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 THE SPEECH 
 
 MICHAEL T. SADLER, ESQ., M.P. 
 
 STATE AND PROSPECTS OF THE COUNTRY, 
 
 DELIVERED BY HIM 
 
 AT WHITBY, ON TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 
 AT A rrutir DINNER GIVEN TO HIM BY THE MERCHANTS, SHIP-OWNERS 
 
 SHIP-BUII.DF.IiS, OF 1 HAT PLACE. 
 
 E.rlrtu'ted from the Hull Advertiser, and the Leeds Ittidtigencer. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY MILLS, JOWETT, AND MILLS, BOLT-COURT. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY L. B. SEELEY AND SONS, J69, FLEET -STREET 
 
 .1. M. RICHARDSON, 23, CORNHILL ', AND SIMPKIN 
 
 AND MARSHALL, STATIONERS* COURT. 
 
 1829. 
 
 Price One Mulling.
 
 ON Tuesday, the 1 5th of September, 1829, a PUBLIC DINNER was -given 
 to Mr. SADLER, by the Merchants and Ship-owners of Whitby (EDWARD 
 CHAPMAN, Esq. in the Chair), in testimony of their approbation of his 
 uniform and steady opposition to the pernicious and ruinous system 
 of policy, under which the mercantile interests of England are at present 
 suffering. The following pages contain the substance of the speech which 
 Mr. Sadler delivered on that occasion.
 
 Stack 
 
 Annex 
 
 5 
 
 SPEECH 
 
 OF 
 
 MICHAEL THOMAS SADLER, ESQ,. M.P. 
 
 &c., &c. 
 
 Mr. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN 
 
 I RISE to return you my most cordial thanks for the honour 
 you have just done me in drinking my health, and more 
 especially for the distinction you have conferred upon me, 
 by inviting me amongst you this day. I should, indeed, be 
 wholly insensible to the common feelings of human nature, 
 were I not deeply affected at this mark of respect, even when 
 personally considered j but when I advert to the approbation 
 of my public principles and conduct, which it so unequivo- 
 cally manifests, and to the circumstances, by no means usual, 
 under which it has been paid to me, I confess I esteem the 
 present as one of the most gratifying moments of my life ; 
 nor have I terms in which I can adequately express myself 
 on the occasion. The last time, indeed, I was in public, I 
 was sharing a similar favour from my generous and highly- 
 valued constituents, who, since I have had the honour of 
 being their representative, have loaded me with great and 
 increasing obligations ; but here, where no such connection 
 could have suggested the present compliment, where, till 
 this occasion, I was entirely unknown, and had not person- 
 ally a single acquaintance, I cannot but regard your present 
 attentions as one of tlie most unequivocal proofs ever ten- 
 dered to any man that his public conduct has met with
 
 general approbation. To be surrounded, under these cir- 
 cumstances, by a company of gentlemen of the highest 
 respectability, whether it regards wealth, character, or in- 
 formation, and more numerous than I could have supposed 
 this place, respectable as it is, could have possibly mustered 
 on any such occasion j and above all, unanimous, as I am 
 given to understand, in their approbation of the political 
 principles of the humble individual who is now addressing 
 you, is indeed a distinction of which any man in this king- 
 dom, whatever be his rank, would feel justly and deeply 
 proud. 
 
 Gentlemen, in addressing you on this occasion, you will 
 expect that I should advert to the terms in which your pub- 
 lic invitation was expressed. In doing this, however, I must 
 wave any remarks upon the too flattering manner in which 
 you have been kind enough to allude to my character and 
 talents, further than just to say, that my character, I hope, will 
 ever be marked by consistency; and, as to my talents, 
 whatever they may be (and I regret to say they are humble 
 and limited), I have freely devoted them, under the direction 
 of my conscience, to the service of the country ; a line of 
 conduct which I foresaw would bring upon me the ridicule 
 and abuse of a certain class of speakers and writers, who re- 
 serve all their approbation for mercenary and unprincipled 
 tergiversation, and all their hatred for the honest and oppo- 
 site course. I arn, however, well content to endure this, 
 certain as I am, that such attempts will only tend to bring 
 into more general discussion those principles of policy of 
 which I am an humble advocate, and which must prevail, 
 being, I am fully satisfied, those of patriotism, humanity, and 
 truth. To this policy you have adverted in your invitation 
 to me, and especially to that part of it more immediately 
 affecting the interests of this ancient town. I shall, there- 
 fore, on this occasion, confine myself to shortly discussing
 
 some of the most prominent and important topics it in- 
 volves. 
 
 Gentlemen^ the ancient and genuine policy of this great 
 country, like its constitution, was notj if I may so express 
 myself, struck out at a heat. Dictated by necessity, and con- 
 firmed by experience, it was the work of successive genera- 
 tions, generations of incomparably greater intellect, and, it 
 is to be feared, of far more real patriotism, than the present. 
 It was not suggested, perhaps, by hireling critics, or patronised 
 by political pamphleteers, but it had the deliberate sanction 
 and suffrages of the most illustrious names that ever adorned 
 England or the world, such names as Bacon, as Locke, as 
 Addison, whose authority gave it the signature of immortal- 
 ity, men who brought to the consideration of the subject 
 not only the broadest lights of reason, but the utmost warmth 
 of benevolence, and who left nothing to be discovered, in the 
 fundamental principles of human policy, to the witlings of 
 the day, but the secret of their own conceited ignorance. 
 That policy, founded upon the certainty of the rich abund- 
 ance of all things necessary to human existence within onr 
 own shores, and of the consequent duty and advantage of de- 
 veloping them, sought from foreign countries those commodi- 
 ties (happily for us, few and comparatively unimportant), 
 which nature had denied to this ; at the same time strictly 
 protecting those branches of British industry which could 
 not otherwise have been introduced amongst us, or preserved 
 when established. Now, it were most easy to show that, 
 whatever reasons there might have been for the introduction 
 of such a system (and they were such as will continue to 
 operate in all countries where common sense prevails), such 
 reasons were rendered infinitely more imperative by that 
 course of events which has caused this country to be more 
 heavily taxed than any other, and (thanks to the support 
 of internal industry) long enabled it to dispense the most 
 
 B2
 
 6 
 
 liberal reward to human labour of any nation upon earth. 
 To allow British labour to be competed with by foreign- 
 ers in our own market, then, is, in reference to our taxa- 
 tion, the most dishonest, and, in regard to our comforts, 
 the most cruel policy that ever was ventured upon by any 
 government in the world, to say nothing of its folly. In 
 behalf of the former system I have mentioned names ; I will 
 now make a still more important appeal, I mean, to facts. 
 Reasonings, by whomsoever urged, may fail; experience never. 
 Under that system of policy, and in spite of obstacles the 
 most formidable, the nation increased its wealth, promoted its 
 prosperity, consolidated its power, and extended its dominion. 
 Depressions, there certainly did occur in the country; but 
 these, which, towards the last, were plainly traceable to the 
 introduction of parts of the absurd policy now adopted, were, 
 comparatively speaking, slight and temporary, and above all, 
 partial. If one interest suffered, the rest were in a condition 
 to sustain it ; the vibrations of the national balance soon 
 subsided into the equipoise of settled and general prosperity. 
 The history of the world exhibits not the nation whose ad- 
 vancement was so rapid, and whose prosperity seemed to 
 promise such perpetuity. That such was its condition, I 
 appeal to your individual experience ; I cite still higher au- 
 thority. Prosperity was pronounced in glowing language 
 from the Throne, prosperity was echoed in still more ex- 
 aggerated terms, and attended with boundless promises of its 
 perpetuity and increase, by the minister of the Crown. These 
 declarations were believed and acted upon by the people, and 
 their faith has been since imputed to them as their folly and 
 their crime, by some of those, even, who put them forth. 
 But they were true, and would have remained so but for the 
 perverse alteration, at that moment, of the principles of our 
 national policy. " All innovation," Lord Bacon says, " is 
 with injury j" and he must be blind, indeed, that does nor
 
 see the injury this has occasioned ; but, by a strange fatality, 
 which not unfrequently occurs in the history of human affairs, 
 the suffering has fallen upon the guiltless, while many of 
 those who were accessary to the change have largely bene- 
 fited by it. 
 
