Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 by Various

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Such as he is, Mr Cobden, it cannot be denied, fills for the present a
large space in the public eye; and so he will continue to fill until
occult party supports are withdrawn, and, having served the turn, he is
left to the natural operation of the principles of gravitation, and to
sink to the nothingness from which he has been forced up by the political
accidents and agitation of the day. Lamentably astern in economical lore
and political knowledge as he is, and as the want of that educational
preparation upon which alone the foundation of knowledge and of principles
can be raised, has left him, Mr Cobden, it must be conceded, turns the old
rags, the cast-off clothes, of other people's crotchets to good account
popularly; he succeeds where others fail, not because he is less ignorant
but because he is more fearless. But newly come into the world, as it may
be said, with little learning from books, with understanding little
enlarged by study, and furnished only with those clap-trap generalities,
that declamatory trash, which may be gleaned from reading diligently the
Radical weekly papers, Mr Cobden boldly takes for granted that all which
is new to himself must be unknown to the older world about him. Thus he
appropriates, without scruple, because in sheer ignorance, the ideas and
discoveries, such as they are and as they seem to him, of others, his more
experienced Radical contemporaries. He plunders Daniel Hardcastle, in open
day, of his banking and currency dogmas; he fleeces Bowring before his
eyes of his one-sided Free Trade and Anti-corn-Law stock in business; nay,
he mounts Joseph Hume's well-known stalking-horse against "ships,
colonies, and commerce," (colonial,) and forthwith on to the foray. Yet he
alone remains unconscious of the spoliations patent to all the world
besides--

"Where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise."

He retails the worn-out conceits of others as new and wondrous discoveries
of his own genius and profound meditation; and all with such a simplicity
and complacency of self-satisfied conviction, that you never dream or
impugning the good faith with which

----"His undoubting mind
Believed the magic wonders which he sung."

Thus has it been with him specially in the last new case of poaching on
the manor of Mr Joseph Hume, whose game he unhesitatingly appropriates,
disguising it only in a sauce of his own flavouring. After sundry mystical
heraldings forth, at various public meetings, of a mighty state secret for
the cure of all state ills, which was labouring for vent in the swelling
breast of Mr Alderman Cobden, M.P., the hour of parturition at length
arrived; he was--after the one or two hours' agonies of a speech delivered
in the for ever memorable day of June 22, 1843--delivered of the mare's
nest so miraculously conceived. Here is the bantling bodily, stripped of
all the swaddling-clothes of surplus verbiage in which it was enveloped on
entering the world of Westminster--resolved, "That, in the opinion of this
house, it is not expedient that, in addition to the great expense to which
the people of this country are subject for the civil, military, and naval
establishments of the colonies, they should be compelled to pay a higher
price for the productions of those colonies than that at which similar
commodities could be procured from other countries, and that therefore all
protective duties in favour of colonial produce ought to be abolished."
Our "colonial system" was denounced by this colonial Draco as "one of
unmixed evil; ... there was no subject upon which there was greater
misapprehension than this ... the _new_ facts he should lay before the
house would, no doubt, prove his position." Happy the legislature
illumined with the infusion of Cobden's Bude light; thrice blest the
people, both inside and outside of the house, amongst whom, all alike, "a
great deal of misapprehension upon this point prevailed," whose darkness
was about to be discharged by the same master mind which was, and anon is,
busied in the discharge of Turkey reds from cotton chintzes at Chorley
print-works.

We need not remind the public, that the peculiar phrases of that disease
with which the mind of Cobden is so profoundly impregnated, essentially
resolve themselves into the _moneymania;_ the leading characteristic of
the mental hallucinations with which the patient is tormented, consists in
the inveterate habit of reducing all argument into arithmetical
quantities; of calculating the value of all truth at some standard rate
per pound sterling, of what it might possibly produce as a matter of
trade; of confounding syllogisms with ciphers, and lumbering all logic
into pounds, shillings, and pence. With diagnostics of disease so
unmistakably developed, it would only be exasperation of the symptoms to
exhibit remedially in other than the peculiar form which the patient
fancies for the kill-or-cure-all draught; and since he has raised the
suit, of which he is the self-constituted judge, in which Cocker is pitted
against the colonies, we shall even humour the conceit, and try the
question with him according to the principles of law and logic, as laid
down and reduced by himself into the substantial shape of a _Dr._ and
_Cr._ account, balances struck in hard cash, and no mistake.

