NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL REFORM IN FRANCE. IF the commercial convention recently concluded between Great Britain and France is open to the charge of being one sided" as far as the interests of the former kingdom are concerned, it does not possess the less interest, nor has it less importance attached to it, in reference to the future prospects of France, and the results that will be produced among other continental nations by the adoption of one among them of the great principles of political economy which have guided this country in modern times in all her commercial relations. It will be more particularly a curious and instructive feature to watch what real progress will be made under the new state of things by a people whose instincts have been hitherto almost purely military when the new fields of agriculture, manufactures, trade, and commerce are opened to them. It is even at the onset not a little instructive to find the press of this country, who, when war and invasion were in the ascendant, attributed all evil to the ruler, and exonerated the people from malevolence and ill will, now that the people, ignorant as they are in France of the first principles of political economy, reject the proffered boon, side with the emperor against the people. It proves that while individuals look too much to men and not to measures, the universal mind regards the measures and not the men. It has long been a moot question among philosophers whether every form of government may not become good or bad, according as it is well or ill administered. says, For forms of government let fools contest, Hume also "those who maintain that the goodness of all government consists in the goodness of the administration, may cite many particular instances in history where the same government, in different hands, has varied suddenly into the two opposite extremes of good and bad. Compare the French government under Henry III. and under Henry IV.: oppression, levity, artifice, on the part of the rulers; faction, sedition, treachery, rebellion, disloyalty, on the part of the subjects. These compose the character of the former miserable era. But when the patriot and heroic prince who succeeded was once firmly seated on the throne, the government, the people, everything seemed to be totally changed; and all from the difference of the temper and conduct of these two sovereigns. Instances of this kind may be multiplied, almost without number, from ancient as well as modern history, foreign as well as domestic. "But here," the same distinguished economist wrote, "it may be March-VOL. CXVIII. NO. CCCCLXXI. R proper to make a distinction. All absolute governments must very much depend on the administration; and this is one of the great inconveniences attending that form of government. But a republican and free government would be an obvious absurdity if the particular checks and controls provided by the constitution had really no influence, and made it not the interest, even of bad men, to act for the public good." We have before us at the present moment instances of the good and bad working of both systems, laying the consideration of the inconveniences attached to either aside. So long as the Emperor of France entertained, or was supposed to entertain, hostile views against this country, confidence waned, and every branch of industry in France itself languished, and was depressed. The moment the emperor shows even an inclination to relieve burdens, introduce reforms, and cement the commercial bonds that unite all countries more or less, confidence revives, and all branches of agriculture, manufactures, trade, and commerce look up again. Our country, on the other hand, has long taken the initiative in the great policy of free trade, and has set the noble example of freedom of navigation to all other countries; but, on the other side, our system of individual independence, absorption in business, and insular exclusiveness, induce us so far to neglect our national defences as virtually to leave the country at the mercy of the first invader. And whose fault is this? Not that of the government or of the administration, but, as we have often argued, of the people; and we are glad to see that this view of the subject has been boldly proclaimed by General Sir Robert Gardiner in a pamphlet recently published, and in which that gallant officer says: "Try the question-ask yourselves whose fault it is that we have no national embodied home army-does the fault rest in the construction of the constitution? No. Does it rest with the government? No. With the legislature? No. You will be surprised if you further press the question, and probe the fault to its foundation. You would then find it to be your own. If the people generally, that is, speaking of those classes possessing the elective franchise, were individually to ask his neighbour, with whom rests this great fault, they might severally reciprocate question and answer, and each receive the recriminative accusation, Thou art the man! This will astonish you, but it is perfectly true. radically your fault in listening to the delusive appeals of candidates as your representatives in parliament, and who make the senseless cry of Military Retrenchment' a password to your confidence and to popular favour." It is We have here, then, examples of two extreme evils wrought by two totally opposed forms of government-an excessive military force demanded by absolutism, an utterly inadequate force supported by the popular will. We have again, on the other side, an example in the proposed industrial reforms of good administration on the part of absolutism to meet existing evils in France, and we may contrast this with the attempt made by an independent people also to remedy an evil by arming themselves!