Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 by Various

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Nor was this desolating scourge of foreign importation confined to Italy;
it obtained also in Greece equally with the Ausonian fields, the abode of
early riches, opulence, and prosperity. "In the later stages of the
empire," says Michelet, "Greece was almost entirely _supported by corn
raised in the fields of Podolia_," (Poland.)--MICHELET, i. 277.

Now let it be recollected that this continual and astonishing decline of
agriculture, and disappearance of the rural cultivators in the latter
stages of the Roman empire, took place in an empire which contained, as
Gibbon tells us, 120,000,000 of inhabitants, and 1600 great cities, was
3000 miles long and 2000 miles broad, contained 1,600,000 square miles,
chiefly fertile and well cultivated land, which embraced the fairest and
most fertile portions of the earth, and which had been governed for eighty
yers under the successive sway of Nerva, Adrian, Trajan, and the two
Antonines, with consummate wisdon and the most paternal spirit.[14] The
scourge of foreign war, the devastation of foreign armies, were alike
unknown; profound tranquillity pervaded every part of the empire; and a
vast inland lake, spreading its ample waters through the heart of the
dominion, afforded to all its provinces the most perfect facility of
intercourse with the metropolis and the central parts of the empire. Yet
this period--the period which Mr Hume has told us the philosophers would
select as the happiest the human race had ever known--was precisely that
during which agriculture so rapidly declined in the Italian and Grecian
fields, during which the sturdy race of free cultivators disappeared, and
the plains of Italy were entirely absorbed by pasturage, and maintained
only vast herds of cattle tended by slaves.

[14] "Quingena viginti octo millia quadringinta duo jugera, quae
Campania provincia, juxta inspectorum relationem, in desertis et
squalidis locis habero dignoscitur, iisdem provincialibus
concessum."--_Cod. Theod_. lxi. i. 2382.

What was it, then, which in an empire containing so immense a population,
and such boundless resources, drawn forth and developed under so wise and
beneficent a race of emperors, occasioned this constant and uninterrupted
decay of agriculture, and at length the total destruction of the rural
population in the heart of the empire? How did it happen that Italian
cultivation receded, as Tacitus and Gibbon tell us it did, _from the time
of Tiberius_; and equally under the wisdom of the Antonines, as the
tyranny of Nero, or the civil wars of Vitellius? Some general and durable
cause must have been in operation during all this period, which at firest
depressed, and at length totally destroyed, the numerous body of free
Italian cultivators who so long had constituted the strength of the
legions, and had borne the Roman eagles, conquering and to conquer, to the
very extremities of the habitable earth. The cause is apparent. It was the
free importation of Egyptian and Lybian grain, consequent on the extension
of the Roman dominion over their fertile fields, which effected the result.
Were England to extend its conquering arms over Poland and the Ukraine,
and, as a necessary consequence, expose the British farmer to the
unrestrained competition of Polish and Russian wheat, precisely the same
result would ensue. If the shores of Hindostan were within three or four
days' sail of the Tiber, this result would long ago have taken place. Let
Polish and Russian grain be admitted without a protecting duty into the
British harbours, as Lybian and Egyptian were into those of Italy, and we
shall soon see the race of cultivators disappear from the fields of
England as they did from those of old Rome, and the words of Tacitus will,
by a mere change of proper names, become a picture of our condition; three
hundred thousand acres will soon be reduced to a state of nature in Kent
and Norfolk, as they were in the Campania Felix. "Nec nunc infecunditate
laboramur, _Podoliam_ potius et _Scythiam_ exercemus, navibusque et
casibus vita populi _Anglici_ permissa est."

The free traders allege that the decay of agriculture in the central
provinces of the Roman empire, to which, by the concurring testimony of
all historians, the ruin of the dominion of the Caesars was chiefly owing,
is to be ascribed, not to the free importation of grain from Egypt,
Podolia, and Lybia, but to the tyranny of the emperors, the gratuitous
distribution of grain to the Roman populace, and the dreadful evils of
domestic slavery. A very slight consideration, however, must be sufficient
to show that these causes, how powerful soever in producing _general_
evils over the empire, could not have been instrumental in occasioning
those _peculiar_ and separate causes of depression, which so early began
to check, and at length totally destroyed, the agriculture of its central
provinces.