Firstly, to begin with the beginning, which Mr Cobden, with customary
confusion of intellect and arrangement, shoots into the midst of his
arithmetic. The worthlessness of the colonies is argued upon the figures,
which show that, of the total exports of the United Kingdom, but one-third
is absorbed by them, whilst two-thirds are taken by foreign markets;
therefore it follows, not that the colonial trade is by 50 per cent less
important than foreign, but that, relatively, it is not only of no
importance at all, but, by all the amount, an absolute prejudice: such, at
least, is the rule-of-three logic of the Cobden school, as, viz.:--

"They should, however, consider what the extent of their trade
with the colonies was. The whole amount of their trade in 1840
was, exports L.51,000,000; out of that L.16,000,000 was exported
to the colonies, including the East Indies; but not one-third of
their export trade went to the colonies. Take away L.6,000,000 of
this export trade that went to the East Indies, and they had
L.10,000,000 of exports to set against the L.5,000,000 or
L.6,000,000 annually which was voted from the pockets of the
people of this country to support these colonies."

We shall come in season meet to the five or six millions sterling said to
be voted annually "to support the colonies." Now, admitting that the
sixteen millions, as stated, of exports colonial do contrast unfavourably
with the thirty-five millions of foreign, and that by all the difference,
by more than the difference, colonial trade is disparaged in its
importance, what becomes of this arithmetical illustration of the
superiority of foreign trade, when by the same standard we come to measure
it against the home trade, scarcely less a subject of depreciation and
vituperation than the colonial, with thinkers of the same impenetrable, if
not profound class as the member for Stockport? Here, for his edification,
we consign the resulting figures from the standard set up by himself, as
they may be found calculated and resolved from minute detail into grand
totals in the "General Statistics of the British Empire," by Mr James
Macqueen, an authority, perhaps, who will not be questioned by competent
judges any where without the pale of the Draconian legislators of the
Anti-corn-Law League.

"The yearly consumption of the population of Great Britain and Ireland for
food, clothing, and lodging, (we give the round numbers only):--

Agricultural produce for food, L.295,479,000
Produce of manufactures, 262,085,000
Imports, (raw produce, &c.) value as landed, 55,000,000
-------------
612,564,000
Deduct exports, 51,000,000
-------------
L.561,564,000"

It follows, then, that whilst foreign trade simply consumes something more
than double that of colonial trade, the home trade alone amounts to eleven
times over both foreign and colonial together, and by sixteen times as
much the amount of foreign trade alone. Upon the hypothesis of Mr Cobden,
therefore, foreign trade should be treated as of no value at all in the
national sense.

Having disposed of Mr Cobden according to Cocker, in reference to his
arithmetical demonstrations of the superiority in point of pounds,
shillings, and pence value of one sort of trade over another, we may
notice some petty trickery, cunningly intended on his part, consisting in
the suppression of figures and facts on the one side, and their
aggregation on the other, &c., by way of bolstering up unfairly a rotten
case. He states the whole colonial trade at L.16,000,000 only, inclusive
of British India, whereas Porter's Tables, which he must have consulted,
give the _total_ exports of Great Britain to all the world for 1840,

at L.51,406,430
Of which colonial, 17,378,550
-------------
Remaining for foreign trade, L.34,027,880