—a praiseworthy and economical proceeding, but no more *Political and Legislative Considerations on National Defence: addressed to the People of England. By General Sir Robert Gardiner, G.C.B., Royal Artillery. Byfield, Hawksworth, and Co. equal to the emergency than a fleet of wherries would be to weather a storm at sea. The programme of industrial reforms sketched by the emperor will assist materially in allaying anxiety concerning French armaments, and in awakening confidence in the preservation of peace; but woe to the nation that, reposing in a false security, forgets for a moment the dangers that menace not only England, but all Europe, from the continuance of a government reposing entirely upon military force, or from a people of so lethal a disposition as to be ever ready to exterminate individuals and nations alike for an idea or a mere difference of opinion! "Notwithstanding the uncertainty that still prevails on certain points of foreign policy," it is said in the imperial manifesto, "a pacific solution may confidently be foreseen. The moment has therefore arrived for occupying ourselves with the means of giving a great stimulus to the several branches of the national wealth. "I address to you with this object the bases of a programme, several parts of which will have to receive the approbation of the Chambers, and upon which you will concert with your colleagues in order to prepare the measures best adapted to give agriculture, industry, and commerce a lively impulse." It is not for us to discuss here why the moment should have arrived now more than at any other time. Whether two costly wars and two imperial loans may not have had an effect; whether the French emperor, finding that England held her ground when his policy was backed by vast naval and military demonstrations, and the insolence of a mercenary press, did not think other modes of conciliation were open; whether the evils which a false system of tariffs and the artificial restriction of industry have entailed on the French people had not reached a climax, the crisis of which it may even now be too late to avert; or lastly, whether, long time favourable to industrial reform, the emperor has not availed himself of his own free will to inaugurate a new policy which is best calculated to uphold the prosperity of the country, the prodigious existing armaments, and the luxuries of Bonapartist imperialism. Probably all these influences, and more, had their weight in the scale. Suffice it for us that the moment for industrial and commercial reform is declared to have arrived. "The truth has long been proclaimed," the programme goes on to announce, "that the means of exchange must be multiplied in order to render commerce flourishing; that without competition industry remains stationary, and keeps up high prices, which are opposed to increase of consumption; that without a prosperous industry to develop capital, agriculture itself remains in a state of infancy. There is a general connexion, then, in the successive development of the elements of public prosperity. But the essential question is to know within what limits the state ought to favour these several interests, and what order of preference it ought to grant to each of them." It is manifest that the imperial writer begs the question when he says that, in as far as France is concerned, these great truths have been long proclaimed. They certainly have found their enlightened advocates, but they have hitherto always been in a minority, and they have been most vigorously, if not ignominiously and criminally, assailed by an interested opposition. Hence it is also that they have as yet never become law. As exchange in foreign trade lies now between countries rather than individuals for both the goods exported and imported are in all cases bought and sold by bills of exchange, but never actually exchanged-so any multiplication in the means of exchange can only be brought about by so far relieving prohibitive and protective duties on the exports of other countries as shall enable them, by the additional wealth that will accrue to the state, by increased consumption, to relieve the duty on their side. that weighs upon the imports from the other. If it were possible for a country both to cultivate and manufacture all kinds of produce with as little labour as it costs to purchase them from other countries, there would be no occasion for foreign commerce; but the remarkable manner in which Providence has varied the productions of nature in different climates appears to indicate a design to promote an intercourse between nations, even to the most distant regions of the earth-an intercourse which would ever prove a source of reciprocal benefit and happiness, were it not perverted by the bad passions and blind policy of man. Yet, in the face of these great self-evident facts, France, jealous of the manufacturing superiority of Great Britain, has hitherto persisted in sacrificing in great part the vast wealth that would accrue to her by developing her native industries-such as agriculture, manufactures of wines, brandies, oils, silks, and