The way in which this disastrous effect has taken place is this: In the first place, the _balance_ of trade has turned so ruinously against us, from the effect of the free-trade measures, that the credit of the commercial classes has, under the operation of our monetary laws, been most seriously confused. It appears, from the accurate and laborious researches of Mr Newdegate, that the balance of trade against Great Britain, during the last three years of free trade, has been no less than £54,000,000 sterling.[23] Now, woful experience has taught the English people that the turning of the balance of trade is a most formidable thing against a commercial nation, and that the practical experience of mankind, which has always regarded it as one of the greatest of calamities, is more to be regarded than the theory of Adam Smith, that it was a matter of no sort of consequence. When coupled with a sliding currency scale, which contracts the circulation of bank-notes in proportion as the specie is withdrawn, it is one of the most terrible calamities which can befall a commercial and manufacturing state. It is under this evil that the nation is now labouring: and it will continue to do so, till folly of conduct and error of opinion have been expiated or eradicated by suffering.
In the next place, the purchase of so very large a portion as a fourth of the annual subsistence--not from our own cultivators, who consume at an average five or six pounds a-head of our manufactures, but from foreign growers, who consume little or nothing--has had a most serious effect upon the home trade. The introduction of 12,000,000 or 13,000,000 quarters of grain a-year into our markets, from countries whose importation of our manufactures is almost equal to nothing, is a most dreadfully depressing circumstance to our manufacturers. It is destroying one set of customers, and that the very best we have--the home growers--without rearing up another to supply their place. It is exchanging the purchases by substantial yeomen, our own countrymen and neighbours, of our fabrics, for the abstraction by aliens and enemies of our money. It is the same thing as converting a customer into a pauper, dependent on our support. It was distinctly foretold by the protectionists, during the whole time the debate on the repeal of the corn laws was going forward, that this effect would take place: that the peasants of the Ukraine and the Vistula did not consume a hundredth part as much, per head, as those of East Lothian or Essex; and that to substitute the one for the other was to be penny wise and pound foolish. These predictions, however, were wholly disregarded; the thing was done; and now it is found that the result has been _much worse_ than was anticipated--for not only has it gratuitously and unnecessarily crippled the means of a large part of the home consumers of our manufactures, but it has universally shaken and contracted credit, especially in the commercial districts, by the drain it has induced upon the precious metals. These evils, from the earliest times, have been felt by mercantile nations; but they were the result, in previous cases, of adverse circumstances or necessity. It was reserved for this age to introduce them voluntarily, and regard them as the last result of political wisdom.