cottons, linens, etc., they are at least in a great measure British, both in their raw material and in their fabrication. The stones, slates, glass, and ironwork, like the furniture, of the house he occupies, are entirely British. But, to proceed further, our exemplar working man must be employed. He may be, according to the supposition on . . ., a shoemaker, and in that capacity he or his master will have custom to give for the operations of his business. The leather Every indus- comes from a British leather-dealer, who, in his turn, had it from trious man a tanner and currier, who bought the hide from a butcher, who neighbour's bought the ox from a grazier, who paid rent to a landowner, who to his welfare. bought manure from a manufacturer, who, with all the others likewise, has been giving employment and profits. The tacks, the binding, etc., of the boots and shoes that Crispin makes, give rise to a similar series of employments and earnings. His industrious habits and the increase of his family contribute to the prosperity of the place where he resides, and of the country as a whole, as long as he lives among us. If the fashion were to prevail generally of buying boots and shoes of Parisian manufacture, he must look out for other employment or else emigrate.1 Other employment he cannot get without displacing somebody, who, in that case, will be the emigrant. Of course, when he leaves his native land, he may use and consume a fractional amount of British manufactures, but it will be a very minute and a decreasing fraction, and as to the various professional gentlemen and tradesmen whom he encouraged, they cease entirely to receive benefits, and even his house becomes tenantless, unless indeed some new trade giving employment is attracted, which is a supposition rather too sanguine; but, even so, it only proves the point we are illustrating, viz., that employment is highly desirable. 1 Loyal Britons will not grudge the Colonies the benefit of large emigration to those parts of the empire so steadily rising in importance, although there is sadly too great reason to exclaim against the tardiness and blindness of our statesmen in respect to the grand question of making the empire one. Every session that is suffered to pass without the problem of unity being solved is an incalculable loss-to the world perhaps-and replete with increasing danger. Unfortunately, far too few of the emigrants go to the Colonies, partly, no doubt, because the empire is not yet federated. The official people of the United States have published what some persons may think unduly high estimates of the value of an emigrant, apart from the capital he brings to the republic. But further consideration would probably not only remove these doubts, but convince that these estimates are too low. Will any of our own countrymen, whether on the basis of cost of rearing, or on that of productive power, or on that of a money-circulating, tradesmen-employing, and tax-paying yield of benefits and profits, show how much a brawny, honest man is worth to the nation? I should not wonder, on the average, nearer £1000 than the officials' sum. We mean an average man of the type in ordinary times. Who can tell what in war? What at all times if he be a man of fertile brain, and a leading spirit VERY HURTFUL EFFECT ON TRADE OF FOUR HOURS LESS LABOUR A WEEK. A letter in a recent Economist disparaged the alleged suffering sustained by British manufacturers through legislative interference with the hours of labour. In consequence, I have obtained information from a millowner who is every way able to present facts and figures, from which I find that the difference between 60 and 56 hours per week in a factory using 5600 lbs. of wool weekly, raises the cost of manufacture of a penny per lb., or more than seven per cent. The reader knows what is meant by a "margin." It is not profit, but that excess of the selling price of an article beyond the cost of the raw material, which ought to pay for the expenses of manufacture, and also leave a profit. If, in the present calculation, we assume the margin, when the time is 60 hours, to be 25 per cent. gross, then after paying the wages and other expenses, the margin is reduced by £16, 13s. 4d. a week, a reduction so considerable as to make much more than the difference between profit and loss, for £16, 13s. 4d. a week is £866 a year. My informant adds :-Granted a manufactured article, price of which is fourth-fifths represented by raw material, a duty of 10 per cent. upon it by a country which can buy the raw material at the same price is in reality a duty of 50 per cent. upon the fifth part of it represented by labour and profit. Now there is no industry can live under this disadvantage; and if it be perpetuated in a new French Treaty, our principal industries will, before the expiry of it, have ceased to send a pound across the channel. If former generations had not guarded against such practically unequal competition, where would have been British superiority on the fields of industry, and where the exceptionally good position of the British artisan? Must he not have sunk to the level that tallies with ower wages, consistently with official ideas not long ago enunciated? Surely the masses, who have been enfranchised since free-trade was adopted, may warrantably claim that, at the least, their case and interest and wishes shall be so far consulted as that the candid inquiry proposed on pp. 36 and 100 shall be conceded. It is abundantly clear that, unless there be some adjustment, by no means synonymous with protection, of the nature indicated on p. 36, either wages must be lowered, or most of our trades will, until they succumb, be carried on at a great disadvantage. See page 41. 64 Here follow a number of promiscuous extracts and documents, containing a large amount of matter which will be found interesting and valuable by any student of the subject who will patiently wade through, or even dip into, what lies by no means invitingly before him. I have other books on my shelves,1 in which are marked some passages. In particular, The State of the Nation, Edinburgh, 1730; The Constitution and Present State of Great Britain, London, circa 1755; Dr. Campbell's Political Survey of Great Britain, Dublin, 1775; and The Edinburgh Review, 1819 and 1834; but I forbear adding them. The reader may well think he has enough. They would show 1. How even on the youth of the kingdom were sedulously inculcated by our great-grandsires very sensible principles of commerce and manufactures, along with the rightful place of trade, as primary objects of national concern, partly in maxims the same as those extracted in preceding pages from Cary and The British Merchant: and let it be noted, the value of trade with colonies was held in justly high estimation, therein teaching a lesson for us. 2. How our forefathers disparaged importations of luxuries, and regarded these as fit subjects for exceptionally heavy duties of customs, much as is seen in several extracts I have given. 