The tyranny of the Caesars, the oppression of the Proconsuls, the avarice
of the Patricians, were general evils, affecting alike every part of the
empire; or rather they were felt with more severity in the remote
provinces than the districts nearer home, in consequence of the superior
opportunities of escape which distance from the central government
afforded to iniquity, and the lesser chance of success which the
insurrection of a remote province held forth to the "wild revenge" of
rebellion. Muscovite oppression, accordingly, is more severely felt at
Odessa or Taganrog than St Petersburg; and British rule is far from being
restrained by the same considerations of justice on the banks of the
Ganges or the Indus, as on those of the Thames. The gratuitous
distribution of grain by the emperors to the populace of Rome, could never
have occasioned the ruin of the Italian _cultivators_. Supposing that the
two or three hundred thousand lazy and turbulent plebeians, who were
nourished by the bounty or fed by the terrors of the Caesars, were the
most useless, worthless, and dangerous set of men that ever existed,
(which they probably were,) that circumstance could never have uprooted
the race of cultivators from the plains of Lombardy, Umbria, or the
Campania Felix. The greatest possible good to a nation, according to the
free trader, is cheap grain, and never more so than when it is purchased
or imported from foreign growers. If this be true, the importation of the
harvests of Egypt and Africa into the Italian harbours, either by the
voluntary purchase of the Roman emperors, or the forced tribute in grain
which they exacted from those provinces, must have been the greatest
possible benefit to the Italian people. How then, if there be no mischief
in such foreign importations, is it possible to ascribe the ruin of
Italian cultivation, and with it of the Roman empire, to these forced
contributions? If the free traders have recourse to such an argument, they
concede the very point in dispute, and admit that the introduction of
foreign grain is injurious, and may in the end prove fatal, to the
agriculture and existence of a state.

Slavery, though a great evil, will as little explain the peculiar and
extraordinary decline of Italian and Grecian cultivation in the later
stages of the Roman empire. The greater part of the labour of the ancient
world, as every one knows, was conducted by means of slaves. They were
slaves who held the plough, and tilled the land, and tended the flocks,
equally in Lybia, in Campania, in Egypt, as in Umbria. Nay, the number of
freemen, at least in the days of the Roman Republic, and the earlier
periods of the empire, was incomparably _greater_ in Italy and Greece, the
abode of celebrated, powerful, and immortal republics, than in Lybia and
Egypt, which from the earliest times had been subject to the despotic sway
of satraps, kings, and tyrants. So numerous were the free citizens of Rome
in the early days of the empire, that, by the census of Claudius, we are
told by Gibbon they amounted to 6,945,000 men,[15] the greater proportion
of whom, of course, were residents in Italy, the seat of government, and
the centre of wealth, power, and enjoyment. While so great was the
multitude of free citizens which the Republic bequeathed to the empire,
resident and exercising unfettered industry in Italy, the cultivators of
Africa and Egypt were all serfs and slaves, toiling, like the West Indian
negroes, beneath the lash of a master. How, then, did it happen that the
labour of the Italian freeman was disused, and at length extinguished,
while that of the African and Egyptian slaves continued to furnish grain
for Italy down to the very latest period of the empire? We are told that
the labour of freemen is cheaper than that of slaves; and the free traders
will probably not dispute that proposition. It could not, therefore, have
been the slavery of antiquity which ruined Italian agriculture, carried on,
in part at least, by freemen; since African agriculture, the fruits
entirely of slavery, continued to flourish down to the very last days of
the Roman world.

[15] GIBBON, chap. i. 68.

The severe taxation of the emperors is justly stated by Gibbon and
Sismondi, as well as Michelet, as a principal cause of the decline of
Italian agriculture: but very little consideration is required to show,
that this cause is inadequate to explain this ruin of cultivation in the
Italian plains, when it continued to flourish and maintain the chief
cities of the empire with food, in Egypt and Lybia. Heavy as it was, and
oppressive as it ultimately became, _it was equal_; it was the same every
where; it might, therefore, satisfactorily explain the _general_ decline
of rural industry through the empire, and doubtless had a large share in
contributing to its downfall; but it cannot explain the _particular_ ruin
of it, in the central provinces of this vast dominion, while it continued,
down to the very last moment, to flourish in its remote dependencies.

