The land absolutely groans under over-material-production of every sort and degree, as on all hands is now acknowledged. The foundations of Manchester tremble under the ponderous piles of Cobden's calicoes, in Cobden's warerooms, ever, like the liver of Prometheus, undiminished, though daily devoured by the vulture of consumption. The sight of the Pelion upon Ossa, accumulated masses of pig upon bar iron, immovable as the cloud-capped Waen and Dowlais of Merthyr Tydvil themselves, should almost generate burning fever, intense enough, among the unfortunate though too sanguine producers, to smelt all the ironstone in the bowels of South Wales, without the aid of furnace or hot blast. Broad cloths, though encumbering cloth halls, are ceasing all over the earth—so say, at least, the Leeds anti-corn-law sages. Loads of linens, as Marshall proclaims, are sinking his mammoth mills; not to lengthen the lamentable list with the sorrows of silks, of cutlery, crockery, and all other commodities, the created or impelled of the mighty steam power that by turns prospers and prostrates us. As the crowning point, the monster grievance of all, comes the cramming over-production of food, farinaceous and animal, under which the overfed stomach of the country is afflicted with nightmare, as we learn on the unimpeachable authority of that wisest and most infallible of all one-idea'd nostrummongers, the immortal Cobden himself.[I]

Vast and overwhelming, however, as the ills which follow in the train of over producing power, in the world material and manufacturing, they sink into utter insignificance—for magnitude, they are as Highgate Hill to sky-enveloped Chimborazo of eternal snow—in comparison with that crowding crush, that prodigious overflow, of charlatanic genius, in the world physical and spiritual, which blocks up every highway and byway, swarms in every circle, roars in every market-place, or thunders in each senate of the realm. There is not one ill which flesh is heir to, which this race original cannot kill or cure. Whilst bleeding the patient to death, Sangrado like, and sacking the fees, they will greet him right courteously with Viva V. milanos—live a thousand years, and not one less of the allotted number. Whilst drenching the body politic with Reform purge, or, with slashing tomahawk, inflicting Repeal gashes, they bid the prostrate and panting state subject rejoice over the wondrous dispatch with which its parts can be dismembered, the arithmetical accuracy with which its financial plethora can be depleted. Eccentric in its motions and universal in its aspirations, for the genius of this age no conception is too mean, no subject too intricate, no enterprise too rash, no object too sacred. It will condescend with equal readiness upon torturing a pauper, fleecing the farmer, robbing a church, or undertaking "the command of the Channel fleet at a moment's notice." With Mr Secretary Chadwick, schooled in police courts, it will metamorphose workhouse asylums for the destitute into parish prisons, with "locks, bolts, and bars," for the safe keeping of unfortunate outcasts found guilty of the felony of pauperism. With Dr Kay Shuttleworth and the privy council, when the masses want bread, it will invite to the "whistle belly" feast of roaring in andante, or dissolving in piano, in full choral concert mobs at Exeter Hall; it will induct into the new gipsy jargon scheme of education at Norwood, where the scholar is introduced to the process of analysation before he has learned to read and almost to articulate; or the miserables initiated into the elements of the linear, the curve, and the perspective in drawing, whose eyeballs are glaring in quest of the perspective of a loaf. Oh! genius profound, and forecasting of privy council philanthropy and utilitarian wisdom; more exquisite of refinement than Nero, who only fiddled when Rome was blazing and wretches roasting, thou, with the wizen wand of Cockney Hullah charmed with Wilhem's incantations, canst teach piping voices how to stay craving stomachs; how Kay upon Jacotot may analytically demonstrate that fast and feasting are both but synonymes of one common termination, the difference squared by time alone, and meaning ten or threescore and ten as the case may be. Misery is but a mockery of language after all; for have I not heard it rampant with lungs, and hoarse with disciplined harmony in Exeter Hall, as Hullah cut capers with his tiny truncheon, with Royalty itself, heroic field-marshals, and grave ministers of state, in seeming ecstasy at the sleight of hand? Just as I have heard and seen in the barracones of Bozal negroes for sale, when, at the crack of the black negro-driver's whip, and not unfrequent application of the lash, the flagging gang of exhausted slavery has ever and again set up that chant of revelry, run mad, and danced that dance of desperation, which was to persuade the atrocious dealers in human flesh how sound of wind and limb they were, and the bystanders how happy.

