, 
inasmuch as it was made up of free imports and restricted exports. 
The resolution was carried by 77 to 49, a defeat which will hurt 
neither Mr. Gladstone’s feelings nor his position. 

This debate is a fair specimen of a long series of ever-recurring 
complaints about the stubbornness with which the stupid 
foreigner, and even the quite as stupid colonial subject, refuse to 
recognise the universal blessings of free-trade and its capability of 
remedying all economic evils. Never has a prophecy broken down 
so completely as that of the Manchester School **—free-trade, 
once established in England, would shower such blessings over the 
country that all other nations must follow the example and throw 

2 See “The French Commercial Tariff’, The Times, No. 30217, June 10, 
1881.— Ed. 

their ports open to English manufactures. The coaxing voice of 
the free-trade apostles remained the voice of one crying in the 
wilderness. Not only did the Continent and America, on the 
whole, increase their protective duties **; even the British Col- 
onies, as soon as they had become endowed with  self- 
government,” followed suit; and no sooner had India been 
placed under the Crown than a 5 per cent duty on cotton goods 
was introduced even there,*” acting as an incentive to native 
manufactures. 

Why this should be so is an utter mystery to the Manchester 
School. Yet it is plain enough. 

About the middle of last century England was the principal seat 
of the cotton manufacture, and therefore the natural place where, 
with a rapidly rising demand for cotton goods, the machinery was 
invented which, with the help of the steam engine, revolutionised 
first the cotton trade, and successively the other textile manufac- 
tures. The large and easily accessible coalfields of Great Britain, 
thanks to steam, became now the basis of the country’s prosperity. 
The extensive deposits of iron ore in close proximity to the coal 
facilitated the development of the iron trade, which had received a 
new stimulus by the demand for engines and machinery. Then, in 
the midst of this revolution of the whole manufacturing system, 
came the anti-Jacobin and Napoleonic wars, which for some 
twenty-five years drove the ships of almost all competing nations 
from the sea, and thus gave to English manufactured goods the 
practical monopoly of all Transatlantic and some European 
markets. When in 1815 peace was restored, England stood there 
with her steam manufactures ready to supply the world, while 
steam engines were as yet scarcely known in other countries. In 
manufacturing industry, England was an immense distance in 
advance of them. 

But the restoration of peace soon induced other nations to 
follow in the track of England. Sheltered by the Chinese Wall of 
her prohibitive tariff,*°’ France introduced production by steam. 
So also did Germany, although her tariff was at that time far more 
liberal than any other, that of England not excepted. So did 
other countries. At the same time the British landed aristocracy, to 
raise their rents, introduced the Corn Laws, thereby raising the 
price of bread and with it the money rate of wages. Nevertheless 
the progress of English manufactures went on at a stupendous 
rate. By 1830 she had laid herself out to become “the workshop of 
the world”. To make her the workshop of the world in reality was 
the task undertaken by the Anti-Corn Law League.*” 

The French Commercial Treaty 391 

There was no secret made, in those times, of what was aimed at 
by the repeal of the Corn Laws. To reduce the price of bread, and 
thereby the money rate of wages, would enable British manufac- 
turers to defy all and every competition with which wicked or 
ignorant foreigners threatened them. What was more natural than 
that England, with her great advance in machinery, with her 
immense merchant navy, her coal and iron, should supply all the 
world with manufactured articles, and that in return the outer 
world should supply her with agricultural produce, corn, wine, 
flax, cotton, coffee, tea, etc.? It was a decree of Providence that it 
should be so, it was sheer rebellion against God’s ordinance to set 
your face against it. At most France might be allowed to supply 
England and the rest of the world with such articles of taste and 
fashion as could not be made by machinery, and were altogether 
beneath the notice of an enlightened millowner. Then, and then 
alone, would there be peace on earth and goodwill towards men; 
then all nations would be bound together by the endearing ties of 
commerce and mutual profit; then the reign of peace and plenty 
would be for ever established, and to the working class, to their 
“hands”, they said: “There’s a good time coming, boys—wait a 
little longer.” Of course the “hands” are waiting still. 