 Let us, therefore, now turn to the present condition of 
 things amongst us. What now is the situation of the country ? 
 A retrogression in three or four short years, since the new 
 theory has been in operation, of the most alarming nature, in 
 whatever point of view it is considered. What is the great 
 interest, which the place, in this heretofore happy empire, 
 that is now prospering ? Where is it that general distress is 
 not now experienced, and impending ruin dreaded ? What is 
 the pursuit which is profitable to the employer, or which sus- 
 tains in comfort the employed ? \Vho shall say whether that 
 mass of bodily suffering which the almost starving operatives 
 now endure, or the mental and concealed anguish which 
 many of their former employers experience, is the most 
 heavy and heart-rending ! 
 
 And first, if we turn our eyes to the agriculturists, who, 
 if calculated as Adam Smith intimates, in reference to the 
 employments solely dependent upon them, which in our 
 census are placed in another class, will amount, as I have 
 proved elsewhere, to two-thirds of the industrious part of the 
 community, I say, turning to the agricultural operatives, 
 what is their condition ? The farmers of the kingdom are on 
 the verge of ruin ; many of them are already inextricably 
 engulfed; poverty and distress pursue, and have already 
 reached them. The labourers, in entire counties together, 
 are in the deepest distress, and are almost universally pauper- 
 ised ; and their condition has had its full share in reducing 
 the manufacturing operatives to a like, or even a worse, situ- 
 ation. With tens of millions of acres of land wholly uncul- 
 tivated, millions of which are amongst the richest soils in the
 
 8 
 
 world,* with millions more, especially in Ireland, not half 
 laboured; and with an incredible and increasing number of 
 hands out of employment, and whom we must sustain, though 
 we wholly lose their labour, things have been at length so 
 happily managed, that we habitually employ the labourers of 
 distant countries, while ours are idle ; call their fields into 
 cultivation while we neglect our own; furnish with capital 
 foreign rivals in other branches of industry which they will 
 assuredly employ against us, while \ve voluntarily diminish 
 the national resources ; and still our population is inade- 
 quately, and, relatively speaking, dearly fed. But, it appears, 
 we are not to pause even here; the economists recommend 
 perseverance in this policy, and its still wider application. 
 They deliberately advise the desertion or abandonment of 
 agriculture, to the extent of putting three-sixths of our soil 
 out of cultivation. Whither, then, must the dispossessed 
 millions of wretched fugitives resort ? To the manufacturing 
 districts, certainly. They must become the rivals of the pre- 
 sent operatives there, instead of remaining their steadiest 
 customers, and that at a time when the goods already fabri- 
 cated are so immense in quantity as to inundate the world, 
 and so low in price as to starve the manufacturers. Political 
 economists, I am well aware, have an answer for all this ; it 
 consists of a future promise; but the people of England have 
 been long amused by promises from the same quarter, and 
 
 * General Statement of the Cultivated, Uncultivated, and Unprofitable Land 
 of the United Kingdom, from the Third Emigration Report, p. 361. 
 Uncultivated,' 
 
 Cultivated. 
 
 capable of 
 Improvement. 
 
 Totals 46,522, 970 1 15,000,000 
 
 Unprofitable. 
 
 15,871,463 j 77,394,433 
 
 We add this note, as the fact has been questioned by The Times newspaper, 
 which asks with reference to the assertion in the text, " Is this true ? Is not 
 its fallacy quite frightful V As to the quality of much of this uncultivated 
 land, especially in Ireland, see Arthur Young's Tour.
 
 9 
 
 have been cruelly deceived j and, moreover, they have been 
 reduced to such a condition by this miserable mismanage- 
 ment, that they can no longer wait the fulfilment of the pro- 
 mises in question, were they as undeniably true as they are 
 manifestly false. They cannot subsist upon remote and un- 
 certain contingencies. By a better policy than that now 
 pursued, this country might furnish an abundant supply of 
 food at a relatively cheaper price, and still have " enough 
 and to spare," to the evident comfort and advantage of the 
 entire community, and especially of the manufacturing part 
 of it. 
 
 Turning, then, to the manufacturing interests, we find that, 
 respecting these, the most disheartening and prejudicial sys- 
 tem has been adopted. We have legalized the constant intro- 
 duction, under certain duties, of articles of foreign industry, 
 which have, in many branches of business, necessarily inter- 
 fered with home labour, and greatly diminished its recom- 
 pense 5 and we have done this without even attempting to ob- 
 tain any countervailing advantages in behalf of our own opera- 
 tives. Our silk-manufacturers, our shoemakers, our glovers, 
 and very many others engaged in still more operose and pro- 
 fitable branches of employment, comprehending, in the whole, 
 a great multitude of our industrious countrymen, have been 
 subjected to the distressing rivalry of foreigners. That this 
 has lessened the demand for home labour there can be little 
 doubt ; none whatever that it has greatly diminished its 
 wages ; indeed, I myself have heard those who were mainly 
 instrumental in introducing the change, exult in the vastly 
 greater cheapness of the goods, when fabricated, which that 
 change has occasioned. I heard the exultation at the time 
 with sorrow ; I heard it with shame ; when I recollected that 
 those who uttered it made no lessening demands upon the 
 public purse, which has still to be replenished in their behalf 
 by the harder efforts of a suffering people. But the exulta-
 
 10 
 
 tion, after all, was natural ; their interests are adverse ; as are 
 those of a body unhappily too numerous, who are the avowed 
 and persevering enemies of a protected internal industry. As 
 to the shipping interests, to which I shall allude hereafter, it 
 were superfluous to tell you that they have been similarly, and 
 even worse treated ; but to this subject I shall again recur, 
 though it is almost unnecessary so to do in the present com- 
 pany. I think with that, at least, Gentlemen, you are as well 
 acquainted as are the theorists. 
 
 One thing has often struck me as to the policy of our pro- 
 jectors, namely, the address with which they manage to set 
 the various interests of the country against- each other ; ma- 
 naging the successive depressions of each by appealing to the 
 selfish feelings of the rest. Thus, I think, I well remember a 
 certain individual (to whom, however, I have never once be- 
 fore alluded personally, notwithstanding the attempted wit 
 that has been so misapplied on that supposition), I say. 1 
 think I remember him holding forth to the Liverpool ship- 
 owners, that they might probably be compensated for the 
 loss of their protection by a similar withdrawal of that of the 
 agriculturists j the granary of the empire might, partially at 
 least, be placed, it was hoped, abroad ; and then the ship- 
 owners would, of course, share in transporting hither the con- 
 stant supplies, (little chance for this, however, I ween, under 
 the reciprocity system !) but both shipowners and agricul- 
 turists were to get other commodities cheaper by the free- 
 trade system ; silks, for instance ; and the silk manufacturer, 
 in his turn, was to be propitiated by the sacrifice of the 
 throwster, &c. The object of these changes was, all the 
 while, low prices (otherwise we pay little compliment to the 
 sagacity of their promoters) ; and, after all, a more insane 
 attempt than to effectuate that, could never have entered 
 into the head of man, when it is considered that we 
 have a fixed incumbrance or debt, to a vast amount, on
 