Think not that charlatanic genius rests content with triumphs even so transcendent as these. It disports itself also in "self-supporting" colonization; it runs riot in the ruin of "penny-postage;" it would be gloriously self-suicidal in abolition of corn-laws and free trade. Nay, as—

the genius of these days looks even to St Luke's, like Oxford, as a berth in dernier ressort, where a sinecurist may enjoy bed and board at the cost of the state, and as a fair honorario for the trouble of concocting a new scheme for raising the wind, or getting a living. The time may come, and sooth to say, seems drawing near, when Gibbon Wakefield, seated on the woolsack, shall be charged specially with the guardianship of all the fair wards in Chancery. Wo to infant heiress kidnappers, when a chancellor, more experienced than Rhadamanthus, more sanguineous than Draco, shall have the care of the innocent fold, and come to deal with abduction! In womanly lore, his practice and experience are undoubted; for has he not had the active superintendence, and the arduous task, of transportation of all the womankind, virgin, and matronly as well, exported to New Zealand on account, with other goods and chattels, of that moral corporation, the New Zealand trading and emigration company, which so liberally salaries him with L.600 per annum for the use of his "principle?" Again, who so fitted as the renowned Rowland Hill, the very prig pragmatic of pretension, for the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer, or First Lord of the Treasury if you will? A man who could contrive a scheme for annihilating some two millions of post-office revenue at one stroke, must be qualified beyond all other pretenders for dealing with a bankrupt treasury; for upon the homoeopathic principle, the physic which kills is that alone which should cure. The scientific discovery, indeed, is not of the modern date exactly which is assumed; for the poet of ancient Greece, his "eyes in a fine frenzy rolling," must have had homoeopathy in view when he sang—

The disinterestedness of Rowland (not he of Roncesvalles, nor even of the honest Macassar oil) need not be doubted, because he claims a large reward for a penny-post scheme, ruinous as it is, utterly unavailable and impracticable, even if as excellent as notoriously prejudicial, but for the really ingenious discovery of the pre-paying stamp system, by a party preferring no title to remuneration, and through which alone, unfortunately, the pretentious project could be practically placed in operation.

Dismissing minor worthies, such as Benjamin Hawes, junior, of the Commission of Fine Arts, selected probably and appropriately from the consideration that home-produced savonnerie may lead to clean ideas of taste, and who, in his own interest, would be a capital Commissioner of Excise; and Bowring, so well qualified to be chairman of a general board of Commissioner Tourists, from his multifarious practice—come we at last to Cobden, of corn and colonial fame, fiercely struggling with gaunt O'Connell himself for stentorian supremacy—

Cobden and the colonies! The conjunction is euphoniously alliterative at least, if not a consistent consequence; yet who more fit to perform at the funeral as the undertaker who alone has got the hearse and mules all ready for the job? Cobden, who has denounced—more still, has passed sentence upon—the colonies, should be the executioner. All hail, therefore, to the Right Hon. Alderman Richard Cobden, M.P., Secretary of State for the Colonial Department—worthy compeer of the Cabinet, where sit Lord Chancellor Gibbon Wakefield, and First Lord of the Treasury Rowland Hill! Rare will be the labours of the trio; the "self-supporting" supported on either hand by a destroying angel.

In the prospective cabinet of Charlatanerie, composed inter aliis, moreover, in addition to the Haweses, the Bowrings, the Brights, the R. R. R. (why does not the man write the names out in full, as Raving, Roaring, Rory) O'Moores, there is, however, already a "split;" the members are each and all at sixes and sevens, for as each has his own sovereign conceit, so each would rule sovereign over the rest, and bear no rival near the throne. All would be kings, but not in turn. That powerful and sarcastic writer, Paul Louis Courier, depicts the same regiphobia as raging among the Parisian Charlatanerie of his day; and with an anxious care for his own reputation and respectability, thus purges himself from contact or connexion with it:—"Ce qui me distingue de mes contemporains et fait de moi un homme rare dans le siÈcle oÙ nous vivons, c'est que je ne veux pas Être roi, et que j'Évite soigneusement tout ce qui pourrait me mener lÀ." Chadwick and Cobden are agreed upon pauperizing the whole kingdom; but the former insists upon keeping the paupers in bastiles, whilst the latter requires them in cotton manufactories; both are agreed upon the propriety of reducing the labouring classes to diet less of quantity and coarser of quality, by which the rates of wages are, and are to be, ground down: but Chadwick naturally insists, that to new poor-laws the post of honour should be assigned in the work of desolation; whilst Cobden, though acknowledging their efficient co-operation as a means to an end, and their priority as first in the field, fiercely contends for the greater aristocratical pretensions and more thoroughgoing operation of corn-law abolition. The Wakefield "self-supporting" colonial specific comes into collision, moreover, with Cobden's "perish all colonies." Kay Shuttleworth vaunts the superiority above all of his analytical schemes for training little children at Norwood to construe, for after age,—

whilst Hullah simpers forth, in softest accents of Cockaigne, the superlative claim of choral shows in Exeter Hall—

Bowring and Hume did, certes, pull together once in the matter of Greek scrip; but, Arcades ambo no longer, the worthy doctor turned anti-slavery monger, whilst Joseph, more honest in the main, cares not two straws whether his sugar be slave-grown or free, excepting as to the greater cheapness of the one or the other. So also with Hawes, never yet pardoned by the financiering economist of "cheese parings and candle ends" for the splendid Thames tunnel job, and £200,000 of the public money at one fell swoop. These people range under the generic head Charlatanerie, as of the distinct species classified as farceurs according to the French nomenclature. For other species, and diversities of species, of a lower scale, but of capacity to ascend into the higher order with time and opportunity, the daily papers may be usefully consulted under the headings devoted to the "pill" specific line—pildoras para en contrar perros, as the Spanish saynete has it.

