Various

FREE TRADE, RECIPROCITY, AND COLONIZATION.

The Budget; a Series of Letters, published at intervals, addressed to Lord John Russell, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Stanley, and Lord Eliot, on Import Duties, Commercial Reform, Colonization, and the Condition of England. By R. Torrens, Esq., F.R.S.

The Edinburgh Review. No. CLVII. Article, Free Trade and Retaliation.

The Westminster Review. No. LXXVIII. Article, Colonel Torrens on Free Trade.

Our readers are not, in general, unacquainted with the public character and literary reputation of Colonel Torrens. He is, we believe, a self-taught political economist; and, like Colonel Thompson, early achieved distinction in a branch of moral science not considered particularly akin to military pursuits. But in his recent labours, he has very seriously damaged his reputation, by attempting to bolster up a policy whose influence on the welfare of the nation has been of the most deadly and pernicious kind; and we therefore advert to the letters called the Budget, more with the view of showing that they have been analysed, and their mischievous principles thoroughly refuted, than with any intention of entering at large into the discussion.

It was, we believe, in the autumn of 1841, immediately following the accession of the present Government to office, that Colonel Torrens commenced the publication of his letters called the Budget. The two first were addressed to Lord John Russell, and professed to show that the commercial propositions of the late Whig Government would, if adopted, have altered the value of money, increased the pressure of taxation, and aggravated the distress of the people. The third letter was on commercial reform, addressed to Sir Robert Peel. The remainder of the series were on colonization and taxation, on the expediency of adopting differential duties, &c.; concluding with one on the condition of England, and on the means of removing the causes of distress; which was afterwards followed by a Postscript, in which the author, addressing Sir Robert Peel, said—

Opinions like these, coming from a man considered to be of some little authority in economical science, were certainly important. The time was serious—the crisis really alarming. A new Government had come into power, and it was thought and expected were about to effect great changes. Even the Quarterly Review, alarmed by the aspect of affairs, came round, in the winter of 1841, to advocate commercial reform. At this critical period Colonel Torrens stepped forward. What his motives were we do not know; though we know that men neither harsh nor uncharitable, and with some opportunities of judging, considered that Colonel Torrens, soured by political disappointments and personal feeling, had permitted himself to be biassed by hopes of patronage from the new Government. The pamphlets composing the Budget only appeared at intervals: but so far as they were then published, did attract considerable attention; the mere supporters of pure monopoly did not, of course, understand them: but that body who may be appropriately enough termed middle men, were not unaware of the value of such support as that afforded by Colonel Torrens, in staring off changes which seemed inevitable. Sir Robert Peel, too, was then in the very midst of his lesson-taking; and as he deeply studied Mr Hume's Import Duties Report, before he brought out his new Tariff, we need not consider it to be very discreditable to him, that he read the pamphlets of Colonel Torrens before he tried his diplomatic commercial policy.

At all events, one of the chief arguments with which Sir Robert Peel and Mr Gladstone justified the great omissions of the new Tariff, was the fact that the Government was engaged in negotiations with other countries in order to obtain treaties of reciprocity. The utter failure of these efforts Sir Robert Peel has repeatedly confessed, accompanied with a sigh over the inutility of the attempt; and the last time that he adverted, in the House of Commons, to the authority of Colonel Torrens (he was citing the Postscript to the Letter addressed to himself) it was with the kind of manner which indicated want of confidence in the guide who had misled him. Whether or no, however, he had relied on that authority in his negotiations with other countries during his futile attempts to obtain commercial treaties, this much is certain enough, that Colonel Torrens did what he could to strengthen the old notion, that it was of no use for us to enlarge our markets unless other countries did so also at the same time and in the same way; and in condemning all reduction of import duties that was not based on "reciprocity," he certainly added all the weight of his authority to prop up a system whose injurious influence has affected the very vitality of our social state, and whose overthrow will yet require no small amount of moral force to effect.

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. Therefore, though not attaching primary importance to the Budget of Colonel Torrens, or believing that it could ultimately have any great effect in retarding the effectual settlement of the great question, it was not without some feeling of satisfaction that we perused the able article in the last Edinburgh Review, in which his delusions are completely set at rest. We quite agree with the writer (Mr Senior, it is said) that "if the Budget were to remain unanswered, it would be proclaimed in all the strongholds of monopoly to which British literature penetrates—in Parliament, in Congress, in the Algemeine Zeitung, and in the councils of the Zollverein—that Adam Smith and the modern economists had been refuted by Colonel Torrens; that free trade is good only where reciprocity is perfect; that a nation can augment its wealth by restraining a trade that was previously free; can protect itself against such conduct on the part of its neighbours only by retaliation: and if it neglect this retaliatory policy, that it will be punished for its liberality by a progressive decrease of prices, of wages, and of profits, and an increase of taxation."

The identity of Colonel Torrens's propositions with the exploded "Mercantile Theory" is very satisfactorily established by the Edinburgh reviewer; and it is certainly humbling to see a man of his ability coming forward to revive doctrines which had well nigh gone down to oblivion. On the subject where Colonel Torrens conceives himself strongest, the distribution of the precious metals, the reviewer has given a very able reply, though some points are left for future amplification and discussion; and, as a whole, if there be any young political economist whose head the Budget has puzzled, the article in the Edinburgh Review will be found a very sufficient antidote. With this, and another able article on the same subject in the last Westminster Review (in fact, two articles of the Westminster relate to the subject—one is on Colonel Torrens, the other on Free Trade and Colonization), we may very safely leave the Budget to the oblivion into which it has sunk; and, meantime, the novice will not go far astray who adheres to the "golden rule" of political economy, propounded by the London merchants in 1820, and re-echoed by Sir Robert Peel in 1842: "The maxim of buying in the cheapest market, and selling in the dearest, which regulates every merchant in his individual dealings, is strictly applicable as the best rule for every nation. As a matter of mere diplomacy, it may sometimes answer to hold out the removal of particular prohibitions or high duties as depending on corresponding concessions; but it does not follow that we should maintain our restrictions where the desired concessions cannot be obtained; for our restrictions would not be the less prejudicial to our capital and industry, because other governments persisted in preserving impolitic regulations."