 11 
 
 which the cheapening of the value of property and of labour 
 in the country which has to sustain it, operates as an enor- 
 mous augmentation. The fundholders, the jobbers, the 
 brokers of the community, may and do feel the advantages of 
 these changes ; some of these dictate the carrying them still 
 further into effect; but it will be well for them, even with a 
 view to their own permanent interests, to pause, or they will 
 find the mischief they meditate " for others, will fall upon 
 their own pate." Eight hundred millions of debt, and cheap 
 prices, are not convertible terms, no more than are foreign 
 competition and British comfort. Seen in the light of true 
 political philosophy, all the different branches of industry in 
 a community are united in the bonds of mutual interest as 
 well as amity ; and, if one be weaker than the rest, the others 
 are willing to extend to it a helping hand ; but the new sys- 
 tem sees things in a different light ; " Buy where you can buy 
 cheapest " is the motto, though it is one which would wholly 
 divest us of all our local duties and attachments, and even o^ 
 patriotism itself. Hence those engaged in various pursuits 
 which can never be wholly dissevered, are taught to eye each 
 other with feelings of jealous hostility; they must still cling 
 together, indeed, but it must be with the desperation of 
 drowning men, who drag each other down to mutual destruc- 
 tion. 
 
 These, Gentlemen, are my general views on the subject ; 
 general, I may call them, for they embrace the interests and 
 pursuits of every industrious class amongst us, including 
 even the very humblest of them ; and I rejoice to say, they 
 are becoming universal among the operatives. The noble 
 English maxim, " Live and let live," is reviving. Whether it 
 regards the labourer at the plough, or the manufacturer at his 
 loom, I have always felt, what I have somewhere expressed, 
 
 " Let those that till, and those that weave, 
 Still by their honest labours live."
 
 12 
 
 And I shall never exchange this feeling for the dry and un- 
 feeling dogmas of political economy. 
 
 But is the country in the distressed state in which it 
 is now represented to be ? It is ! though almost to the 
 present moment it has been insultingly denied. And were I 
 to become a political tourist in order to ascertain the fact, I 
 would seek it amongst the many. I should not fix my views 
 on the mere surface, or rather summits, of society ; these 
 may still glow with the gleam of setting prosperity, which, 
 like the luminary from whence I take my illustration, casts a 
 richer ray, the lower it is on its decline ; while its warm and 
 cheering beams, withdrawn from beneath, have left the nar- 
 row, humble vale of poverty in darkness and destitution. I 
 say, I would not collect my information 
 
 " Where Luxury 
 
 In palaces lies straining her low thought 
 To form unreal wants ;" 
 
 nor from " flatterers at feasts ; " from the discussions of eco- 
 nomists, at the boards of our merchant princes, groaning with 
 delicious viands, and sparkling wines of every vintage ; but 
 rather from the father of the cottage, who sits, idle, and dis- 
 tressed, brooding over the fate of those from whom his eyes 
 are averted, his suffering family, but over whom his heart is 
 yearning and breaking ! I would not seek it in the dazzling 
 drawing-room, full of curious and costly foreign decorations, 
 where the lady's splendid robe, which sweeps over the Turkey 
 carpet, is the glowing labour of the Lyonese loom ; and the 
 person, even to the hand and the foot, adorned with the pro- 
 ducts of other than English industry. No ! I would rather 
 read it in the condition of that poor homeless being, of the 
 same sex, shivering in the portico below; whom the intro- 
 duction of those very luxuries has perhaps deprived of her 
 honest employment, and driven to seek, in the wages of 
 prostitution, the preservation of a life worse than death it-
 
 13 
 
 self. I would not take my ideas of the principle and progress 
 of the system from the circles of affluence, or the vortex of 
 fashion, but from the cellar or the garret of the distressed 
 manufacturer, or rather from the workhouse, the jail, and the 
 dungeon, which, as Lord Hale says, extreme poverty and 
 idleness crowd with their wretched victims. As to myself, 
 I had to present a petition from one of the most populous 
 hundreds of the county of Lancaster, and 1 learned, on the un- 
 impeachable authority of the highly respectable gentlemen 
 through whom it was handed to me, that thousands of the 
 people are subsisting on fifteen-pence a-head per week, and 
 even that pittance is earned by extreme and long-protracted 
 labour. Such was the state of the cotton manufacture ; a 
 report I have just received asserts the same melancholy fact 
 regarding thousands in the neighbourhood of Huddersfield, 
 employed in certain branches of the woollen trade. All in- 
 terests alike are suffering. 
 
 Till very lately, however, the prevalence of general distress 
 was insultingly and mendaciously denied by many of our 
 public oracles. That impudent falsehood will now, however, 
 avail no longer. Patient as the people of England usually 
 are under their sufferings and privations, they are now, I 
 deeply regret to observe, beginning to be turbulent. When 
 the weavers of Spitalfields were refractory, these oracles 
 coolly recommended, not their redress, but their desertion ! 
 The business was to be removed, it was said, to distant 
 parts. Well ! Is Congleton at this moment any better off? 
 Has Macclesfield been less insurrectionary ? Is Coventry 
 more quiet ? Look at Rochdale, at Manchester, at Barns- 
 ley ; what is the state and condition of those places ? Gen-, 
 tlemen, I have alluded to the turbulence of the people, but 
 not in approval of it. Would to God my voice could reach 
 them and might be listened to ! I would most earnestly exhort
 
 14 
 
 to patience, and peace, and obedience to the laws : but I 
 would not advise them to desist from remonstrating concern- 
 ing their grievances. If the ministers could be bullied out 
 of their principles, as some of them professed to have been, 
 I should hope they might be importuned out of their policy ; 
 though I am fully aware that, to the scandal of human nature, 
 whims are much more tenaciously maintained than principles ; 
 and such, perhaps, still think, that agitators for " emancipa- 
 tion " ought to be listened to ; agitators for " bread " put 
 down ! 
 
 But now that the general distress can be no longer denied, 
 still this darling theory is to be defended, by attributing our 
 sufferings to other causes : and it must be confessed that they 
 give us abundance of choice. Sometimes it has been laid to 
 the charge of stagnation, more frequently to over-production ; 
 now the bankers are in fault, now the traders; our agricul- 
 turists have produced too much; or they have produced too 
 little. We have had a surplus of capital, we have had a 
 want of it; but now it seems that an indifferent harvest or two 
 is the most convenient apology for our distresses ; which dis- 
 tresses, however, commenced before the harvests were defi- 
 cient ; but had it been otherwise, variations in our seasons 
 always have existed, and ever will recur, as certainly, though 
 perhaps not so regularly, as the cycles of the planetary system. 
 And for these, as they must always be expected, a wise and 
 paternal government will never be unprepared. In a word, the 
 people of England, it has long appeared too plainly, cannot 
 trade to the satisfaction of their rulers ; nor does Providence 
 appear to please these rulers any better. Two facts, however, 
 are certain; first, that the distress is great; and, secondly, that 
 its date is coincident with that of the operation of the new 
 theory ; witness the statistics of misfortune, of poverty, of crime, 
 in the instant and vast increase of bankruptcies, the multipli-
 
 15 
 
 cation of criminal committals, the rise in the poor-rates, all 
 taking their date from the identical period in question.* Can 
 events of so striking and tremendous a character exist without 
 a cause, and one adequate to their production ? It were absurd 
 to suppose it. One of the most important duties of the go- 
 vernment is, therefore, to search it out, and, instead of with- 
 standing those public inquiries, for which the people have so 
 