works of art to a vain competition, by the artificial aid of prohibitive duties. The same kind of division of labour which exists among the individuals of a community is also in some degree observable among different countries; and when particular branches of industry are not formed by local circumstances, it has invariably been found the best policy to endeavour to excel a neighbouring nation in those manufactures in which they are nearly on a par, and not to attempt competition in those in which, by long habitand skill, they have acquired a decided superiority. Thus alone can the common stock of productions be most improved, and all countries most benefited. To uphold other and vain competitions by prohibitive duties is not only sacrificing a nation to the interests of a few, but it is sacrificing the future of that nation, for it is impeding the development of the great natural resources of wealth, industry, and population by keeping the markets for such resources closed by the prohibitive duties on the other favoured branches of industry. Nothing can be more illiberal or shortsighted than a jealousy of the progress of neighbouring countries, either in agriculture or manufactures. Our demand for their commodities, and theirs for ours, so far from diminishing, will always be found to increase with the means of purchasing them. It is the idleness and poverty nurtured in "unions," and the employment of the population in not only unproductive but wasteful objects, such as excessive military and naval armaments, not the wealth and industry of neighbouring nations, that should excite alarm. Mirabeau ably expounded this in his "Monarchie Prussienne," when he says: "There is one sure principle in commerce, and that is, the wealthier your customers the more you will sell them; and thus the causes that enrich a people also always exalt the industry of those who have business affairs with them." And then, alluding to the effect of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which drove so many skilful manufacturers and artificers out of France, and to which we are indebted for our Spitalfields, he added: "The great truth that is presented to us by that memorable example is, that it is foolish to hope to destroy the industry and commerce of one's neighbours, since we at the same time annihilate all sources of wealth at home. If such efforts could ever produce their fruits, they would depopulate the world, and would make that nation the most unfortunate which should have had the evil power of monopolising all industry and the commerce of the world, and which would be thus ultimately reduced to the position of being for ever selling and never buying. Happily, Providence has so disposed matters that the follies of sovereigns cannot drive nations entirely from the right path to wealth and happi ness. As far as France is concerned, they have certainly succeeded for a long time. Let us hope for better things for the future, and this will most assuredly be the case if it be admitted and understood that it is not only the means of exchange that must be multiplied in order to render commerce flourishing, but that the natural products of the country, and the habits, skill, and genius of the people, must be taken advantage of and considered in such exchanges even more than the mere multiplication of the means itself. The skill and genius of a people cannot at the same time be more enhanced than by competition, and this brings us to the next paragraph of the programme, "that without competition industry remains stationary, and keeps up high prices, which are opposed to increase of consumption." This is so far true, that prohibition and prohibitive duties, by upholding a few manufacturers, causes competition to languish, takes away from the desire to excel, and wedding inferiority to non-productiveness, it naturally upholds high prices. But competition amongst purchasers also always renders commodities dear, whilst competition amongst dealers renders them cheap. Hence it is that free trade acts beneficially in two ways: it removes the prohibition which impeded competition in skill, industry, and productiveness, and by opening other markets it relieves the competition of purchasers, which is equally productive of high prices. The advantages to be derived by removal of prohibition and of prohibitory duties, and the chances presented to the French manufacturer by fair and open competition, will be the most vexed questions connected with the proposed reforms. The manufacturing capitalists are, in many instances, a wealthy and highly influential body of men, and they will never willingly give up the certainty of profit derived from their existing protected state, for the speculative one presented to them by a future condition, to be brought about only by increased skill, and industry, and other improvements, all demanding the exercise of ability, energy, foresight, and possibly the employment of additional capital. The opposition that will be made to the proposed reforms will be best judged of by the arguments of the advocate Frédéric Billot :* One of the most fatal errors to France (says this impracticable protectionist) has been, without contradiction, the adoption by its philosophers, its thoughtful men, and its statesmen of the eighteenth century, of the governmental formulæ Les Alliances de la France. Par Frédéric Billot, Avocat, Auteur des Lettres Franques à Napoléon III. |