Happily the country need never despair of salvation, even should the cabinet prospective of farceurs fall to pieces, for there yet remain two species of a genus taking higher rank in the social system; species that really have a root, a name, and pretensions hereditary or legitimately acquired. These each affect philosophy, and represent it too; they of the caste hereditary in grande tenue, they of the new men with much pompous parade of words, and all the Delphic mystics of the schools. They are none of your journeymen—your everyday spouters—in the Commons or common places. They exhibit only on state occasions, after solemn midnight preparation made; their intended movements are duly heralded beforehand; their approach announced with a flourish of trumpets. They carry on a vast wordy traffic in "great principles;" they condescend upon nothing less than the overthrow or manufacture of "constitutions"—in talk. The big swagger about "great principles" eventuates, however, in denouncing by speech from the throne repeal as high treason, and O'Connell the repealer as a traitor to the state; and next, with cap in hand, and most mendicant meanness, supplicating the said traitor—denounced—repealing O'Connell, to deign acceptance of one of the highest offices in the realm. Their practice in the "constitution" line consists in annihilating rotten borough A because it is Tory; in conserving rotten borough B because it is Whig. The grand characteristic of each species is—vox et preterea nihil. Need I further proclaim them and their titles? In the order of Parisian organization they stand as faiseurs and phraseurs. You can make no mistake about the personality ranged under each banner; they are as perfectly distinguishable each from the other, though even knit in close and indissoluble alliance, as Grand Crosses of the Bath from Knights of the Garter. At the head of the faiseurs you have Lord John Russell, Lord Viscount Palmerston, and Lord Viscount Howick. You have only to see them rise in the House of Commons—Lord John, to wit—

to be led into the belief that

The physical swell of conscious consequence—the eye-distended "wide awake" insinuation of the inconceivable, unutterable things—the grand sentiments about to be outpoured—hold you in silent wonderment and expectation. You conceive nothing less, than either that the world is about to come to an end, or the millennium declared to be the "order of the day." You imagine that the orator will lose self and party in his country. Nothing of all this follows, however. You have some common-places, perhaps common truisms, some undefined, mean-all-or-nothing, declamation about "constitution" and "principles," by way of exordium; for the rest, Rome is sunk as if it existed not, down to the peroration it is all about Cato himself, and his little Whig party about him.

Chief of the phraseurs stand Mr Babington Macaulay and Mr Lalor Shiel, the peculiarity of whose craft—a profitable craft of late years—consists in furbishing up old ideas into new and euphonious forms of speech. Of the one it may be said, that

The other more finished leader of the class mystifies you with metaphysics, half conned and unmastered by himself—more anxious still to make his points than to please his party; and, of the two, would rather sink his country than his climax. He is a rhetorician, a dealer in set phraseology, an ingenious gatherer and polisher of "other men's stuff." Of the faiseurs, may be repeated what Marshal Marmont, in his Voyage en Hongrie, en Transylvanie, &c., says of the faiseurs of Paris—"SubjuguÉs par le gout et cette manie d'uniformitÉ absolue, qui est la maladie de l'Époque, et qui resulte de principes abstraits, dont l'application est presque toujours funeste aux peuples qui l'Éprouvent, ils ignoraient combien il est dans la nature des choses et dans le bien des nations de modifier l'organization sociale suivant le temps, les lieux, suivant le plus on moins grana degrÉ de civilization, et d'aprÈs mille circonstances, qui ne peuvent Être prÉvues d'avance, mais que le legislateur capable apprecie au moment oÙ il est appÉlÉ À fonder la sociÉtÉ." On the cession of the Illyrian provinces, by Austria, after the battle of Wagram, the faiseurs, or abstract principle men, of Paris, were prompt with their plans, not for "constitutions"—Bonaparte had put an end to that branch of their mÉtier—but for reorganizing the laws, administration, &c., of Transylvania de fond en comble, without knowing any thing of the people or country, without having seen either the one or the other. Marmont, appointed governor of the ceded provinces, who had studied on the spot the institutions established by Austria, found these so perfect and well adapted to the genius and inclination of the population, and the purposes of government, that he opposed the faiseurs with success, and, by his representations, induced Bonaparte to confirm and act upon what existed.

