will be found much to exceed in export value the cottonindustry, though it must be added that to the extension of the latter there are yet no apparent limits. Many articles of export, which in 1839 were too inconsiderable to be included in a summary of principal articles, and not a few which had not then appeared in the export list, have since risen to a value much exceeding that of some principal articles in 1839; as for example, in 1873 alkali and chemical products, £1,676,861; beer and ale, £2,419,575; books, £912,534; herrings, £1,027,121; papermanufactures, £973,899; painters'colours and materials, £1,016,975; stationery other than paper, £672,970; telegraphicwire and apparatus, £2,359,563; and iron, steam, and sailingships, made to foreign order, of which there is no record in the Board of Trade returns whatever. The imports of the United Kingdom in 1873, besides many new commodities of great aggregate value, such as esparto, guano, gutta-percha, hops, jute, oil-seed and oil-seedcakes, petroleum, pyrites, and various chemical substances, present a general increase over the whole range of foreign and colonialmerchandize, most marked in raw materials and provisions, of which the chiefly notable example, since they may fitly be embraced in the same category, includes wheat, corn, flour, rice, cattle, sheep, pigs, bacon, butter, cheese, eggs, poultry, potatoes, all manner of farm and dairy produce, the import value of which in 1873 is found to have amounted to £85,036,365.
This, however marvellous, is indeed but the commerce of our kingdom, but it contains the main current of the commerce of the whole world, and is consequently an example, though a strong and concentrated example, of what has been passing in other mercantilecommunities. The exports of all nations have not been computed at more than £800,000,000 to £850,000,000. Deducting from the larger sum the British and Irish exports, it follows that more than two-thirds of the exports of all other parts of the world are imported into the United Kingdom. Any permanent increase of trade in so large a centre is impossible without an increase throughout the general sphere, though this increase may be variously distributed. The following statistical results of Professor Levi exhibit in the briefest form where the chief movement has been in the remarkable epoch under consideration, so far as it can be seen through the trade of the United Kingdom.[1]
It is always critical to assign specific causes for commercial results on so vast a scale and over so wide a theatre, for in such cases there must not only have been a long antecedent preparation of means to enable such rapid and gigantic efforts to be made, but it is certain that many economic causes will be found to have been in concurrent operation, effects themselves becoming causes in turn, and though in apparent conflict, one checking the excess of the other, yet in reality extending and sustaining the general impulse. But three grand characteristics of the period have been adduced with almost common consent as affording an explanation of the phenomena—(1) the adoption of free trade by Great Britain, (2) the Californian and Australian gold discoveries, and (3) Steam navigation, railways, telegraphs;—and these may obviously be accepted as the most powerful forces ever brought to bear on the extension of trade in any one age.
The measures by which Sir Robert Peel introduced this great change in the policy of the United Kingdom were marked by four general objects, merging by practical sequence in the absolute principle of freedom of trade—1st, to remove from the tariff all prohibitions of foreign import, among the chief of which were agriculturallive stock, while retaining for a limited period some protective regulation; 2d, to place hundreds of articles of the nature of raw materials of manufacture, and others of less importance, yet useful in the arts, on a footing of entire freedom from customsduty; 3d, to reduce the duties on foreign manufactures which came into competition with home manufactures; and 4th, to repeal the corn laws, admitting foreign grain on a nominal fixed duty, which last involved an equally complete relief to provisions, live stock, agricultural produce of every kind, and to foreign manufactures. When the landlords and farmers were placed in full and direct competition with the world, no class of manufacturers had any excuse left for the slightest shred of protection. All these measures had the appearance more of liberal concessions to foreign nations than of any advantage to home producers, and this is, no doubt, the reason why free trade was so long resisted, and many were unable to see, until the problem was visibly demonstrated, that in liberating commerce, even in developing foreign resources, the most powerful impulse may be given to all the springs of domestic prosperity. The immediate effects in increasing the publicrevenue—even the customsrevenue, which seemed endangered by the abolition of so many duties—in reviving Britishtrade and manufactures, and imparting new life to agriculture itself, were so great that the free trade policy was speedily carried up to its highest points of triumph. The differential duties on foreign and colonial, slave and free laboursugar were removed; and the navigation laws, in favour of which the greatest prejudice had long existed, were fully conformed to the new policy. The expected influence of so successful an illustration of free trade on other nations has not yet been realized to any considerable extent. A more liberal system of trade with France and other Europeancountries has only been effected by treaty, which, however mutually advantageous in its results, is in its temporary and provisional character more or less unsatisfactory. It was not enough that Great Britain could say to her neighbours that free trade had worked well not only for herself but for them. There was always the ready retort of the protected interests in the