 * We quote from the Mirror of Parliament a passage in a speech of Mr. 
 Sadler's ia the debate on the Silk Trade Bill, which gives the documents to 
 which he alludes : " In the mean time, what has it (the free-trade sys- 
 tem) done for the people ? Have their comforts increased ? Look at the 
 consumption of that article, which is a fairer criterion of the comforts of 
 the British people, I think, 'than the consumption of Russian tallow, malt 
 brewed into beer. Has that kept pace, not merely with the increased 
 labour which it ought to cherish and sustain, but even with the increased 
 population of England ? It has done far otherwise. But, Sir, an appeal 
 to the misery of the people, rather than to their comforts, is far more ap- 
 propriate on this occasion. How then has your new theory particularly 
 operated upon the trading capitalists of the country ? Let us turn, iu 
 proof of this, to the bankrupt list. The number of commissions signed 
 three years before, and three years subsequently, to the full operation of 
 this system, stands thus : From October 1, 1822, to October 1, 1825, the 
 annual number averaged 1355 ; from October 1, 1825, to October 1, 1828, 
 2109 ! Let us now turn to its effects on the operatives. Their distress may 
 be most fairly indicated, I think, by the annual statistics of pauperism. 
 Taking, then, the returns, which are made up to the 28th of March, the 
 termination of the ecclesiastical year, and therefore belonging, in fact, 
 more properly to the preceding one, these, for a few years, are the results ; 
 
 1822 .. 5,773,096 
 
 1823.. 5,736,898 
 
 1824 .. 5,734,216 
 
 1825 .. 5,928,501 
 
 making an average of 5,793,177. But, Sir, when the free-trade system, 
 which was to do such wonders for the wealthy, and dispense such increas- 
 ing comforts to the poor, was in operation, this was the effect : 
 
 1826 .. 6,441,088 
 
 1827 . . 6,298,000 
 
 Making an increase in the two averages of 576, 867. What will the next 
 returns amount to ? I have already ascertained that they have greatly 
 increased. Lord Hale has said, that national want is always indicated by 
 national crime. What then say the criminal reports ? Do they corrobo- 
 rate the preceding views or otherwise? Let this melancholy branch of 
 our national statistics also speak for itself. Commencing, Sir, when the 
 natiou was settled dowu into habits of peace, namely, from about 1817,
 
 16 
 
 long and so loudly called, to solicit, rather than reject, their 
 evidence and information. 
 
 It appears to me, that we can best approach this inquiry by 
 a series of negatives, And first, it is not Providence that is 
 chargeable with the miseries of the people ; On the con- 
 trary, never was there a country so endowed with whatever 
 
 and continuing to 1823, when the commercial policy of the country was 
 still undisturbed, there were in annual committal* in England and Wales 
 
 1817 . 13,932 
 
 1818 . 13,567 
 
 1819 . 14,254 
 
 1820 . 13,710 
 
 1821 . 13,115 
 
 1822 . 12,241 
 
 1823 . 12,263 
 
 exhibiting not much variation, but one of a most pleasing character, for 
 there was a decided diminution. In the year 1824, when the new system 
 was projected, but put only into limited operation, the committals advanced 
 at once from 
 
 1823 . 12,263 to 
 
 1S24 . 13,698 
 nearly twelve per centum ; in 
 
 1825 . 14,437, 
 
 nearly 18 per centum ; in 1826, the year when its new regulations, which 
 were to cover us with so much prosperity and happiness, and which some 
 would fain persuade us they have done, the number rose at once to 16,164, 
 nearly 32 per cent, advance upon that of 1823, only three years before ; 
 1827 to 17,921, above 46 per cent.; in 
 182S to 16,564, 35 per cent. ! 
 
 And this portentous advance in crime has taken place, notw ithstanding all 
 our boasted improvements in the jurisprudence of the country, which have 
 been made the ground of so much eulogy ; notwithstanding our police 
 bills, our tread- mills, and I know not what besides. If we take the 
 average of the three years already alluded to, before the system 
 commenced, and that of the three years during which it has operated, 
 leaving out the two of transition, then the former number is 12,539, the 
 latter 16,883, an increase of more than one third ! an advance so vast 
 and appalling, as to he attributable to any thing rather than accident, and 
 which is so exactly coincident in dates with the preceding documents, as 
 plainly to fix itself upon the absurd, cruel, and ruinous policy, then unfor- 
 tunately adopted. But I will dwell no longer upon these par titular proofs. 
 The ' free-trade ' system, as it regards the country at large, is thus ac- 
 companied by increasing labour, increasing poverty, increasing suffering, 
 increasing crime."
 
 17 
 
 could administer to its comforts, 'promote its prosperity, or 
 secure its greatness. All the real elements of wealth are 
 contained within our shores ; all the accidents which could 
 favour their developement are also ours. We have long en- 
 joyed a profound and uninterrupted peace. We have a 
 country, unrivalled in fertility and ample in extent, only par- 
 tially cultivated, and capable of sustaining, as future genera- 
 tions will prove, a vast accession of inhabitants in far greater 
 plenty than our present population enjoys. Beneath us are 
 minerals of the most valuable kind. Without, our territories 
 encircle the earth, accumulating on our shores the products 
 of all regions, and opening a door of access to all countries. 
 We have a climate unrivalled in salubrity, and a position 
 among the nations the most fortunate ; surrounded by the 
 ocean, which is not only the very element of British safety 
 and glory, but an inexhaustible mine of wealth. Such, with- 
 out an hyperbole, is the condition in which Providence has 
 placed us; such the bounties the Deity has poured upon us. 
 The sacred and figurative language of the East, which now 
 occurs to me, might be applied to England, as emphatically 
 as to an equally distinguished and unthankful country of old, 
 " He has placed our vineyard on a very fruitful hill, he 
 has fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and built a 
 tower in the midst of it, and planted it with the choicest 
 vine." And it may still be asked as it was of old, " What 
 could be done more to his vineyard than he has done in it?" 
 I fear I may continue the citation with equal truth, " He 
 looked for judgment, but, behold, oppression; for righteous- 
 ness, but, behold, a cry !" But I defy any man to answer 
 the solemn question as it respects England, so as to lay in 
 any measure the misery of this people at the door of eternal 
 Providence. 
 
 Nor, secondly, is it the character or conduct of the inha- 
 bitants to which the present distress of the country is attri-
 
 18 
 
 butable. On the contrary, there is not a population upon 
 earth more prone to labour, more active, enterprising, or in- 
 telligent, in their exertions ; more persevering in their pur- 
 suits ; none who have so great an abundance of capital, that 
 idol of the present system, by which, according to its doc- 
 trine, our national advantages can alone be developed or dis- 
 tributed. Whoever, therefore, or whatever has occasioned 
 the existing distress, the people are guiltless. 
 
 Nor is it the number of our countrymen which has produced 
 it. Fashionable as is this diabolical doctrine, for diabolical 
 it is, inasmuch as it begins by affronting God, and issues in 
 injuring man; it is, like many other fashionable notions, 
 utterly false. It is the prerogative of God, saving the pre- 
 sence of our political economists, to decide this question ; 
 and he has decided it, in the superabundance of the means 
 of human subsistence, which, as a nation, he has lavished 
 upon us, placed within our reach, and solicited us to accept. 
 Whether in reference to the resources of the country, or its 
 means of profitable employment, if properly developed, there 
 is not a sinew or an arm too many in the empire, no nor else- 
 where, any more than there is a superfluous spirit called into 
 the realms of immortality by the Eternal God ! Short 
 indeed, and infernal, would be the remedy, were this revolting 
 notion true. Deportation of every kind, murder in all its 
 forms, indirect or otherwise, would be obvious and general 
 benefits. Still, however, the promulgators of this notion, 
 with the habitual selfishness of the system, pronouncing upon 
 the redundancy of human being, invariably except themselves. 
 The Christian advocates of this doctrine are not its personal 
 converts ; whether as it respects life, or its propensities and 
 feelings, they make no personal sacrifices. They are no Cur- 
 tiuses, but I see your indignation at the very mention of 
 these notions ; and, rather than on the dogmas of the poli- 
 tical economists, we will still rest, as to this matter, upon the
 
 19 
 
 assurances of Him who " giveth food to all flesh ; for his 
 mercy endureth for ever." 
 