Mr Cobden knew well, however, that Gibraltar, Malta, and the Ionian Isles
are not, and cannot be considered as, colonies. They are in fact military
stations held for political and commercial objects. It would be ridiculous
to suppose that the rock of Gibraltar, with a population of 15,000 souls,
should consume of British imports alone L.1,111,176, the value actually
entered for that port in 1840. That amount should be accounted as to the
credit of foreign export trade, and so Mr Cobden reckoned it, without,
however, drawing the distinction, as he should have done. But that would
have exposed the miserable chicanery of the double dealing he had in hand;
for whilst taking credit for the exports to Gibraltar as part and parcel
of foreign trade, he proceeded, by way of doubly weighing the balance, to
charge all the civil and military expenditure of the garrison and fortress
against colonial trade, so that he treated Gibraltar as a colony in
respect of its cost, and as a foreign country in respect of its trade.
Cunning Isaac! here we have his military arithmetic:--"Upon the 1st of
January in this year, their army numbered 88,000 rank and file. They had
abroad, exclusive of India, 44,589. So that more than one half of that
army was stationed in their colonies; and as it was stated by the noble
lord the member for Tiverton in his evidence, for every 10,000 of these
soldiers that they had in the colonies, 5000 were wanted in England for
the purpose of exchange and recruiting. So that not only one-half, but
actually three-fourths of the army were devoted to the colonies. The army
estimates this year amounted to L.6,225,000, the portion of which sum for
the colonies amounted to L.4,500,000." Now, as the garrison of Gibraltar
alone consists of about 4000 men, to which add 2000 as the proportion for
the reserve in England for recruiting and exchanges, it follows that of
the 44,500 men on colonial duty, to which add the reserve in England,
22,250, one-eleventh are stationed in and wanted for Gibraltar alone, the
charge of which to be rateably deducted from the whole sum of L.4,500,000,
falsely set down as incurred for the colonies, would be about L.410,000.
If to this sum be added L.275,000 for "new works in Gibraltar," as stated
by Mr Cobden himself from the estimates--ordnance expenditure, (1000
guns,) L.25,000 only--share of navy estimates, L.50,000 only--we have a
gross sum of above three quarters of a million sterling as the cost of a
fortress whose sole utility, in peace or in war, is the favour and
protection of foreign trade--of the trade of the Mediterranean, of which
it is the key; and the nation is saddled with this cost for, among others,
the special behoof of that economical and disinterested patriot Mr Cobden
himself, who trades to the shores laved by the waters of that sea, the
Levant and the Dardanelles, if not the Black Sea. Why, Gibraltar alone,
with its 15,000 of population, is more than double the charge of Canada
with its million of people, one-half just emerged out of a state of
rebellion, if not _quasi_ rebellious yet. So with Malta, its garrison of
about 3000 men; and, besides, a naval squadron for protection, that island
being the headquarters of the Mediterranean fleet--a fleet and a station
exclusively kept up for the protection of foreign trade, if for any
purpose at all. And so also with the Ionian Islands, garrisoned with 3300
troops. Taking the garrison forces of Malta and these islands at 6000 men
only, with the reserve in England of 3000 more, making altogether 9000,
the rateable share of expense, according to the calculation of Mr Cobden,
for the whole army, would be about L640,000. Add to this sum the estimate
of L410,000 for the garrison alone of Gibraltar, and we have the gross sum
of L1,050,000 for the three dependencies of Gibraltar, Malta, and the
Ionian Islands, under the head of those army estimates, amounting to
L4,500,000, which Mr Cobden veraciously charges to the account of the
colonies. We purposely leave out of question for the present the
consideration of the other heavy charges in naval armaments, ordnance,
&c., to which this country is subjected for the same possessions, because
we have still to deduct other portions of the army expenditure set down as
for colonial account--that is, as the penalty paid for keeping colonies;
whereas a foreign trade of thirty-four or thirty-five millions, costs the
country nothing at all, according to the numeration tables of Mr Cobden,
and therefore should be all profit.

Passing from Europe, we come to Austral-Asia, where Great Britain, among
others, possesses no less than three penal colonies. It will not be
contended that New South Wales, Van Diemen's Land, and Norfolk Island,
were established either with economically trading or political objects;
that, in point of fact, they were established in any other sense than as
metropolitan prisons, for the safe keeping, punishment, and moral
reclamation and reform of those _quasi_ incorrigible offenders, those
criminal pests, by which the health of society was distempered, and its
safety endangered in the parent state. Therefore, whatever the military or
other expenditure incurred, it must be as much an obligation in its
supreme or corporate capacities upon the state benefited, as the support
of the criminal jurisdiction at home in all its ramifications, from the
chief judges of the land down to the lowest turnkey at Newgate. We need
not stop to enquire in what proportion the manufacturing system, with the
immoral schools of radicalism, irreligionism, and Anti-corn-Law Cobdenism,
have contributed to people the penal settlements, and, _pro tanto_, to
aggrieve the national treasury. Certain it is, and a truth which will not
be questioned, that by far the largest share of that criminal refuse has
been cast off by and from the manufacturing districts; and of which,
therefore, the colonial trade portion indirectly contributed should be
rateably the minimum, as compared with foreign trade. In his _Statistics
of the Colonies of the British Empire_, Mr Montgomery Martin remarks of
New South Wales, that "it should be observed that a large part of the
military force is required to guard the prisoners." Let us take the number
of troops so employed at 2600, which will not be far from the mark, the
corresponding home reserve of which will be 1300 more, and we then arrive,
with the help of Mr Cobden's arithmetic, and starting from his own fixed
datum of total charge, at a sum, in round numbers, of L265,000 army
expenditure for the three penal colonies; the more considerable proportion
of which must at least be set down as arising indirectly from foreign
trade, and certainly far the least from colonial, so far as chargeable
upon either.

