peo things, whether to array with them our persons or to lay them upon our tables, gives rise to a commerce which is dignified with the name of so many interests, as the manufacturing interest, and the shipping interest, and the East or West India interest. But let not the magnificence of these titles impose upon us, or lead us to imagine that any one branch of commerce yields more for the wellbeing of the community than merely its own article. But does it not, over and above, afford their maintenance to the ple engaged in it? No, it gives them their employment but not their maintenance. This maintenance lies enveloped, not in the article which they produce, but in the price which is paid for it. It comes, as it were, from the other side of the exchangenot from the manufacturers who work up the article, or the traders who bring it to market, but from the customers who pay the price for it. The perpetual tendency is to accredit every particular trade both with its own proceeds and with the returns which they bring; and the most egregious example that can be found of this delusion is in that most mercantile of all politicians, William Pitt, who at the commencement of the revolutionary war prophesied the ruin of France's power from the ruin of her commerce, in the loss of which he could perceive nothing else. than the loss of all her means for the payment and maintenance of armies. It was the destruction of her commerce which gave her her armies. She lost by it the luxuries which commerce yields; but the maintenance of the workmen whom commerce employs still remained with her. The effect was to transform millions of artizans and operatives, formerly in the pay of individual consumers, into as many soldiers, afterwards in the pay of the state. From the earthquake which engulfed her commerce, there suddenly sprung forth a host of armed men whom no man could number, who in a few months cleared her territory of all its invaders, and in a few years achieved the subjugation of all continental Europe to the bargain. The levies and conscriptions of France at that period should have taught our statesmen long ago what that is which constitutes the real strength and resources of a kingdom. The lesson we think is now beginning to dawn on the minds of certain of our statesmen, more especially of Sir Robert Peel, who already in a small way has made prosperous trial of vigorous direct taxation, and would recommend, for a time at least, the further extension of it, to meet the exigency of our Irish and Highland famines. It is our deep-felt conviction that did Britain but know the might and the magnitude of those resources wherewith Providence has blest her, she would not so quail and falter and be in sore perplexity before her present visitation. Had she but the full consciousness of her hand of strength, she would put it forth; and make the grand Political Economy of a Famine. 275 comprehensive effort so feelingly and forcibly called for by the honest jurymen of Dublin-and, not by one measure only, but by a series of measures, accomplish both the new-modelling of our Highlands, and the reconstruction of Ireland, and this at one. tithe of the expense which she has lavished on many of her wars. * Let us imagine that, among the many things to be yet done for Ireland, there behoved, perhaps for years to come, to be a large importation of food from abroad, and this to provide against the unavoidable deficiencies which must arise from the neglected agriculture of the present year, and which may continue for several years to come ere the difference can be made good between a grain-fed and a potato-fed population. It seems quite clear that without such extraordinary supplies, we shall have again and again to incur the misery and disgrace of those hideous starvations which have scandalized the world-and all the more that they took place in one portion of the United Kingdom, while in the other portions of it the people from high to low were in circumstances for giving full swing, or at least to an extent as great as usual, to all sorts of luxurious and even riotous indulgence. And it seems equally clear that the whole expense of these supplies cannot be left, whether through the medium of grants to the helpless or of wages to the able-bodied beyond the value of their labour, cannot be left on the landlords, without entailing such an amount of ruin upon the order, and filling them with such a sense of despair, as to alienate from all co-operation, that body of men, through whom alone we can obtain such local agencies, as are indispensable for giving effect to the measures which have yet to be decided on, ere Ireland shall be conducted with safety and general advantage through the difficulties of her present crisis. Let us therefore hope that Government will feel the duty of lending their helping hand in this great national emergency; and that, to be enabled for doing so, they will have recourse to a vigorous direct taxation, both to meet a far larger prospective expense than they have yet contemplated, and to provide for the deficiency of the past expenses which have already been incurred. * A direct taxation for the special object of putting Ireland and our Highlands right might be spread over several years of a transition process-just as among our city taxes, there often comes, and for a length of time too, a special charge for improvements and which continues to be levied till they are all paid for. It were a noble exhibition of patriotism and public virtue would Parliament venture on such an imposition and the people willingly respond to it. Our own preference would be for the graduation of such a tax and in this way-to lay no tax on any income below £50, and then to tax all above this, not by laying the centage on the whole income, but only on the excess above £50. Thus a tax of 5 per cent, would amount to 10s. on all who had £60 a-year, to 20s. on all who had £70 a-year, &c. The produce of such a tax, if wisely administered, might transform both Ireland and the Highlands into prosperous countries in the course of a very few years. On the principle that we have just announced, the people of our land are fully able for such an effort and such a sacrifice, provided only that those of them who have more than the necessaries of life to live upon, are able to forego a part of their luxuries. And this we contend is the single, the only inconvenience, that would be suffered, had we only the boldness to face the present exigency in all its magnitude, and the determination by means and measures of commensurate magnitude rightly and fully to dispose of it. The tax-payers would drink less wine than before, in which proportion there behoved to be an abridgement of the winetrade; but perhaps it will satisfy the worshippers of commerce as our all in all, to be told that in that very proportion the corntrade might be extended; and our alarmists for the shipping interest to be told, that the same, nay a far greater amount of shipping, is required for the importation of grain than of the costlier articles which come to us from abroad. It is demonstrable that in the consequent state of things which would ensue from a heavy direct taxation on all above the working-classes, we should behold as great a population as fully employed and as well maintained as before; and that the whole effect of this altered direction