But the taxation of the empire, _when coupled with the free importation of
grain_ from these distant dependencies, does afford a most satisfactory,
and, in truth, the true explanation of the ruin of Italian and Grecian
cultivation. It was a fixed principle of Roman taxation, that the duties
allotted on a particular district should remain fixed, how much lower the
inhabitants or industry of the province might decline. When, therefore, by
the constant importation of Egyptian and African grain, raised at half the
cost at which they could produce it, the Italian cultivators were deprived
of a remunerating return, and the taxes exacted from each district
underwent no diminution, it is not surprising that the small farmers and
proprietors were ruined; that they took refuge in the industry and crowds
of cities, and that the race of freemen disappeared from the country. A
similar process is now going on in the Turkish provinces. But without
undervaluing--on the contrary, attaching full weight to this
circumstance--nothing can be clearer than that it was the ruinous
competition of foreign grain, raised cheaper than they could produce it,
which rendered the same taxation crushing on the Italian farmers, which
was borne with comparative facility in the remoter provinces, where land
was more fertile, and labour less expensive. An example, _a fortiori_,
applied to the British empire, where the free traders wish us to admit a
free importation of grain from Poland and the Ukraine, where not only is
labour cheap but taxation trifling, into the British islands, where not
only is labour dear but taxation is five times more burdensome.

And for a decisive proof that it was the superior advantages which Egypt
and Lybia enjoyed in the production of grain, and not any other causes,
which occasioned the ruin of Italian agriculture, and with it the fall of
the Roman empire, we have only to look to the condition of the Italian
fields in the last stages of the government of the Caesars. Already, in
the time of the elder Pliny, it had become a subject of complaint that the
_great properties_ were ruining Italy[16]--a sure proof, when the great
division of estates in the days of the Republic--when, literally speaking,
"every rood had its man"--that some general and irresistible cause,
affecting the remuneration of their industry, was exterminating the small
proprietors. Erelong, cultivators ceased entirely in the country, and
the huge estates of the nobles were cultivated exclusively in pasturage,
and by means of slaves. "La classe," says Michelet, "_des petits
cultivateurs peu a pee a disparu_; les grands proprietaires qui leur
succederent y suppleerent par des esclaves."[17] It is recorded by Ammianus
Marcellinus, that when Rome was taken by the Goths, it contained 1,200,000
inhabitants, and was mainly supported by 1780 great families, who
cultivated their ample estates in Italy in pasturage, by means of
slaves.[18] For centuries before, the threat of blockading the Tiber had
been found to be the most effectual way of coercing the Roman populace;
and whenever it took place, famine ensued, not only in Rome, but the
Italian provinces. The diminution of its agricultural produce had, long
before, been stated by Columella at _nine-tenths_, and by Varro at
_three-fourths_, of what at one period had been raised. Yet such was the
wealth of the Roman nobles, derived from pasturage, that some of them had
L.160, 000 a-year.[19] Agriculture, therefore, was destroyed; grain was no
longer raised in Italy; Rome was wholly dependent on foreign supplies--but
pasturage was undecayed; and colossal fortunes were enjoyed by a wealthy
race of great proprietors, who managed their vast estates by means of
slaves, and had bought up and absorbed the properties of the whole free
cultivators in the country. Such was the effect--such was the result--of a
free trade in grain in ancient times.

[16] "Verumque confitentibus _latifundia perdidere Italiam_."--PLINY,
_Hist. Nat_.xviii. 7.

[17] MICHELET, i. 96.

[18] AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS, c. xvi.--See also GIBBON, vi. 264.

[19] GIBBON, vi. 262.

The free traders seem not insensible to these inevitable results of their
favourite principles; but they meet them by describing such consequences
as rather advantageous than injurious. If England, say they, can raise
iron and cotton goods cheaper than Poland, and Poland and Russia grain
cheaper than England, then the interest of each require that they should
follow out these branches of industry, and it is impolitic to strive
against it. Let, then, England admit foreign grain on a nominal duty, and
this will in the end induce Russia and Prussia to admit English
manufactured goods on equally favourable terms; and thus the real
interests of both countries will in the end be promoted.

