As political economy arose with a metaphysician, and has been prosecuted by men of the same abstract turn of mind, it very soon aspired to the philosophical character of a science. It laid down its laws. But it has not always been seen that the harmonious and systematic form it has been able to assume was owing to an arbitrary division of social topics, which in their nature, and in their operation on human welfare, are inextricably combined. They laid down laws, which could only be considered such by obstinately refusing to look beyond a certain number of isolated facts; and they persisted in governing mankind according to laws obtained by this imperfect generalisation.
With regard to the main doctrine of the political economists, that of free-trade – their advocacy of unfettered industry, whether working for the home or foreign market – one sees plainly that there is a truth here. Looking at the matter abstractedly from other considerations, what doctrine could be more reasonable or more benign than that which instructs the separate communities of mankind to throw aside all commercial jealousies, all unnecessary heartburnings – to throw down their barriers, their custom-houses, their preventive stations – to let the commerce and industry of the world be free, so that the peace of the world, as well as the wealth of nations, would be secured and advanced? What better doctrine could be taught than this? Did not Fénélon, mildest and best of archbishops, reasoning from the dictates of his own Christian conscience, arrive at the same conclusion as the philosophical economist? What better, we repeat, could be taught than a doctrine which tends to make all nations as one people, and the most wealthy people possible? But hold a while. Take the microscope, and deign to look somewhat closer at the little interests of the many little men that constitute a nation. Condescend to inquire, before you change the currents of wealth and industry, (though to increase both,) into what hands the wealth is to flow, and what the class of labourers you diminish or multiply. Industry free! Good. But is the capitalist to be permitted, at all times, to gather round him and his machinery what multitudes of workmen he pleases – workmen who are to breed up families dependent for their subsistence on the success of some gigantic and hazardous enterprise? Is he to be allowed, under all circumstances, to do this, and give the state no guarantee for the lives of these men and women and children, but what it obtains from his perhaps too sanguine calculations of his own profit and loss? Is it any consolation that he bankrupts himself in ruining others, and adding immensely to a pauper population? Commerce free! Good. It will increase your imports, and multiply by an advantageous exchange the products of your industry. But what if your measure to promote this freedom of commerce foster a mode of industry at home essentially of a precarious nature, and attended with fearful political and social dangers, at the expense of other modes of industry of a more permanent, stable, peaceful character – must nothing still be heard of but free commerce? Must the utmost amount of products, at all hazard, be obtained, whatever the mode of industry that earn it, or the fate of those called into existence by the overgrown manufacture you encourage? Is it no matter how won, or who enjoys? Is the only question that the wealth be there? What if England, by carrying out, without pause or exception, the doctrine of free-trade, should aggravate the most alarming symptoms of her present social condition – must this law of the political economist be still, with unmitigated strictness, urged upon her? She pleads for exception, for delay; but the political economist will not see the grounds of her plea – will not recognise her reasons for exception: full of his partial science, which has been made to occupy too large a portion of his field of vision, he cannot see them.
England, by a series of well-known mechanical inventions, extended in a surprising manner her manufacture of cotton, and with it her foreign commerce in this article. It is unnecessary to repeat figures that we have given before, or which may be found in any statistical tables. Enough that her operations here have been on a quite gigantic scale. Recollect that this is the channel into which must run the industry and capital which your measures of free-trade may drive from their old accustomed course. Look for a moment at the nature of this species of industry, and ask whether it would be wise to foster and augment it at the expense of other more ordinary and less precarious modes of earning a subsistence. An enormous population is brought together, educated, so far as their industrial habits are concerned, in no independent labour, but taught merely to perform a part in the great machinery of a cotton-mill, themselves a part of that machinery, and trusting, they and their families, for their necessary bread, to the successful sale of the great stock of goods, the annual amount of which they are annually increasing. Although the home market may absorb the greatest portion of these goods, yet the foreign market takes so considerable a share, that any derangement of the external commerce throws a large number of this densely-congregated multitude out of employment. Is there nothing peculiarly hazardous in this condition of things? Granted that nothing can, or ought to be done to restrain the enterprising capitalist from speculating too freely with the lives of men, is it a state of things to be aggravated? Now, at this juncture comes the apostle of free-trade, and demands (for illustration's sake) that French boots and shoes be admitted duty-free. He employs the well-known, and, to its own legitimate extent, unanswerable argument of the political economist. He tells us that, by so doing, we shall purchase better and cheaper boots and shoes, and sell more of our cotton; that, in short, by manufacturing more cotton