 In whatever point of view, therefore, we regard this great 
 nation, we may assert, that its natural state is one of pros- 
 perity and happiness. Such is the condition which it ought 
 to enjoy. And the minister to whom, in effect, the country 
 commits the charge of seeing that the public " receive no 
 injury," ought to render a reason for its condition if it be 
 otherwise. 
 
 What, then, are the real causes of the general depression, 
 under which every interest at present groans ? The answer 
 to this question, were I to discuss it fully, and according to 
 my own views of the subject, would commit me into too wide 
 a field for the present occasion. Some of the more latent, 
 but not the less operative, of these, I shall not now touch 
 upon, but confine myself principally to the topics which are 
 more generally argued in relation to this subject, and to these 
 I shall address myself very shortly. 
 
 And first, I consider the policy of the Government, in re- 
 ference to the circulating medium, to have been most per- 
 nicious; and on this point I cannot but remark two things, 
 the one is. that their dpctrine, upon this subject, appears to 
 me to be most erroneous or confused; the other, that, had it 
 been true, it was strangely mistimed as to the period of its 
 application. What is it for which a circulating medium, of 
 whatever denomination, is alone wanted ? It is to facilitate 
 the interchange of the products of human industry ; and 
 whatever does this, and continues to do it effectually, is, to 
 all intents and purposes, " sound," to adopt the cant term of 
 the day. To use a familiar illustration, if a farmer and a 
 manufacturer, for instance, wish to barter a calf and a coat, 
 I can see no imaginable difference in the result, whether they 
 do this in kind, or by silver, or gold, or copper, or promissory 
 notes of a large or small denomination, the purpose is ac- 
 
 c
 
 20 
 
 complished, and the difference is, that it is often accom- 
 plished the more conveniently, especially in distant transac- 
 tions, by the latter than the former methods; and no man 
 can deny that such notes, had the Ministry wished to reform, 
 instead of destroying the system, might have been rendered 
 as secure as gold, which, with all its boasted superiority, is 
 itself only the sign, and not the element, of the wealth it 
 assists to interchange. Credit also, as an appendage to the 
 paper system, was a great, and I believe the greatest, instru- 
 ment, in effectuating the interchange of the products of 
 human industry ; but this also our present political econo- 
 mists have discountenanced, to the visible detriment of the 
 less wealthy classes of society, whose interests ought prefer- 
 ably to have been contemplated. We see the consequences 
 in the universal stagnation and distress which have ensued. 
 
 Next, in adverting to the period when the small notes 
 have been withdrawn, I will first premise, that the whole of 
 the circulating medium of a country, of whatever denomina- 
 tion or amount, represents that part of the property of that 
 country which is in transitu, and no more. In proportion, 
 therefore, to the plenty or the paucity of that medium, the 
 nominal value of that property is high or low ; and as the 
 value of all the property of a country is measured and deter- 
 mined by the worth of that part of it which is upon sale, ac- 
 cording to the well-known axiom of Hudibras, 
 
 r The value of a thins 
 
 Is just as much as it will bring ; " 
 
 so the circulating medium measures the value of all the pro- 
 perty of the community whatsoever, whether on sale or 
 otherwise; and its total monetary value is high or low ac- 
 cording as that medium is plentiful or the reverse. Now, in 
 a country where there are no fixed money debts or incum- 
 brances, public or private, any variation in the amount of 
 the circulating medium would be immaterial : the relative
 
 21 
 
 values of all properties would still be preserved in every such 
 case. But in this country, the contrary was unhappily the 
 fact ; the private money engagements were immense, the 
 public debt enormous ; very much of both had been con- 
 tracted under the paper system; so that the withdrawal of 
 this, especially of that part of it in general circulation, pro- 
 portionably increased the value and weight of those incum- 
 bianccs, and at the same time diminished the value of the 
 property on which they rested, and the possibility of dis- 
 charging them. All the values of the country, together with 
 its debts, whether public or private, its taxes and burdens of 
 every kind, bad been accurately adjusted to the previous sys- 
 tem ; but by this operation, if I may make use of a mathenia- 
 tical illustration strictly apposite, the fulcrum of the balance 
 was removed, so as to increase, in effect, the weight imposed 
 upon us, and to lessen the means of sustaining it. Meantime, 
 it is not attempted to be denied but that the fundholder, the 
 jobber, the nominal capitalist, and all pensioners and place- 
 men of whatever kind, were benefited by this operation j but 
 on the rest of the community, namely, the industrious part 
 of it, it committed as direct a spoliation as was ever attempt- 
 ed. The Government borrowed in paper, and, if they had 
 continued to pay in it, their creditors would still have 
 realised immense advantages by their transactions ; but to 
 borrow in paper, and pay in gold, to benefit so vastly the 
 non-productive at the expense of the productive classes, 
 already so depressed, was monstrous. While on the subject 
 of the circulating medium, I will only add, that one piece of 
 forgetful ness, or worse than forgetful ness, has often struck 
 me in contemplating this return of cash payments, thus 
 forced upon the country ; and it is this, that its proposers 
 never submitted a measure for a reduction, to the like extent, 
 in the public salaries and pensions of the empire, most of 
 which had been successively adjusted to the paper medium 
 
 c 2
 
 22 
 
 by large and direct augmentations. It is never too late to 
 be honest, and perhaps the thing may yet be proposed by the 
 ministerial advocates of the cash system. 
 
 If, however, it was determined to return to cash payments, 
 in preference to rendering the paper ones secure and 
 " sound," then, while the money values of all the property 
 in the country were regulated by the paper currency, and 
 consequently high, an effort ought to have been made, by 
 levying annual instalments on all property, including, of 
 course, funded and personal property, in order to have paid 
 off a proportion of the national debt, which would then have 
 been a comparatively easy and effective operation : a measure 
 which I thought at the time ought to have been adopted, 
 instead of what is called Mr. Peel's Bill, the effects of which, 
 in common with others, I then anticipated. Under the pre- 
 sent system, however, the difficulty of such an effort would 
 be increased tenfold, if not rendered totally impracticable. 
 But our country is governed by expedients 1 
 
 Another cause of the present and long-continued depres- 
 sion of the commerce and manufactures of the country, I 
 have already alluded to (and this, also, is attributable to the 
 same school of economists, the bane of the country), I mean 
 the free-trade system, as it is miscalled ; a perfect misnomer, 
 in my humble opinion, and as great and grievous a practical 
 fallacy as ever existed, inasmuch as it has given no " free- 
 dom" to British industry, which, indeed, it has crippled 5 
 but has licensed foreigners to make "free" with your home 
 markets, a privilege which threatens to "free" you from se- 
 veral important branches of industry altogether. Circum- 
 stanced as this country is, having to sustain a so much hea- 
 vier load of taxation, and paying dearer for the necessaries 
 of existence, and subsisting its operatives, at least till this 
 fatal alteration, better than any other, it must be obvious that 
 in all these branches of industry, where we have no counter-
 