There are two objections to this system. In the first place, it is
impracticable if it were expedient. In the second, it is inexpedient if it
were practicable.

It is impracticable if it were expedient. Theoretical writers may coolly
discuss in their closets the total destruction of various important
branches of industry, the "absorption" of the persons engaged in them in
other pursuits, and the transference of national capital and industry from
agriculture to manufactures, and _vice versa_; but it is impossible to
effect such changes by the voluntary act of government, even in the most
despotic country. We say by the voluntary act of government; because there
is no doubt that it may be effected, though at an enormous sacrifice of
life, wealth, and happiness, by the silent and unobserved operation of the
laws of nature, which are irresistible; as was the case with the
transference of industry from agriculture to pasturage, under the effect
of free trade in grain in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, in
the later stages of the Roman empire; or from manufactures to agriculture,
from the consequences of the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope in the
Italian republics in modern times. But no government, not even that of the
Czar Peter or Sultaun Mahmoud, could succeed in destroying or nipping in
the bud brances of national industry, by simple acts of the legislature or
sovereign authority, not imposed by external and irresistible authority.
The Emperor Paul tried it, and got a sash twisted about his neck,
according to the established fashion of that country, for his pains. The
Whigs tried it, and were turned out of office in consequence. All the
governments of Europe, despotic, constitutional, and democratic, meet our
concessions, in favour of free trade, by increased protection to their
manufacturers. They dare not destroy their rising commercial wealth any
more than we dare destroy our old colossal agricultural investments. The
republicans of America even exceed them in the race of tariffs and
protection. Sixty-two per cent has lately been laid on our British iron
goods in return for Sir Robert Peel's tariff; a similar duty on iron and
cotton goods, it is well known, is contemplated in the Prussian leagues in
Germany. The British government has at length, through its prime minister,
spoken out firmly in support of the existing corn-laws. The feeling of the
agricultural counties, as evinced at the late meetings, left them no
alternative. All nations, under all varieties of government, situation,
race, and political circumstances, concur in rising up to resist the
doctrines of free trade. Necessity has enlightened, experience has taught
them: a very clear motive urges them on, which is not likely to decline in
strength with the progress of time--it is the instinct of
self-preservation.

Such a system as the free traders advocate, if practicable, would be to
the last degree inexpedient.

What would be the result? Why, that one country would become wholly, or in
great part, agricultural, and the other wholly, or in great part,
manufacturing. Is this a result desirable to either? Admitting that a city
or small state, which has no territory which can furnish any considerable
proportion of the subsistence which it requires, like Holland, may do well
to attend exclusively to manufactures and commerce; or a country which, by
the rigour of nature, or the remoteness of its situation, cannot attain to
commercial or manufacturing greatness, would do well to attend exclusively
to the cultivation or productions of the earth; the question which here
occurs--Is such a system advisable or expedient for a nation which has
received from the bounty of nature the means of rising to greatness in
_both_--such as Great Britain, Russia, or Prussia? The free traders would
have England sacrifice its agriculture to its manufactures, and Russia
sacrifice its manufactures to its agriculture. Would such a system benefit
either? Would England be happier or richer, more stable or more moral, if
the already colossal amount of its manufactures were trebled; or Russia,
if its rising iron and woolen fabrics were destroyed, and its industry
confined exclusively to the slow return of agricultural labour? Is it
desirable that the zone of tall chimneys, sickly faces, brick houses, and
crowded jails, which at present spans across the whole of England and part
of Scotland, should be doubled and trebled in breadth; and the fertile
fields of Kent, Norfolk, and East Lothian, be reduced to vast unenclosed
pastures, such as overspread Italy in the later stages of the Roman
empire? Or is it desirable to Russia and Prussia that they should be for
ever chained to the labour of boors, serfs, and shepherds, and all the
vivifying and unimportant effects of commercial wealth be denied to their
exertions? Nature has designed, experience recommends, a very different
system. History tells us in all parts of the world, that it is in the
_intermixture_ of commerce and agriculture that the best security is to be
found for social happiness and advancement, and the most effectual
antidote provided to the evils with which either, when existing alone, is
so prone. Mr McCulloch has told us, that the commerce and manufactures of
Great Britain have now risen to such a prodigious height, that any further
extension of them is undesirable, and that no real patriot would have
desired them to have become so extensive as they already are. Is it
desirable, in such a state of matters, to go on increasing the same
splendid but perilous system, and to do so at the expense of the great
pillar of national wealth, security, and independence--the land of the
state?

