severe punishment on the millions of hard-working, ill-fed consumers among their fellow countrymen; but they seem always to overlook the fact, that there is a consumer to consider as well as a producer;—and that this consumer is their own countryman, their own neighbour, whose condition it is their first duty to consult and watch;—duty as well as charity ought to be first exercised at home. That is a very doubtful humanity which exercises itself on the uncertain result of influence indirectly produced upon governments in the other hemisphere of the globe, and neglects, nay sacrifices, the interests of the poor and helpless around our own doors,—not only by placing the necessaries of life beyond their reach, but at the same time destroying the demand for their labour by which alone they can obtain them.

If individuals entertain conscientious scruples against the use of slave produce—let them, if they please, act upon them themselves, but do not let them seek to inflict certain punishment, and the whole train of vice and misery consequent on starvation and want of employment, upon their poorer neighbours, for the purpose of conferring some speculative advantage on the slaves of the Brazils or elsewhere: no man can be called upon as a duty to do so great a present evil, in order to accomplish some distant good, however great—or however certain.

THE FALLACY OF PROTECTION.

All laws made for the purpose of protecting the interests of individuals or classes must mean, if they mean anything, to render the articles which such classes deal in or produce dearer than they would otherwise be if the public was left at liberty to supply itself with such commodities in the manner which their own interests and choice would dictate. In order to make them dearer it is absolutely necessary to make them scarcer; for quantity being large or small in proportion to demand, alone can regulate the price;—protection, therefore, to any commodity simply means that the quantity supplied to the community shall be less than circumstances would naturally provide, but that for the smaller quantity supplied under the restriction of law the same sum shall be paid as the larger quantity would command without such restriction.

Time was when the Sovereigns of England relied chiefly on the granting of patents to individuals for the exclusive exercise of certain trades or occupations in particular places, as the means of rewarding the services of some, and as a provision for others of their adherents, followers, and favourites, who either held the exclusive supply in their own hands on their own terms, or who again granted to others under them that privilege, receiving from them a portion of the gains. In the course of time, however, the public began to discover that these monopolies acted upon them directly as a tax of a most odious description; that the privileged person found it needful always to keep the supply short to obtain his high price (for as soon as he admitted plenty he had no command of price)—that, in short, the sovereign, in conferring a mark of regard on a favourite, gave not that which he himself possessed, but only invested him with the power of imposing a contribution on the public.

The public once awake to the true operation of such privileges, and severely suffering under the injuries which they inflicted, perseveringly struggled against these odious monopolies, until the system was entirely abandoned, and the crown was deprived of the power of granting patents of this class. But though the public saw clearly enough that these privileges granted by the sovereign to individuals operated thus prejudicially on the community, they did not see with equal clearness that the same power transferred to, and exercised by, Parliament, to confer similar privileges on classes; to do for a number of men what the sovereign had before done for single men, would, to the remaining portion of the community, be just as prejudicial as the abuses against which they had struggled. That like the sovereign, the Parliament, in protecting or giving privileges to a class, gave nothing which they possessed themselves, but granted only the power to such classes of raising a contribution from the remaining portion of the community, by levying a higher price for their commodity than it would otherwise command. As with individuals, it was equally necessary to make scarcity to secure price, and that could only be done by restricting the sources of supply by prohibiting, or by imposing high duties on, foreign importations. Many circumstances, however, combined to render the use of this power by Parliament less obvious than it had been when exercised by the sovereign, but chiefly the fact that protection was usually granted by imposing high duties, often in their effect quite prohibitory, under the plea of providing revenue for the state. Many other more modern excuses have been urged, such as those of encouraging native industry, and countervailing peculiar burthens, in order to reconcile public opinion to the exactions arising out of the system, all of which we shall, on future occasions, carefully consider separately. But, above all, the great reason why these evils have been so long endured has been, that the public have believed that all classes and interests, though perhaps not exactly to the same extent, have shared in protection. We propose at present to confine our consideration to the effects of protection,—first, on the community generally; and secondly, on the individual classes protected.

As it is admitted that protection ought, if granted at all, to be given to all alike, it would follow that the whole produce of the country would be raised to an artificial price; and if this were the case, as far as regarded the exchange or transactions among members of the same community, the effect would be merely nominal, of no advantage to any one, and of little disadvantage beyond the enormous public expense needed to prevent people cheating each other by smuggling and bringing in the cheaper foreign article;—but such a community must forego all notion or idea of a foreign trade;—they must have no desires to be gratified beyond themselves, and they must have within themselves the independent means of supplying every want. For even if the law be strong enough to maintain an artificial high price at home, it has no power of making other countries pay that price; and if everything we possessed commanded a higher price at home than other countries could supply the same for, we should have nothing which we could exchange for the produce of other countries, and thus no more foreign trade could exist, than in a poor country which had no surplus produce. It is therefore essential that every country should bear in mind, in adopting a system of protection to manufactures or other produce, that they thereby effectually debar themselves from all foreign trade to neutral countries in such articles; for if they require high duties at home to protect them from the produce of other countries, which could only come at considerable expense to compete with them at home, how can they withstand that competition when they meet on the same terms in every respect in a neutral market? How effectually has France stayed her export linen trade by raising the duties and the price of linen yarn, and by that act, intended as a blow to English trade, given the linen manufacturers of this country a greater advantage over France in the markets of the world than ever. How idle are the efforts of the Belgian government to establish depôts and factories for the sale of their manufactures in St Thomas add other places, while the manufacturers in Ghent are only able to maintain their home trade, by high protective duties, against English, French, and German goods, and still cry out for greater protection!

It is, however, abundantly plain, that the state of a country above described could not long exist, when industry and intelligence