 23 
 
 vailing advantages, either from the possession and retention of 
 the raw material, better machines, or superior skill, foreign- 
 ers must be able to undersell us, and consequently to deprive 
 many of our home operatives of their work and of their bread. 
 The branches so circumstanced are numerous and important. 
 It is true that there is, for the present, a protecting duty, as it 
 is called, imposed upon some of their articles, miscalculated, 
 as I presume to think, if it be meant as such ; while the cir- 
 cumstance of legalizing them at all, has given a greatly in- 
 creased facility to smuggling; which it was promised at the 
 time, in ignorance or in worse than ignorance, that it would put 
 down, and which has overwhelmed, in many instances, the 
 home market with foreign goods. The manufacturers sought 
 relief, if not in prohibition^ yet in a higher protection. The 
 government refused them a committee, and lowered the duty, 
 in order that the custom-house instead of the smuggler might 
 become their great rival : as if that could serve, or do other- 
 wise than still more deeply injure them ! Prohibition was 
 peremptorily refused, and it was argued that no higher a duty 
 could be obtained than that to which it is now reduced. 
 Absurd ! When the revenue is at stake, see the amount that 
 can then be rigorously exacted: 100 per cent, upon teas, 
 500 per cent., perhaps, upon brandies, 1000 per cent, upon 
 tobacco ; while the immense amounts, so collected, are a suf- 
 ficient proof how small a proportion of such taxes can be 
 evaded. But if it be true that you cannot exact more than 
 25 per cent, duty on silks, &c., without returning to the pro- 
 hibitory system, then, in spite of the political economists, 
 prohibit ! Let Parliament preserve the field of British la- 
 bour as strictly as their laws do the manors of the country, 
 and we will then be content. I> not the object as impor- 
 tant ? If you cannot otherwise effect this necessary purpose, 
 I repeat, prohibit ! I repeat it in the words of Bacon, con- 
 cerning foreign manufactures, such being superfluities, that
 
 24 
 
 they ought to be prohibited ; for that, says he, will either 
 gain the manufacture, or banish the superfluity. 
 
 I shall not now pause to discuss whether a principle of 
 free trade, properly so called, and not what the political 
 economists would fain have us to understand by the term, if 
 originally introduced, might not have been beneficial, nor 
 consider whether, under such circumstances, it might or 
 might not be rendered so at present ; seeing that there is not 
 the least disposition whatsoever, in any country with which 
 we are connected, to act upon such a principle generally. 
 And without this mutual understanding, it is evident we should 
 suffer ; for I shall not waste a moment of your time by com- 
 bating that ridiculous dogma of the theorists, which instructs 
 us to believe that a nation, as well as an individual, cannot 
 dissipate its capital, or the accumulated stores of former 
 days, by improvident transactions with others. But I will 
 proceed to state, that supposing it could be made out most 
 clearly, that particular branches of business, and some of 
 them most important ones, might, under certain circum- 
 stances, be abandoned with advantage to the community, 
 still to tread down interests which have been planted for 
 ages amongst us, and fostered with the most anxious care, 
 to the destruction of the capital employed in them, and to 
 the immediate loss of labour as it respects the artisans, with- 
 out any hint at the least compensation, would be as direct 
 an act of spoliation as any of those charged upon the revolu- 
 tionists of France during the wildest period of their sway, 
 and to whose school the proposition in question, together 
 with many others which political economy has eagerly 
 adopted, may be distinctly traced. But under no circum- 
 stances whatever, Gentlemen, can your interests be those 
 which England can willingly consent to resign, if she con- 
 templates the preservation of that naval supremacy to which 
 her safety and glory have hitherto been confided.
 
 25 
 
 But in defence of this miscalled free-trade system, it is 
 said that it has not injured the home manufactures, even in 
 the particular branches thus interfered with ; and this is at- 
 tempted to be proved by the increased quantity of the raw 
 material consumed at home since the system commenced. 
 Admitting the fact stated, which I yet doubt, as it is often 
 stated ; still does this demonstrate the prosperity which it is 
 advanced to prove ? Tell me not about the quantity of silk, 
 for instance, which is now introduced, being greater by 
 millions of pounds weight per annum ; but answer me whe- 
 ther, for the additional labour thus imposed, a corresponding 
 increase in the gross amount of wages for making it up has 
 taken place ; nay, whether for the increased work, even equal 
 wages have been obtained ? The reverse is the melancholy 
 fact, in that and all the other manufactures so interfered 
 with. And this great diminution in wages demands an in- 
 crease of labour for the purpose of obtaining even a scantier 
 subsistence ; hence the supply of goods is necessarily in- 
 creased ; and mark the double and disingenuous use the eco- 
 nomists make of this ! They attribute the distresses they 
 can no longer deny, to over-production ; and still this over- 
 production they use as a proof of prosperity ! I will only 
 add, that the statesmen, who can felicitate themselves or the 
 country on this cheapening and increase of human labour 
 amongst us, would have been fit political economists for a 
 celebrated tyrant of old, Pharaoh, who, while he withheld 
 the allowances, increased the tasks of an oppressed people. 
 The people of England produce enough, labour sufficiently; 
 who doubts it ? But alas, " they spend their strength for 
 that which is not bread, and their labour for that which sa- 
 tisfieth not !" In the eyes of our calculators, the temple of 
 British prosperity may indeed appear vast in its proportions, 
 magnificent in its ornaments, and rich in its several parts; 
 it may be filled with the votaries of wealth, and echo with
 
 26 
 
 the sounds of mirth and mutual congratulation ; but let 
 them east their eyes to its foundations ; there are seen its 
 secret supporters, the living Caryatides of the system, a miser- 
 able multitude of both sexes and of all ages, from over-la- 
 boured and withering infancy to decrepit age, who are bowed 
 to the dust by the load of labour imposed upon them, and 
 whose health, and morals, and life itself, are sacrificed to the 
 mammon of political economy, capital. 
 
 But it is now said, in answer to the preceding argument, 
 and in defence of free-trade, and with an air of triumph ; (for 
 such is the ignorance of these reasoners) that all branches of 
 manufactures, as well as those immediately interfered with, are 
 alike plunged into distress, consequently this system cannot 
 have been injurious to any. Since the existence of the suffer- 
 ing can no longer be denied, their favourite theory is to be 
 saved by admitting its universality ! Now it appears to me, 
 that of all the absurdities political economy has yet put forth, 
 and they have been sufficiently numerous and glaring, this is 
 the greatest ; it is one of which the lowest mechanic would 
 feel ashamed. Supposing that, previously to this fatal inroad 
 upon our home markets in some important branches of 
 British industry, taking the whole together the demand 
 and supply were accurately balanced ; is it not obvious that 
 subsequent surcharge of any particular branch, must necessarily 
 affect the whole? Those whose labour is supplanted in one pur- 
 suit, must resort to another, overcharging that also ; injuring 
 therefore, most certainly, the entire market of labour. The 
 man, therefore, who proposes to supplant a certain number of 
 silk-looms by foreign fabrics, will also affect, in reality, so 
 many cotton ones, and these again will interfere with linen 
 operatives, and so through every branch of national labour. 
 The marvel is, that so plain a position could be overlooked , 
 one which must be true any where, excepting in such a coun- 
 try as India, where the industrious classes are separated into
 
 27 
 
 castes, and rigidly reject all change of employment under any 
 circumstance. But in England, where the introduction 
 of machinery has superseded in so great a degree manual 
 ingenuity, the equipoise of labour is speedily adjusted and 
 preserved, however it may be disturbed. Interfere by your 
 new system, then, with the labour of nearly a million of hands, 
 and in their distress the rest will assuredly partake ; they 
 will suffer not a merely sympathetic but a real, not a re- 
 mote but an instantaneous, injury. 
 