This immense agglomeration, this monstrous over-production of the tribes of farceurs, faiseurs, and phraseurs is a misfortune of the first magnitude—a pest worse than that of the locusts which lay waste the land of Egypt, as here the substance of the people is devoured. Conflagrations may, and do, occasionally diminish the number of cotton-mills, and lighten the warehoused accumulation of cottons, or other inert matter; but no lucky plague, pestilence, or cholera, comes to thin the crowded phalanx, and rid this empire of some portion of the interminable brood of mongers of all shapes and sizes. As Horace says—

And now, leaving this discursive preliminary sketch, the length of which was unpremeditated, of the leading influences which are fast hurrying to social disorganization, it is time that once more we stand face to face with the one disorganizing doctrine of one-sided free trade; with the banner on which the phraseurs and farceurs have inscribed the cabalistic devices, in flaming characters—"Leave the imports alone, the exports will take care of themselves;" and, "A fixed duty is a fixed injustice." One might be tempted to believe the first borrowed from the armorial bearings of Lord Huntingtower's "bill" friends, whose motto is, or should be—"Leave the fools alone, and the knaves will take care of themselves;" the second is clearly no better than a petty-larceny paraphrase of Newgate felony, in whose code of duties it stands decreed, from all time, that "a fixed law is a fixed despotism."

The history of industry and commerce in every country, from the most ancient down to modern times, gives the lie to these pertly pretending truisms; for there is scarcely one branch of manufacture to be named which does not owe its rise, progress, and perfection, to the protective or financial, or both combined, control exercised over imports. If we look at home only, where, we ask, would the woollen manufacture be now, but for the early laws restrictive of the importation of foreign woollens, nay more, restrictive of the export of British fleeces with which the manufactories of Belgium were alimented? Where the cotton trade, even with all Arkwright and Crompton's inventions of mule and throstle frames, and the steam-engine wonders of Watt, but for the importation tax of 87 per cent with which the cotton manufactures of India were weighted and finally crushed? Where the British iron mines and the iron trade, now so pre-eminent over all the world, but for the heavy import duties with which the iron of Swedish, Russian, or other foreign origin was loaded? And so also, may it be asked, in respect to almost all industry and production. If, as contended, the woollen, cotton, and iron industries would not only have been created, but much more largely have flourished, without the aids and appliances of friendly tariffs, the one-sided free traders are, at least, bound to something more potential than mere assertion and idle declamation in support of the vague allegation. They have the evidence of facts patent and abundant to confront and gainsay them; they shall have more; but is there to be no reciprocation of facts counter? Is the evidence and the argument to remain all on one side, and on the other nothing but wordy nothingness—

Where are the unknown lands of factories and furnaces, of puddling and power looms, of steam-engines and blowing machines, all self-created and "self-supporting," scorning the crutches of patronage, and high-mounted on the stilts of free, or one-sided free trade? Either they exist in the shape of matter tangible and substantial; or they exist not except as chateaux en Espagne are dreamt of, or as bubbles blown and chased by idle urchins—modern philosophers in petticoats. This bubble-blowing has been, indeed, converted into something of a mine of industry of late years, most successfully exploitÉ by all the chevaliers d'industrie of the race of farceurs before referred to. Let us not forget, however, that one of the most indefatigable of the class, after various and many voyages by sea, and travels by land, in quest of the picturesque in political economy, did, indeed—or says so, and has compiled a book to prove it—light on this long-sought, never-before discovered land, in whose Arcadian bowers sits enthroned the very genius of trade, free and unfettered as the eagle in his eyry on the crowning crest of St Gotthard. Would you know this thrice-blest region—"Go climb the Alps," as the Roman satirist bids—it is Switzerland snugly ensconced in their bosom.