3. How confident Mr. Pitt and subsequent advocates of improved trade relations with France were that British industrials could, except in a few articles such as silks and lace, more than hold their own in competing with the French. 4. How predominant in the minds of these statesmen was expectation that, if free-trade with France were established, it would chiefly be (including silk manufactures) the produce of her soil we should receive. 5. I may add, how great and persistent and very successful have been, at and since the time of Colbert, the nursing care and the energy and skill directed by the French to commerce, and that both this desire and attainment of commercial development was with a political design, and in connection with national naval and military strength. I am tempted to indulge here in two short extracts, the first from Proposals for carrying on certain Public Works in the City of Edinburgh, 1752. This semi-official document, after saying, "the whole system of our trade, husbandry, and manufactures . . . began to advance with rapid and general progression," proceeds, "It is the united force of the whole nation which seems at length to be exerting itself. Husbandry, manufactures, general commerce, and the increase of useful people, are become the objects of universal attention." The other, An Address to the Electors of Great Britain, by an Eminent Hand, Edinburgh, 1740, of a fit Member of Parliament, says, "As he must immediately discern that the plenty and power of this nation can only be nourished on the bosom of trade (especially manufactures), every method should be devised to secure the long and healthy life of our Alma Mater." 1 Except for Reports, I have not gone beyond what these supply. If I had, how much might my presentation of the case have been strengthened! APPENDIX CONTAINING CONFIRMATORY EXTRACTS. A. EXTRACTS FROM "THE LIFE OF THE PRINCE CONSORT," VOL. v. "The Commercial Treaty, negotiated by Mr. Cobden, between England and France, had been signed at Paris on the 23d January, and ratified 4th February. It had been announced that it would be laid before Parliament on the 6th February by Mr. Gladstone, and that he would at the same time make his financial statement." "While all were fascinated by the clearness of exposition, the comprehensiveness of view, and the eloquence which distinguished this address, the scheme which it developed provoked much unfavourable criticism." Treaty "The prospect for the coming year, too, was far from encouraging. It showed a deficit of more than £9,000,000, the estimated charges being £70,000,000 as against £60,700,000 of estimated income. This deficiency Mr. Gladstone proposed to meet by renewing the Gladstone's Income Tax at an increased rate-10d. in the pound on incomes French above £150, and 7d. on incomes under that amount, and by continu- speech. ing the existing high tea and sugar duties. The weight of these burdens all could appreciate. They were imminent and certain. The advantages to result from closer commercial relations with France and the reduction of the import duties on French wine and brandy, on which Mr. Gladstone mainly rested to persuade the country to bear for a time the disturbance of the equilibrium between its revenue and expenditure, were speculative, possibly remote, and in any case open to much discussion." "The Treaty with France, on which it so largely rested, had fallen out of favour with many who had at first been well disposed to it from the moment their trust in the sincerity of the Emperor had been shaken. Such advantages as it offered seemed too like a lure to His main conciliate objections to the annexation of Savoy, an imputation freely arguments. launched against it, indeed, by the French Protectionists. And even these advantages seemed to be more than counterbalanced by those which, under the Treaty, France had secured for herself. What she most wanted, our coal and iron, we bound ourselves to give her for British ten years duty free, while we were also pledged to abolish all duties to coal and on French manufactured goods, and to reduce the duty on brandy from 15s. to 8s. 2d., and on wine from 5s. to 3s. These changes E pledges as duties. Disparity of obligations. were to take immediate effect, while, on the other hand, France retained all her prohibitory duties on English productions unaltered until the 1st October 1861, when she engaged, not to abolish them as we had done, but only to reduce them to a maximum ad valorem duty of 30 per cent., to be lowered to 25 per cent. after the lapse of three years. On the whole, however, the manufacturers of England were not dissatisfied with the arrangements. The Treaty was a step in the right direction.” . . . "The Emperor continued," in a letter to Lord Cowley, "the approval of the Commercial Treaty must of necessity restore to their normal state the political relations of the two countries." Objections to the Treaty. B. NOTES ON THE FRENCH TREATY, 1860. The following remarks by Mr. Macfie were published in the Liverpool Daily Post of 16th February 1860. Of course they were but imperfect at the time, and could not be expected to forecast exactly the actual working and consequences of the Treaty : "THE TREATY WITH FRANCE. "To the Members of the Chamber of Commerce. "The following are among the objections a supporter of the Government has to the treaty "It concedes much in return for little. This is impolitic, because irritating to the British people, and not calculated to win us the respect of foreign nations. "It perpetuates the inequality between our treatment of France and her treatment of us, by confirming it and withdrawing the main inducement to lessen it by lowering duties on importations into France. "It deprives the United Kingdom of the power of rectifying that inequality from her own side by a change of duties. "It deprives this kingdom of the power of reverting for revenue to the Customs duties which she abolishes, whatever the future state of the national finances. Surely no treaty ought to promise more than that France shall be treated as the most favoured foreign nation. On wine we reduce the duties without the power of reverting to higher ones. "It deprives this kingdom of the power to legislate independently in regard to affairs that are exclusively her own concern,-how she shall raise her revenue, and on what; whether she shall have export duties or not; what she shall allow to be exported, and what not. Why should we become dependent on any foreign power to say what our Customs system is to be? "It binds us to allow the export trade in coal without restraints, or duties, or limits, even though we may be engaged in war with the |