in the expenditure of the country's wealth, were the loss of certain personal indulgences to the higher classes, but with the gain it might be in return for it, of nobler objects-as the defence of a country against foreign invasion, or the establishment of a better economy within its borders. We have long advocated the law of primogeniture, and can sympathize with the pleasure and the pride which were felt by Edmund Burke, in the glorious aristocracy of England. But nothing, we are persuaded, would more conduce to the stability of their order-nothing remove farther the evil day, when their candlestick shall be taken out of its place-than their willing surrender though but in part of such enjoyments as might well be suspended, to the demands of patriotism and the public weal. This willingness can only have its full expression and effect by the collective voice and through the organ of Parliament. They may provide for the stupendous design of setting up a right economy in Ireland by loans; and we should rather they did, than that Ireland should be left as hitherto to flounder on as she best may. But our own decided preference is for a vigorous and direct taxation. men. But ere we carry our proposals any further, let us here advert to the probable effect which the establishment of the Free-Trade system is likely to have for a season on our economists and statesThe imagination is, that it will enlarge indefinitely the powers of commerce; and so the tendency in men's minds will be to magnify, we had almost said to deify, commerce all the mole-as if it were the primary source and sovereign dispenser Political Economy of a Famine. 277 of all the blessings which serve to strengthen or enrich a nation. The very famine wherewith we have been visited might serve to correct and sober down these anticipations; and to convince us that commerce is not the fountain-head, but that agriculture is the fountain-head, and commerce but the derivative stream or the derived and dependent reservoir. Even Dr. Smith, notwithstanding his own masterly exposure of the mercantile system, was so far carried by his favourite principle, the more endeared to him that he himself was its parent and its discoverer, as unduly to exalt at times the prerogatives and powers of merchandise. And yet there is one memorable sentence of his which should help to keep us right that the great end of all production is consumption. Did we but retain our steady hold of this maxim, and make at all times the right application of it, it would raise us to a higher and more commanding position for a correct survey of the whole question. Commerce would be assigned its true place, if we made our estimate of its importance to turn on the benefit which accrued from the use of its resulting commodities -if we fixed our eye on the cui bono, the terminus ad quem, of its various processes. It would reduce Political Economy to its just dimensions, so that it should no longer monopolize the whole field of vision, to the subordination or the exclusion of higher interests than its own. We are hopeful that had this consideration been present to the mind of Mr. Trevelyan, it would have saved him from the single error into which we think he has fallen throughout the whole of a correspondence, characterized all along on his part by signal ability and the most enlightened economical views-for then we apprehend that he would not, in mere deference to the Free-Trade principle have advocated as he has done the continuance of distilleries.* On the question-How is it best that our grain should be consumed? Better, we shall ever contend, in a crisis like the present; better in bread to the people, than in liquors for the good cheer of England, or the nauseous dissipations of Scotland, or even in the animal food on which Burke grounds his argument in behalf of distillation. Nay, so far do we carry our views on this matter, we should hold it greatly better that the families in the metropolis of Ireland were put on bread and water, instead of bread and milk or bread with butter on it, rather than that families in the provinces should be left without bread altogether. We make every allowance for the want of time and preparation and precise knowledge throughout the year that is past; but it will be an indelible disgrace, if in another year the Irish shall be again left to die in thousands, that the Scotch might luxuriate in spirits, and the English in their potations of beer as usual. *Irish Correspondence, (Commissariat Series) pp. 106, 17. But we must now hasten to a close-yet not surely, it might well be thought, without at least breaking ground on the question-What is to be done for Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland? And we are not ashamed to confess that at present we have no inclination to do more than break ground upon these questions. It might be a very lengthened process, and one of very many steps or stages, by which to come at last to the establishment of a good permanent economy for either of these countries; and therefore it might be presumptuous and premature to venture on an out-and-out description of the whole of it. But though unwilling, and perhaps unable, to furnish a guide-book for all the thousand miles of this way-yet if perfectly sure, though even of but the first mile, it were doubtless of importance to be told of it, more especially if at the end of this first mile, we shall be in all the better circumstances by the way opening before us as we proceed on it, for ascertaining the ulterior direction of the journey. It is good, nay indispensable, ere we go forth on an expedition for some distant landing place, that we should know what is the right point of departure, and how to make a right outset. The way to be wrong throughout is to make a wrong commencement. First, then, we should hold it as a good outset principle that the question before us is clearly an imperial one, to be prosecuted and to a great extent carried into effect by imperial means— though to a certain extent by local means also, and this in as great a proportion as might secure the vigilance and helpful cooperation of the landowners, by the interest which they are made personally to feel in their wise and economical administration. We cannot image a worse preparative for any system of future ameliorations, than to begin either with such acts or such refusals as are fitted to strike despair into the hearts whether of our Highland or our Irish proprietary. Notwithstanding all the ungenerous, and all the flagrantly impolitic abuse that has been heaped upon them, particularly in Ireland, these are the parties on whom we must principally draw for good local agencies, without which Government will be utterly helpless for the right execution of its measures. But how can we expect that they will enter with any heart or hopefulness upon the task, if burdens are to be laid and measures to be adopted, tantamount in their belief to the confiscation of all which belongs to them? To decree such a revolution in property as this were to legalize a wholesale anarchy, and bring all into confusion. The clear wisdom of Government is to gain the confidence and good-will of those who de facto are lords of the soil; and this can only be done by convincing them that although it will not give way to indefinite rapacity and clamour, its honest purpose is so to devise |