But while the “hands” waited the wicked and _ ignorant 
foreigners did not. They did not see the beauty of a system by 
which the momentary industrial advantages possessed by England 
should be turned into means to secure to her the monopoly of 
manufactures all the world over and for ever, and to reduce all 
other nations to mere agricultural dependencies of England—zin 
other words, to the very enviable condition of Ireland. They knew 
that no nation can keep up with others in civilisation if deprived 
of manufactures, and thereby brought down to be a mere 
agglomeration of clodhoppers. And therefore, subordinating 
private commercial profit to national exigency, they protected 
their nascent manufactures by high tariffs, which seemed to them 
the only means to protect themselves from being brought down to 
the economical condition enjoyed by Ireland. 

We do not mean to say that this was the right thing to do in 
every case. On the contrary, France would reap immense 
advantages from a considerable approach towards Free Trade. 
German manufactures, such as they are, have become what they 
are under Free Trade, and Bismarck’s new Protection tariff***’ 

a Gesetz, betreffend den Zolltarif des Deutschen Zollgebiets und den Ertrag der Zélle und 
der Tabacksteuer. Vom 15. Juli 1879. (Nr. 1320).—Ed. 

will do harm to nobody but the German manufacturers them- 
selves. But there is one country where a short period of Protection 
is not only justifiable but a matter of absolute necessity — America. 

America is at that point of her development where the 
introduction of manufactures has become a national necessity. 
This is best proved by the fact that in the invention of 
labour-saving machinery it is no longer England which leads, but 
America. American inventions every day supersede English 
patents and English machinery. American machines are brought 
over to England; and this in almost all branches of manufactures. 
Then America possesses a population the most energetic in the 
world, coalfields against which those of England appear almost as 
a vanishing quantity, iron and all other metals in plenty. And is it 
to be supposed that such a country will expose its young and 
rising manufactures to a long, protracted, competitive struggle 
with the old-established industry of England, when, by a short 
term of some twenty years of protection, she can place them at 
once on a level with any competitor? But, says the Manchester 
School, America is but robbing herself by her protective system. So 
is a man robbing himself who pays extra for the express train 
instead of taking the old Parliamentary train—fifty miles an hour 
instead of twelve. 

There is no mistake about it, the present generation will see 
American cotton goods compete with English ones in India and 
China, and gradually gain ground in those two leading markets; 
American machinery and hardware compete with the English 
makes in all parts of the world, England included; and the same — 
implacable necessity which removed Flemish manufactures to 
Holland, Dutch ones to England, will ere long remove the centre 
of the world’s industry from this country to the United States. 
And in the restricted field which will then remain to England she 
will find formidable competitors in several Continental nations. 

The fact cannot be longer shirked that England’s industrial 
monopoly is fast on the wane. If the “enlightened” middle class 
think it their interest to hush it up, let the working class boldly 
look it in the face, for it interests them more than even their 
“betters”. These may for a long time yet remain the bankers and 
money-lenders of the world, as the Venetians and the Dutch in 
their decay have done before them. But what is to become of the 
“hands” when England’s immense export trade begins to shrink 
down every year instead of expanding? If the removal of the iron 
shipbuilding trade from the Thames to the Clyde was sufficient to 
reduce the whole East-end of London to chronic pauperism, what 

The French Commercial Treaty 393 

will the virtual removal of all the staple trades of England across 
the Atlantic do for England? 

It will do one great thing: it will break the last link which still 
binds the English working class to the English middle class. This 
link was their common working of a national monopoly. That 
monopoly once destroyed, the British working class will be 
compelled to take in hand its own interests, its own salvation, and 
to make an end of the wages system. Let us hope it will not wait 
until then.