We have next, taking Mr Cobden's rule of practice, about L.50,000 actual
military expenditure in St Helena, to which add reserve in England, and a
total of about L.70,000 is arrived at; which cannot be placed to colonial
account as for colonial purposes, since the island is purely a military
and refreshment station for vessels _en route_ for China, India, and the
seas circumflowing; and foreign trade, therefore, as much concerned in the
guilt of its expense as colonial traffic. The amount of charge, therefore,
although remaining to be deducted from the colonial head, may be left as a
neutral indeterminate item. But the military expenses for Singapore,
Penang, and Malacca, about L.80,000, cannot be for colonial account at
all, because stations merely for carrying on foreign trade, against which
chargeable, with the civil establishments as well, whether in whole or in
part, paid by the East India Company or not.

Returning westward, we have the Bay of Honduras with a military
establishment, including reserve as _per_ Cobden, expending about
L.50,000, which ranges for the far greater part within the category of the
cost attending foreign trade. Then, on the West African slave-trading
coast, we have Sierra Leone, with a military expenditure, actual and
contingent, of about L.25,000. There are the Cape Coast Castle, Acera,
Fernando Po, and other small African settlements besides, which cannot
cost less, in military occupation, than some few thousands a-year, say
only L.10,000, all for foreign trade, since colonization and production
are _nil_; and with Sierra Leone, they are only kept, or were established,
for the purpose of suppressing the trade in slaves, and promoting a
foreign trade in that quarter of Africa. Coming to Europe we have
Heligoland, a rock in the North Sea, which, as only costing something more
than L.1000 per annum on foreign trade account, we may leave out of
question. Now, without pretending on the present occasion to make up and
offer an approximate estimate of the proportion of army expenditure
charged against the colonies by Mr Cobden, which should be set down either
to political account, as arising from the possession and maintenance of
outposts necessary for defensive or defensively aggressive purposes, in
case of, or for the prevention of foreign war, or for the protection and
encouragement of foreign trade, in which a right large portion of the
military expenditure for Jamaica, Nova Scotia, the Bahamas, Bermuda, &c.,
may be regarded, we shall content ourselves with reducing his wholesale
estimate of colonial army charge by the materials antecedently furnished.
The reductions will stand thus, premising that in respect of Singapore,
Penang, and Malacca, we have not the means of ascertaining what proportion
of the charge falls upon the national treasury, as part is borne by the
East India Company. Of one fact there can, however, be no doubt; namely,
that nearly the whole of that charge is incurred for the support and
maintenance of foreign trade, just in or about the same degree as the
charges for Gibraltar.

Gibraltar, army estimate, L.410,000
Malta, Ionian Islands, 640,000
New South Wales, Van Dieman's Land, Norfolk Island, 265,000
St Helena, 70,000
Singapore, Penang, &c., 80,000
Honduras, 50,000
Sierra Leone, Cape Coast, &c., 35,000
----------
L1,550,000
----------
Deducting this amount from Mr Cobden's colonial
estimates of 4,500,000
----------
L2,950,000

This discount of about 35 per cent at one "fell swoop" from an audaciously
mendacious account-current, would be deemed sufficiently liberal if
dealing with other than the "measureless liars" of the League; it is far,
however, from the whole sum which will be charged upon, and proved against
them, on occasion hereafter when the general question shall be progressed
with. The rogues that fleeced the simple stripling, Lord Huntingtower, out
of 95 per cent for his bills, were not, as shall be proved, more
unscrupulous cheats and abusers of individual, than the League are of
public faith.

