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As to the mass of the people, the nation at large, it was, as Paul has just said, a matter of indifference whether they were fleeced by the capitalists of their own country under protection or the capitalists of foreign countries under free trade. The literature of the controversy between Protectionists and Free Traders makes this very clear.
Time proved, however, that the appetites of protectionists could not so easily be appeased; and all wings of the party presently found themselves in harmony, in resisting the proposals to set up extremely high barriers.
The fashionable, the cautious, the Protectionists, the pious, all joined in the hue and cry. It was pointed out that the Exhibition would serve as a rallying point for all the ruffians in England, for all the malcontents in Europe; and that on the day of its opening there would certainly be a riot and probably a revolution.
Let me repeat here, that I do not accuse the protectionists in Congress of being absolutely and always Sisyphists. Very certainly they are not such in their personal transactions; very certainly each of them will procure for himself by barter, what by direct production would be attainable only at a higher price.
It was Napoleon's lot to win the favour of the rigid protectionists, while not alienating that of the men of the Gironde, who saw in him the champion of agrarian liberty against the feudal nobles. Moreover, the nation still cherished the pathetic belief that the war was due to Albion's perfidy respecting Malta, and burned with a desire to chastise the recreant islanders.
But it is observable, that no individuals now grumble so much as the farmers who voted for free trader in 1847, unless indeed it be the shipowners, every one of whom for years, both in and out of Parliament, supported the repeal of the corn laws. The Protectionists maintained their numbers, though they did not increase them, in the new Parliament.
The words used by him on one occasion to Sir Joseph were very strong. “England,” said he, “is, and must be a shopkeeper; and our docks and harbours are only so many wholesale shops, the doors of which should always be kept wide open.” It is curious that his son Robert should have taken precisely the opposite view of this question, and acted throughout with the most rigid party amongst the protectionists, supporting the Navigation Laws and opposing Free Trade.
The protectionists are fond of flashing to the public eye the glittering delusion of great money-results from manufactures, mines, artificial exports so many millions from this source, and so many from that such a seductive, unanswerable show an immense revenue of annual cash from iron, cotton, woollen, leather goods, and a hundred other things, all bolstered up by "protection."
Bankes, to consider the course which should be adopted by the Protectionist party with respect to the Coercion Bill, it was assumed, as a matter of course, that the coalition of the government and the Whigs must secure the passing of the measure, even if the Protectionists were disposed, for the chance of embarrassing the ministry, to resist it; and of course there was no great tendency in that direction.
His opinions, he goes on to say, on the subject of Protection had undergone a change, and chiefly because the prophecies of the protectionists, when the tariff was altered in '42, were falsified by experience.
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