 Many other observations on the new doctrines might be 
 added, but I shall not further enlarge. Their object seems 
 to be, to serve the mere capitalists, the jobbers, the commission 
 brokers, the foreign agents ; those of whom Locke has truly 
 said, that they prosper and grow rich by the very means 
 which impoverish the rest of the community. To instance 
 only one of these, Absenteeism, this, it is now taught, 
 is no injury to a country; a position, the absurdity of which can 
 only be equalled by its perniciousness. The absentees 
 of England and Ireland are the enemies of their country, 
 depriving tens of thousands of their daily labour and bread, 
 and deeply injuring hundreds of thousands more. I think, 
 with Adam Smith, that such individuals are fair objects of 
 exclusive taxation, avoiding as they do all the burdens of the 
 country from which they derive their all, and vacating all 
 their duties, whether those of patriotism or of humanity. If 
 they remain dead to every worthier motive, I would appeal 
 to something more on a level with their principles and feel- 
 ings ; I would touch, and deeply, their interests. 
 
 But, Gentlemen, it will be naturally expected that I should, 
 on this occasion, advert somewhat particularly to the interests 
 of shipping, as more peculiarly affecting this respectable 
 town and one of those to which you pointedly alluded in 
 the written invitation with which you have honoured me. And 
 first, I may say, that, without an appeal to any documents
 
 28 
 
 whatever, I am certain, that to allow full scope to the reci- 
 procity system, in regard to shipping, cannot but be fatal to 
 its prosperity. When I consider that between many of the 
 ports of England and of the Continent, there are but a few 
 days', I might say, in some instances, a few hours' sail; and 
 when our competitors in the latter can build their vessels at 
 half the price you can, man them at half the wages, and 
 victual them at less than half the cost, I say, under these 
 circumstances, who does not see that the foreigner will, in this 
 competition, ultimately beat us off our own element, and, in 
 the mean time, diminish the profits and lessen the wages in 
 every branch of the pursuit ? I am aware that you are obliged 
 to employ the ships you already own, and the hands, espe- 
 cially apprentices, you are bound for the present to support, 
 and to increase the activity of that employment in order, 
 though unsuccessfully, to compensate for the diminution of 
 profit, cited, indeed, as a proof of prosperity, as it respects 
 your particular branches of business as well as those of the 
 manufacturers, by the economists. But it requires no gift of 
 prophecy to foretell ruin to that calling, whatever be its 
 nature, which no longer affords a profitable return to the 
 capital of the master, nor sufficient employment, and ade- 
 quate wages, to the workman. 
 
 How the documents are managed or made up which 
 profess to demonstrate an increase of tonnage to an enor- 
 mous amount since the period of the peace, 1 hardly know. 
 Perhaps not only the coasters, but the steam vessels of the 
 kingdom, numerous and large, and repeating their voyages 
 with such surprising frequency, may be occasionally added 
 to the amounts, swelling, therefore, the tonnage in an 
 extraordinary degree ; though it is evident that these ves- 
 sels, valuable as they are in many respects, have hardly 
 any more to do with the shipping trade, properly speaking, 
 excepting, as I have heard some assert, to injure it than so
 
 many stage-coaches : one part of their trade being the ac- 
 commodation of absentees and of Irish labourers. But from 
 one of the returns presented last session of Parliament, it 
 appears that British shipping has diminished, comparing 1828 
 with 1814, to the extent of 769 ships, 275,749 tons, and, 
 what is still more to be lamented. 23,244 men, a diminu- 
 tion of a most melancholy nature ; instead of an increase of 
 20 per cent., which the increase of the population would have 
 warranted us to expect. By other official reports, as quoted 
 by Mr. Robinson, the member for Worcester, who spoke in 
 favour of the petition from the hundred of Blackburn, which 
 I had the honour to present, it appears, that for the three 
 preceding years, ending January 1827, 1828, and 1829, the 
 number of the vessels built in those years respectively, were 
 1719, 1 140, and 1 125. Then, as to their tonnage, that exhi- 
 bited a decrease to this extent, 207,088, 163,946, and 128,752; 
 the amount of the former of the three years exceeding the lat- 
 ter by the appalling difference of above 60 percent. Thisstate- 
 ment, I am told, comports with your experience, though it 
 may be contradicted by certain documents put forth for the 
 purpose of outfacing the general distress of this important 
 branch of trade. But if, in these public reports, such enor- 
 mous discrepancies occur, is not that an imperative reason for 
 a public inquiry; which the advocates of the new system have 
 always strenuously refused ? Their conduct of itself decides 
 the question, and speaks volumes. 
 
 But, Gentlemen, I saw the other day, in a personal attack 
 upon myself, the British shipping classed amongst those in- 
 terests to which the epithet " trivial" was applied. No terms 
 which I have at command can sufficiently reprehend such an 
 assertion, either as to its falsehood or its folly. From the time 
 of our great Alfred, who was alike the founder of the British 
 constitution and of our fleet, and who so far extended his 
 patronage of it as to confer the privilege of nobility upon him
 
 30 
 
 who should cross the ocean a given number of times, even on 
 mercantile pursuits ; from the time of Alfred, I say, down to 
 a very late period, the encouragement and support of the 
 shipping of England have been made matters of supreme 
 concernment. Since its creation, however, its most effectual 
 encouragement was probably the Navigation Act, that Magna 
 Charta of English shipping, which was one of those laws that 
 Mr. Fox eulogized so highly, and the spirit and intent of 
 which Mr. Pitt supported and extended with all his influence, 
 however its letter was modified. Even Adam Smith, who 
 wrote at a period when England had hardly ceased to be an 
 exporter of the necessaries of life, and when, consequently, 
 free trade was not the proposition it now is, but the very re- 
 verse, even Adam Smith asserted the Navigation Act to be 
 dictated by " the most deliberate wisdom." That Act form- 
 ed an essential part of the naval constitution of England, if I 
 may so speak ; it was on the faith of that sacred engage- 
 ment, for sacred it had become in the sight of successive 
 generations of Englishmen, that you, Gentlemen, embarked 
 your property ; which is now much of it sacrificed and lost bv 
 as direct an act of spoliation as if the same power had seized 
 a portion of your estates, which you hold only under the same 
 sanction, that of the law. But, Gentlemen, it is not your in- 
 terests alone which have been injured, life itself is sacrificed, 
 by the inferior method of ship-building rendered necessary 
 by that competition with foreigners, which the reciprocity 
 system has introduced. Yes, Gentlemen, it is a fact, per- 
 fectly familiar to all acquainted with the subject, that the 
 deterioration which has ensued in tbis branch of national in- 
 dustry has caused, and is still causing, a lamentable waste of 
 human life. But what matters this to the economists ? 
 
 Finally, Gentlemen, in thus interfering with your interests, 
 those of the royal navy are touched: that navy, at the very 
 mention of which, he is no Briton whose heart does not glow
 
 31 
 
 with feelings of exultation, mingled however, at present, I 
 fear, with those of apprehension and regret. That navy, 
 which is the shield of England's defence, and the arm of her 
 strength ; which has preserved her in the profoundest peace, 
 when a world was leagued against her; which swept the ocean 
 of her enemies, and poured upon their remotest shores her 
 irresistible thunders: that force, without which her military 
 arm would be utterly powerless; and which has therefore a 
 share in all the laurels Britain wears, as well as those hright 
 and unfading ones which are exclusively her own, the royal 
 navy is put in jeopardy by this anti-national policy, a wors e 
 consequence even than all the personal and private injuries 
 which have been inflicted : " As defence (again to quote Adam 
 Smith) is of much more importance than opulence, the Act of 
 Navigation is (was, he must now have said) the wisest, per- 
 haps, of all the commercial regulations of England." But 
 that Act, the same school so often alluded to, have torn 
 asunder with as little ceremony as they have destroyed that 
 " Old Almanack" of 1688 the Protestant constitution of the 
 empire. 
 