Nevertheless, before the title of Switzerland Felix be fully conceded, the legitimacy of its derivation remains to be investigated. The concession can only be registered upon three conditions fulfilled. It must be shown, firstly, that manufacturing industry was not fostered in its early stages by the governing power; secondly, that if it had attained a large development unprotected, the proportions of such development shall have been at the least equal, as upon the theory of free trade they should be superior, to the ratio of progression manifested in other countries where protection has been the ruling principle; thirdly, that free trade was not a necessity imposed by circumstances and position, not the result of a barter of value for value, but of free and spontaneous choice, and as the result of the profound conviction of the superior excellency and adaptability of the abstract principle. We shall deal briefly with the subject, because it has been discussed more at length heretofore in those special articles in which we have treated of the rise and progress of the cotton manufacture in this and other countries. In regard to the first condition, it was established on a former occasion, that the ruling powers of one or more of the Cantons, did advance large capitals, and offered more, in order to encourage and assist in the establishment of cotton-spinning mills, with machinery of the most perfect construction, under the superintendence, and with a share in the profits, of persons duly skilled from England. Happily, one of the individuals to whom such offers (on the basis of a £100,000 capital) were made, and by whom declined, then and subsequently one of the largest exporting merchants of Lancashire to Switzerland, and the Continent generally, still lives, and we have had the statement confirmed by himself within the last two or three years. This was somewhere between 1795 and 1800, further our memory does not serve for the precise date at present, nor is it indispensable. A manufacture thus, as may be said, artificially created and bolstered up, we do not say unwisely, does not assuredly answer the first condition required. With respect to the measure of the manufacturing development, the data are unfortunately wanting for precise verification; for Switzerland possesses no returns of foreign trade at all, nor can any satisfactory approximation be arrived at from inspection of the official tables of the foreign and transit commerce now before us of Holland, Belgium, and France, through which all the transmarine intercourse of Switzerland must necessarily pass. The exports and imports of Holland, by the Rhine, are not so classed as to show what proportion appertains to Germany and what to Switzerland, as both stand under the one head of Germany and the Rhine. In the Belgian tables, Switzerland does not enter at all until 1841, therefore they can afford no materials for the comparison with former years. From the French tables, more scientifically constructed, correct information may be gathered, so far as the commerce with and through France. But we are wanting nearly altogether in materials for estimating the land traffic of Switzerland with Germany and Italy. Taking the French tables alone, it may be collected, however, that the commerce of Switzerland has been considerably on the increase with and through France. In the cotton trade, for example, the imports of raw cotton in transit through Havre, for Switzerland, had already augmented from 2,973,159 kilogrammes in 1830, to 6,446,703 kilogrammes in 1836; and again, from the latter term, to 104,842 metrical quintals in 1840, which declined to 77,534 in 1841. Our returns do not enable us to state with exactitude whether the whole, or what portion, of the transit of cotton for the two latter years was destined for Switzerland, because our French tables do not, as up to 1836, embrace the details of the separate transit trade to each country, but only the total quantities. The increase of imports by way of France must not, however, be taken to all the extent as an absolute increase, nor can we conclude, with any assurance, that it was an increase upon the whole. For, in consequence of some important reductions in the dues agreed to by France in order to favour and attract the entire transit trade of Switzerland through its territory, the cottons formerly passed to Switzerland through Rotterdam and Antwerp by the Rhine, have been sent by way of Havre. Thus, on consulting Mr Porter's Tables of Trade, we find that the twenty-one millions of lbs. of cotton re-exported to Holland and Belgium in 1837, had decreased, in 1840, to little more than twelve millions. What proportion of the twenty-one millions was destined for Switzerland, there are no means of ascertaining, except from the returns in detail of the Rhine navigation, the existence of which, in any available shape, may be doubted. Assuming that the whole of the cotton passing in transit through France was for Switzerland, we find a quantity equal to about seventeen millions of pounds, in 1841, as required for the supply of the cotton manufacture; or say, on a rough average of 1840 and 1841, nineteen and a half millions of pounds. Now, considering that the cotton manufacture has been established in Switzerland above a century, these figures certainly demonstrate any thing but an extraordinary rate of progress. The cotton manufacture of Russia does not number half the years of existence, and yet the average consumption of raw cotton, in 1840 and 1841, was nearly thirteen millions of pounds, and of cotton yarn, rendered into cotton,[J] about twenty-three millions more. It must be noted, moreover, that whereas subsequently to the inventions of Arkwright and Crompton, Switzerland drew nearly the whole of her yarns for making into cloths from England, not possessing herself any spinning machinery until the commencement of the present century, and then but to a trivial extent, with scarcely any augmentation of importance, until some years after the general peace of 1815; yet that, within the last twenty years, the use of machinery has been extensively introduced, cotton factories have spread on all sides, for working which water-power in abundance afforded every facility, so that she now spins nearly all the yarns necessary for her fabrics, and imports from England but a very slender quantity of the higher counts still required for her finest muslins. Those imports do not perhaps exceed, if they reach to, one million pounds per annum. Of many merchants in Manchester, thirty or forty years ago, extensively engaged in furnishing that supply, but one or two at present are to be found. It remains, therefore, doubtful whether there has been any material progress in the cotton manufactures of Switzerland, so far as the quantities of fabrics produced, and the weight of cotton consumed, for many years past. Through the commercial arrangements before referred to, her special trade with France in all commodities has been on the increase; but, as the usual result of the commercial treaties of France, all to the advantage of France. Thus, for 1841, the imports (special trade of internal consumption) of France from Switzerland are stated at twenty-two millions of francs only, whilst the exports of France to Switzerland amounted to thirty-nine millions. This, be it observed, is the result of one-sided free trade, which opens its gates to all, whilst partially favoured only in return, when at all. Switzerland, for example, is free to the import of French cottons; France hermetically sealed against those of Switzerland. The general trade, that is, inclusive of transit and special, had also materially improved; the aggregate imports representing eighty-three millions of imports into, against eighty-nine millions of exports from Switzerland; or that the general trade with France had rather more than doubled since 1832, imports and exports together. The transit portion of this general trade, representing all the transmarine movement of Switzerland, is that rather, it may be said, carried on with the United States Spanish America, Brazil, &c., in which the greatest improvement of her foreign trade had taken place. She has, on the contrary, very largely lost ground in Germany, where she enjoyed marts for her manufactures, before the establishment of the Commercial Union, of an extensive and profitable description, from the advantages of her geographical position; and it is probable, that from the same cause she will have lost no inconsiderable portion of the share her merchants had in the supply of Turkey, Persia, and other countries on the shores of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. With Holland and Belgium, her commercial relations would seem to have been sensibly on the decline, so far as the returns, available and comparative, enable us to form an opinion. Upon a balance, therefore, of increase, upon one side, and decrease on the other, there is reasonable ground to question any progress in Switzerland, at all commensurate with the general accelerated movement in manufactures and commerce of other industrial countries about her, and beyond the seas; in exemplification of which, we have on other occasions presented, as we shall continue to present, evidence which may not be questioned.