But the discount of Cobden's Cocker veracity here established, with which
for the present we shall conclude, is far (enormous, almost incredible
though it be) from the full measure of his intrepidity in the "art of
misrepresentation;" crediting him, as upon fair consideration we are
bound, with misrepresenting to some extent from sheer ignorance, from want
of that early mental training, or maturer discipline, which alone can
qualify for the severe labour of researches into, and the analysation of
truth. For, unfortunately for the question he has raised, although not so
far entertained by the legislature, the very figures discounted from his
colonial fictions tell against, and must be carried over to the debit of,
his highly cherished foreign trade account, the cost of which to the
country will be approximately verified on another occasion in Blackwood.
It is the distinctive mishap of the family of the Wrongheads, the
illiterate, one-idea'd class of which he is a member, that they never can
contemplate a friendly act without perpetrating mischief, nor intend
mischief without unconsciously achieving discomfiture and disgrace. For of
the L.1,550,000 colonial overcharge in military expenditure _alone_ of
this shallow, unreflecting, and superficial person, not less certainly
than L1,200,000 must be charged to the account of foreign trade, the
special trade he delights to honour. It will constitute, as he will find,
a material item in the general balance-sheet which we purpose to draw
hereafter between the advantages of foreign and colonial trade.

Sir Robert Peel is not more correct in his so bitterly reproached
"do-nothing" policy about Irish repeal, than in his "do-nothing" emphatic
policy about Corn-law repeal. No man better knows how, left to
themselves, the Brights and Cobdens will turn out to be Marplots. The
dolts cannot see, that however hard the Villierses, and such as them, bid
for popularity against them, in apparently the same cause--they have an
interest diametrically adverse in the general sense, and on the fitting
opportunity will throw them overboard. The most influential part of the
liberal press, both metropolitan and provincial, it is well understood,
concur with the League to some extent in its avowed objects, without at
all liking its leaders, or the means pursued for the end sought, and wait
only for the occasion, which will come, for damaging and finally
overthrowing them in popular estimation. In Manchester, Leeds, and
Birmingham, that is, in the privately known sentiments of the leading
press and other liberal leaders of opinion in each, it is notorious that
this feeling and occult determination prevails. Mr Cobden himself, and
some of his colleagues, are not unaware of the fact, and have, in the
factious and political sense, latterly trimmed their course accordingly.
But, notwithstanding, confidence they have recovered not--never will,
because apostacy or trimming cannot inspire confidence; they are
endured--to be used, and to be laid aside, "steeped in Lethe" and
forgotten, as in time they will be.

In this brief article we have treated only of the salient points of the
colonial slanders of Mr Cobden and the League. We have challenged them
only with carrying to colonial account above one million and a half
sterling, with which the colonies, so understood in the true sense, have
nothing to do; and we have shown that one million and a quarter nearly of
the charge made against colonial trade, legitimately appertains to foreign
trade. Hereafter we purpose to investigate the respective charges entailed
upon the country by foreign and colonial trade, to apportion to each its
share, and to strike the balance of profit and loss relatively upon each.
Let it suffice for the present that we have shown Mr Cobden and his
figures to be utterly undeserving of credit in a partial point of view
only; we could, as we shall, prove them to be, either through idiotical
ignorance or stupidly malicious intent, more worthless of credit still in
the general and rational sense--in the relative proportions of the
totality of national expenditure. The blunderer, ignorant or malignant,
classed the expenditure for Guernsey and Jersey, and the Channel islands,
under the head of colonial military expenditure, as well as a considerable
portion of the cost of the Chinese war, partly repaid or in course of
being repaid. He took the exports to the colonies for 1840, when the
Chinese war was only in its origin, and expense scarcely incurred; and he
adopted the estimates for 1843, when the expenses of the Chinese war had
to be provided for, a portion of which was charged under colonial heads.
He omitted, as we have said, any account of permanent charge for
conducting and protecting the trade with China, amounting to a
considerable sum yearly under the old system, and which hereafter will be
more--all to the account of "foreign trade." He omitted besides, at the
least, half a million for the war with China--all for "foreign trade." We
shall have other occasions, however, for exposing his dishonesty, and
vindicating the colonies from his calumnies. The only words of something
like truth he spoke, were against that bastard and discreditable system,
purporting to be a "self-supporting system," concocted by adventurers and
land-jobbers for achieving fortunes at the cost, and to the ruin, of the
unsuspecting emigrating public, and to the signal detriment and dishonour
of the state.

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