Further, the proposed system is pernicious even with reference to the
national wealth and interests of the manufacturers themselves, as tending
to undermine the main branches of our national resources, and substitute
encouragement to an inferior, to upholding of the superior market for our
manufacturing industry.

Although in the meetings where they address the agricultural
constituencies, the free traders hold out that their measures would
benefit the manufacturers, and _not injure the agriculturists_; yet
nothing can be clearer than that this is a mere shallow pretext, put forth
to conceal their real objects and the effect of their measures, and that
the result they _really_ anticipate is as different from that as the poles
are asunder. What is the benefit they hold out to the community as an
inducement to go into their measures? Cheap grain. What is the motive
which stimulates all their efforts, and which, among themselves and in
private conversation with all men of sense, they at once admit is their
ruling object? _Reduced wages_; the hope of extending our export in
foreign countries by taking an additional quantity of their rude produce;
and diminishing the cost of production to our manufacturers by lowering
the price of food, and with it the wages of labour. The whole strength of
their case rests in these propositions. Their influence over the urban
multitudes arises solely from the continual reiteration of these alluring
hopes. If these effects are not to follow free trade and the efforts of
the League, in the name of Heaven, what good are they to do, and why do
they agitate the country and subscribe to the League fund? Sensible men do
not throw away L100,000 for nothing, for no benefit to themselves or
others. But these prospects are as fallacious as they are alluring, and so
a very few observations will demonstrate.

Considered in a _national_ point of view, if the matter is brought to this
issue, the great question is--Whether agriculture or manufactures are the
superior interests in the production of national wealth. Admitting that
the true policy for government is to protect _all_ the branches of
national industry, and stoutly contending, as we do, and ever shall do,
that the real and ultimate interests of all is the same, and cannot be
separated--the question comes to be, if one fiercely demands the sacrifice
of the other, and insists that its interests are so weighty and momentous
that all others must be sacrificed to them, which of the two thus placed
in jeopardy is the most momentous? which brings in most to the national
treasury? Now, on this point the facts are as adverse to the arguments of
the League, as on all other branches of their case.

Take the sum total of manufactures in Great Britain and Ireland,
accompanied with the sum total of agricultural production, in order to
discover which of the two is the more valuable interest--in order that it
may be discovered, if matters are brought to that issue that one or other
must be abandoned, which is to be sacrificed. The choice of a wise
government could not be doubtful, if it were necessary to make the
selection. The agricultural productions of the British islands amount to
L.300,000,000 a-year, while the sum total of manufactures of every
description is only L.180,000,000. Nor can it be said, with any degree of
truth, that the agriculture of the country is dependent for its existence
on its manufactures, and would decline if they were materially injured;
for the example of modern Italy and Flanders proves, that three centuries
_after_ a country has ceased to be the chief in manufacturing or
commercial industry, it may advance with undiminished vigour and success
in the production of agricultural riches.

But this is not all. The statistical documents which have now been
prepared with so much care by Parliament, and published by the accurate
and indefatigable Mr Porter, himself a decided free trader, demonstrate
that, of the manufacturing productions, nearly three-fourths are taken off
by the home market, and _four-fifths_ by the home and colonial market
taken together, leaving only ONE-FIFTH for _the whole foreign markets of
the world put together_--

"The total amount of British manufactures annually produced is about
L180,000,000 worth, of which only L47,000,000 is taken off by the
whole external trade of the world put together, while no less than
L133,000, 000 is consumed in the home market; and of the foreign
consumption, fully a third is absorbed by the British Colonies, in
different parts of the world. So that the home and colonial trade is
to the whole foreign put together as 5 to 1. And, whle the total
produce of manufactures is L180,000,000 annually, and of mines and
minerals L13,776,000, the amount of agricultural produce annually
extracted from the soil is not less than L300,000,000; or a half more
than the whole manufactures and mines put together."

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