Therefore, it results, that the second condition in proof of the superiority of the free, or one-sided free trade principle, as represented in Switzerland, the embodied beau idÉal of the theory, is not fulfilled. It were easy, indeed, to show the absurdity of a pretension to the rigorous reign of a principle, in a country where, though the federal government levies are merely nominal duties on imported commodities, for other than which it is and must ever be powerless, whatever the will, yet in the separate cantons or chief towns with barriers, scarcely any article enters and escapes without payment of an octroi impost, equal to a moderate state duty on importation at the ports or frontiers of other states. What would be said in this country, if wool, cotton, or any commodity entering free, or at merely nominal rates, at London or Liverpool, were to be taxed on arrival at Leeds or Manchester, for purposes of local revenue or local protection?

We may afford to dismiss the third condition in the smallest space. Free trade in Switzerland, such as it is, is not an affair of principle, of conviction, therefore of choice, as ridiculously pretended, but a necessity arising out of her geographical position. On all sides she is surrounded enclavÉe, amidst states which hold the gates of ingress and egress. Close the Rhine and the Seine against her, and she must surrender commercially at discretion, as she politically does, to such terms as may be dictated. A heavy pÉage upon river or land transit, ruins her manufactories, her industry, root and branch. She is too happy only, therefore, to be tolerated with a passage to the sea, on the hard terms of surrendering the just rights of her own industry to the free invasion of foreign competing products; she makes, ex necessitate, the sacrifice of a large portion, in order to save the remainder. Would you have the commentary? Read it in the miserable fare, the low wages, the toil unremitting and uncompensated, of the operative masses; in the depressed rate of profits, the strict, painful, but indispensable frugality of master manufacturers and capitalists, when perchance capitalists may be found, of Switzerland surnamed Felix, over-borne by foreign competition, as depicted in the Report of that romance writer, Mr John Bowring himself, who, of all men, in his own particular case, would be the last to advocate short commons, shabby salaries, or petty profits. Switzerland, therefore, answers none of the conditions required for the demonstration of the free trade theory upon the greatest profit, or even upon the greatest happiness principle, the verba ardentia of anti-corn-law declaimers, and utilitarian poetasters, notwithstanding. But if the case of the free and one-sided trade theory breaks down in its one only deceptive personification, the proofs are strong and abundant in behalf the cause of the legitimate principle of protection to industry, or of the reciprocity principle well understood, which involves essentially the principle of protection. Let us discursively range over Europe, in further addition to the evidence, which, in respect of Russia, has already been assigned; and, as with regard to Spain, and Russia as well, we shall not hesitate to signalize the abuse of a righteous principle, where in practice it degenerates into the Japanese barbarism of almost absolute prohibition and isolation. A comparison betwixt Switzerland and Japan, two nearly stationary states, where all around is in progress in the industrial sense, ruled upon economical principles so opposite and conflicting, would be a labour both amusing and profitable; but unfortunately the adequate materials are wanting in the one case as in the other; state-books of account and custom-house returns, are as rare and unheard of in Nangasaki as in Helvetia. Fiscal exactions, however, are not unknown in either, the difference being, that the despotic majesty of Japan undertakes them upon his own account, whilst the people of the Alps, as intractable, with better right, impose and levy for their own use and behoof. Withal, to the one-idea'd philosophy of your absolute theory, systematic, uniformity men of the present day, it should seem an extraordinary paradox, putting all speculation to rout, that despotic Japan should be as prosperous, more powerful, more free from intestine convulsion, although more ancient of standing, therefore to be presumed enjoying at least as much happiness as free and unfettered Switzerland, rioting betimes in all the freaks of liberty and revolution.