 Gentlemen, I might easily enlarge upon this important 
 subject. But it is unnecessary. You, I conceive, are fully 
 competent to judge of the present state of your own busi- 
 ness, and to compare its past and present condition. This 
 place I have always understood to have been one of the most 
 noted ship-building stations in the kingdom. From Whitby, 
 the celebrated Captain Cook chose to have his vessels, in 
 which he circumnavigated the globe ; and from hence an- 
 other ornament of science, Scoresby, sailed. A wish to visit 
 so interesting a place brought me once, for a few hours, here 
 before ; but I saw it under the obsolete and rescinded system, 
 which gave protection to British bottoms ; and then the place 
 was prosperous in a high degree, and full of activity : now it 
 is evidently declining, and in decay. The difference is, in-
 
 32 
 
 deed, most striking. But in making these observations, I do 
 not sympathise with you so deeply, Gentlemen, as with those 
 who would have been better employed, and more amply paid 
 by you, had the former system been allowed to remain. The 
 ship-builders and merchants of Whitby have lived in other 
 and better times, and are, I understand, as a body, wealthy 
 in an unusual degree, and can therefore sustain these reverses, 
 or leave the business, though at great sacrifices, which sub- 
 jects them to such loss. But the workmen, what is to be- 
 come of them ? And here I will make my last allusion to 
 the new principle ; it is at the lower and industrious classes 
 that it principally takes its aim, in which the Legislature 
 has long been too much its abettor. Paley says expressly, 
 that " the care of the poor ought to be the principal object 
 of all laws, for this plain reason, that the rich are able to 
 take care of themselves ;" but were I to say that any of the 
 late regulations have been dictated by these feelings, I should 
 compliment the benevolence of their projectors at the expense 
 of their intelligence. I will compliment neither. The mo- 
 dern system, which has been insinuating itself amongst us by 
 degrees, I hold to be an attack upon the privileges of labour- 
 ing poverty throughout. In agriculture, this spirit dictates 
 what Lord Bacon calls, the engrossment of great farms ; by 
 which a hundred little cultivators must be thrown out of a 
 decent occupation, and replaced by one, if the theorists can 
 make it out that a grain more of " surplus produce," to use 
 their cant expression, can be so obtained. In manufactures, 
 it would, as the Edinburgh Encyclopedia justly expresses it, 
 " turn out of employment the entire population, if the mas- 
 ter manufacturer, by the employment of machinery, could 
 save five per cent." In commerce, it exhorts you to buy 
 where you can buy cheapest, though you leave the multitude, 
 who enable you to purchase at all, without employment, rai- 
 uient, and bread. In shipping, it allows the native mariner,
 
 33 
 
 whose life is a life of danger, and whose death is often one of 
 glory, and who may be called upon at any moment to fight 
 the hattles of his country, to be ground down or supplanted, 
 as it may happen, by the slaves of some foreign despot, who 
 perhaps victuals them upon black bread and oil. " As to cur- 
 rency," its object is to secure capital, but curtail credit, which, 
 in other terms, is but refusing to humble industry the loan of 
 the principal implement by which its future wealth might be 
 created, clipping the wings by which poverty can alone 
 hope to rise from the earth. Even in science, I am sorry to say, 
 this " infection works." If, for instance, anatomy has to be 
 promoted, but I recall the idea; here at length the poor 
 are allowed the privilege of monopolizing the market. Sub- 
 jects for the human shambles are to be supplied by the friend- 
 less poor exclusively; those legislators who have illumina- 
 tion enough to laugh at their prejudices, as they call them, 
 nevertheless refuse their own carcasses to the carving knives 
 of the dissectors. These, however, are not the most striking 
 instances which might and shall be adduced in proof that the 
 spirit of modern legislation, since we have deserted the hu- 
 mane, benevolent, aye, and politic principles of our Christian 
 forefathers, is hostile to the real interests of the working 
 classes. These are, and have long been, my settled feelings 
 and sentiments, and I utter them in no hostility, open or dis- 
 guised, against the other and higher ranks of society, whom, 
 on the contrary, I have always attempted to support, in my 
 humble sphere, in their just rights and privileges. It is to 
 secure these, as well as to serve the lower orders, that I thus 
 speak, and I shall act conformably. But the present legisla- 
 tive philosophy attempts to place the pyramid of national 
 prosperity upon its apex instead of its base ; its anxieties are 
 about the summit, when it should be attending to the founda- 
 tion. My preceding observations are not levelled at any set 
 of men in power, personally considered j on the contrary, it
 
 34 
 
 has always been my wish to support the government of the 
 country as far as I conscientiously could ; and the present 
 ministry had more especially my good wishes. I had differed 
 from their new policy, indeed, ever since they introduced it, 
 the " thunder" of the opposite party, however the ownership 
 is contended for, the lightning attending which has scorched 
 ard withered all our vital interests ; but I imagined that 
 they were supporting what I conceived were of still more im- 
 portance to the country even than its interests, namely, its 
 principles. I have found myself lamentably deceived. I can- 
 not, therefore, as an Englishman, always make up my mind 
 to think and speak of men in power, the dispensers of pub- 
 lic favours and rewards, as some do, who are always ready 
 to declare 
 
 " Whate'er they do, 
 " Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best." 
 
 No ; I am not one of those cameleons who take their change- 
 ful hue from some object near which they are crawling; 
 I wish, as is likewise fabled of that reptile, that such 
 could also live upon air; it would be far better for the pub- 
 lic purse, and no worse for public principle. 
 
 I fully meant, on this occasion, and before I had con- 
 cluded, to have adverted to that line of policy which I humbly 
 think ought to be adopted, and which, without any violent 
 revulsions, much less untried plans, would still, and I think 
 speedily, restore the nation to its wonted prosperity. I have, 
 however, already exhausted your patience, and shall there- 
 fore conclude ; not that I shrink from the task, or shall 
 refrain from submitting my ideas on this important subject 
 on a proper occasion. In the mean time, do I despair con- 
 cerning the country? God forbid ! She will recover, and 
 recover the sooner, because she is even now loathing the 
 potions with which she has been lately drenched. She may 
 be prostrated for the present ; but, like another Antoeus, she
 
 35 
 
 will rise, with renewed strength, from every overthrow. She 
 will yet prosper ; not, indeed, because of the councils of her 
 rulers, but in spite of them. Yes ; this mighty nation, un- 
 rivalled for ages in military and naval glory, foremost in 
 the pursuits of science, warmest in every work of philan- 
 thropy, brightest in the paths of genius; the nurse of 
 liberty, the asylum of religion, the mother of mighty 
 nations, who shall spread her language, perpetuate her in- 
 stitutions, and submit to her moral empire, when the do- 
 minion of her power shall have passed away; this country 
 is destined yet, I hope and believe, to become, in the 
 hands of a gracious Providence, the benefactress of the uni- 
 verse. She will yet vindicate her own principles, and assert 
 her own cause. She may, like many a gallant bark that has 
 taken refuge in your friendly port, be now at sea, in danger 
 and distress, the sport of adverse winds, and tossed on the 
 dark and tempestuous waves ; but, if I may apply the fiction 
 of Virgil to a nobler purpose, the Deity shall appear, and, 
 smiting the unfaithful Palinurus, himself seize the helm, and 
 pilot the vessel through the subsiding storm into the haven of 
 prosperity and peace. Gentlemen, I will conclude. I know 
 that, when I sit down, it will occur to my mind that I have 
 omitted much, and that, perhaps, the most important part of 
 what I meant to have said. To these omissions, however, 
 shall not be added that of failing again to thank you, indi- 
 vidually and most cordially, for the high honour you have 
 done me. 
 
 I'rintcd by Mills, Jowett, and Mills, Bolt-court, Fleet-street.
 
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