We do not propose to extend our enquiries into the history of industrial progress in other lands further on the present occasion, than to such external demonstrations, as measured by imports and exports, as may with most convenient brevity and fidelity answer the purpose in view. The possession of authentic documents in ample degree, expository of the past and present conditions of social and material interests in almost all the civilized states of the world, would enable us to follow out, in minute detail, the rise, the career, the vicissitudes of each; but although, on future and suitable occasions, we may be induced to resume and pursue the task already commenced in former numbers, it is not necessary now, and would far outstrip any possible space at our disposal. Commencing with Austria, it may be shown, that even with an ill-considered economical rÉgime of, until of late years, general prohibitions and restrictions, with the incessant and ill-judged policy of forcing manufacturing industry, for the hasty development of which the natural foundations were not previously laid, whilst neglecting the cultivation and encouragement of those varied agricultural and mining treasures, with which, through the length and breadth of her territory, she is so abundantly stored, the advance of Austria, commercial and manufacturing, need not assuredly fear comparison with that of free-trading Switzerland. The following are the returns of the foreign trade of the Austrian empire, excepting for Hungary and Transylvania, which will be found hereafter for the years cited. Other documents are in our possession, bringing the information down to 1840, but as not entirely complete in respect of a portion of the traffic by the land frontiers, whilst in results they differ little from the last year of the table here given, it is not worth while to make the addition.

The florin is equal to 2s. 0d. 4-10 sterling. The increase under the head of importations within the ten years was equal, therefore, to nearly 33 per cent, and on exportations about 24 per cent. Amongst the imports may be remarked raw cotton to the value of about L.1,273,000; among the exports, raw silk, for about L.2,400,000; linens, for about L.770,000; woollens, for L.2,268,000; glass and earthen-ware, L.584,000; round numbers all. A mean value, imports and exports together, from 1835 to 1838 inclusive, of about twenty-five millions sterling annually, does not certainly represent a commercial movement so large as might be expected in an empire of the territorial extent, numerous population, and rich natural products of Austria. But, as appears, its progression is onwards; and seeing that, in 1836, she entered on the laudable undertaking of revising and reforming her prohibitory and restrictive system; that, in 1838, another not inconsiderable step in advance was taken by further relaxations of the tariff; and that she is at the present moment occupied with, and may shortly announce, fiscal improvements and tariff reductions of a more wisely liberal spirit still, it is not to be doubted that, with the accompanying extension of agricultural and mining industry, Austria is destined to take a much higher rank in the commercial world than she has yet attained.

The values of the external relations of Hungary and Transylvania with foreign nations direct, are of little importance. The bulk of the traffic with them doubtless passes through the Austrian dominions, properly so called. Thus their joint foreign traffic direct, was in—

The imports, only once, in 1836, surpassed those of 1830, within the eight years. The foreign exports were, in

But the commercial relations of Hungary and Transylvania, with the other provinces of the Austrian monarchy, were, on the contrary, satisfactorily extending. The returns before us, never before published here, it is believed, do not date further back than 1835, and exhibit the following results:—

The value of manufactured cottons alone, imported from the other Austrian provinces, amounted, in 1838, to the almost incredible sum of sixty-four millions of florins, or say not far short of six and a half millions sterling; of woollens, the import was nearly to the value of eighteen millions of florins. It is difficult to conceive that such a mass of cottons could be destined for internal consumption alone; and therefore the suggestion naturally occurs, that a considerable portion at least must pass only in transit to the ports for re-exportation to the coasts of the Black Sea and the Levant; but on reference to the exports, we find cottons entered only for 31,296 florins. The proportions in which the different leading articles of importation and exportation enter into the total amounts of each may be thus stated:—

The great bulk of this commerce with Hungary and Transylvania is carried on with the three great provinces of the empire—Lower Austria, which alone absorbs about two-thirds of the total; Moravia and Austrian Silesia, one-fourth; and Gallicia and Austrian Poland, the imports from whence represent above one-tenth, and the exports to which form one-twentieth of the whole.

Such has been the progress of the Austrian empire even under the unwisely strained rÉgime of prohibition and restriction. The absolute theory men will not gain much certainly by its comparison with the free trading elysium of Switzerland, although the most favourable for the latter which could well be selected, inasmuch as representing a principle carried to a prejudicial extreme.

We have not, however, done with our absolutists of the one-sided free-trade theory yet. We must traverse Belgium with them, but at railway speed; Belgium, of commercial system less restricted than Austria, yet more exclusive than England, where, however, some approach towards the juste milieu of the equitable principles of reciprocity, may be observed in progress. How then has she fared in the general mÊlÉe of industrial strife, and what are her prospects for the future in despite of her stubborn resistance to the new lights? Let the figures which follow answer for her. The imports and exports by land and sea, were in—

For commerce special, that is, of internal production and consumption alone, the returns show, in—

The commerce general comprises as well the imports and exports of the special commerce as the transit and deliveries in entrepot of foreign merchandise. From 1834 to 1842 the increase of imports and exports, combined under the special head, was equal to more than three millions sterling. Under the general head, the increase was nearly equal to six and a half millions sterling. The comparatively large and disadvantageous inequality betwixt the exports and imports, under both heads, results mainly from the loss of those markets in the Dutch colonies, and in Holland also, of which, during her connexion with Holland and under the rule of the same sovereign, Belgium was almost exclusively in possession. The formation of the German Commercial Union cannot have failed also to damage her intercourse with Germany, to the markets of which her contiguity afforded so easy and advantageous an access.

It was our intention to have reviewed at some length the progress of the German Customs Confederation since its complete formation, with some inconsiderable accessions subsequently in 1834; but space forbids. In brief, but conclusive, evidence of that progress under the rule of protection, we may afford, however, to cite the following returns of revenue accruing under the poundage system, representing, of course, the growing quantities imported. The alternate years only are given, to avoid the needless multiplication of figures:—

The Prussian thaler is 2s. 10-3/4d. sterling.

Year by year the rise has been uninterrupted; and with the growth of imported commodities thus represented by the revenue, have indigenous products multiplied, and native manufactures flourished and extended more rapidly and widely still.

In a review of protected nations it is impossible that France should be lost sight of. More rigorously protective than Belgium, prohibitive even in some essential parts of her system, whilst stimulating by bounties in others, the results of a policy so artificial and complicated can hardly fail to confound your dabblers in first principles and rigid uniformity. In the sense economical France has not hesitated to violate outrageously all these first principles, all that perfect theory, in the worship and application of which, politically and socially, her philosophers were wont to run raging mad, and her legislators, like frantic bacchanals, were in such sanguinary "haste to destroy." Singular as it may seem, and audaciously heretical as the consummation in defiance of the order inevitable of first causes and consequences invariable, the comparative freedom of commercial principles in the old rÉgime of France allied with political despotism, was, however, ruthlessly condemned to the guillotine, along with the head of the Capets, never to be replaced by the ferocious spirit of democracy, revelling in the realization of all other visionary abstractions of perfect liberty, equality, levelling of distinctions and monopolies. With the reign of the rights of man was established, in the body politic, that of prohibition and restriction over the body industrial—gradually sobered down, as we find it now, to a system singularly made up of prohibition, restriction, protective, and stimulant, since the last great revolution of July. It is in vain to deny that, under the reign of that system, France has prospered and progressed beyond all former example; that whether freer Switzerland may have stood still or not, France, at least, has never retrograded one step, nor ceased to advance for one year, as thus may be concisely exemplified in the citation of three terms of her commercial career, faithfully indicative of the annual consecutive movement of the whole series:—

Thus the imports in ten years had more than doubled, whilst the exports had advanced 400 millions in official value; say upwards of twenty millions sterling per annum for imports, and sixteen millions for exports. The special commerce of France, representing exports of indigenous and manufactured products, and imports for consumption, and, therefore, significative of the march of domestic industry, presents the following movement:—

The imports, therefore, for consumption, that is, duty paid upon and consumed, had multiplied twofold in the ten years; and the exports of the products of the soil and manufactures, at the rate of 300 millions of francs or twelve millions sterling.

Thus flourish, wherever we turn our eyes, the interests of industry, where defended and encouraged by that protection to which so righteously entitled at home. The abolition of all protection, in the economical sense, would be policy just as sane as, politically, to dismantle the royal navy, start the guns overboard, and leave the hulls of the men-of-war to sink or swim, in harbour or out, as they might. Conscious of the inherent rottenness or insanity of such a destructive principle of action, its advocates would now persuade us, that, although inimical to protective imposts, they are by no means averse from the imposition of such fiscal burdens as might be necessary for raising the amount of revenue required for State exigencies. The difference between one sort of impost and the other, would seem little more than a change of name—a flimsy juggle of words—"a rose by any other name would smell as sweet;" and, to the consumer, it matters little whether the tax he pay is levied for protection or finance, the sum being equal. It is, and it has been objected against various protective duties, that, as revenue, they are little productive; but, in fact, they were not originally or generally laid on with a view to revenue direct, but with the intent of protecting those growing or established interests, which are productive of revenue indirectly, by enabling protected producers to consume largely of taxed commodities, or to contribute, by direct taxation, their quota towards general revenue. If, by reciprocal agreement and stipulations with foreign states which are, or might become, consumers of the products of national industry, equitable equivalents can be found for the sacrifice of a certain amount of home protection, that may be a question deserving of consideration; but a very different question from the one-sided suicidal abolition of all protection. It may pass under review hereafter. In the mean time, let us hope that neither Government nor Legislature will be insidiously betrayed, or openly bullied, into any unsafe tampering with, or rash experiments upon, a sound and rational principle.

---