Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 April 1892 — Protection in England. [ARTICLE]

Protection in England.

Edward Atkinson writes as follows on the history of protection in Englund: A very common but utterly erroneous Idea prevails in this country that Great Britain only gave up the system technically called protection when by means of this system she had attained conditions of great prosperity and a substantially commanding position in manufactures and commerce. The very reverse is true. The protective system was given up by Great Britain under the pressure of pauperism and bankruptcy in which It culminated In the years immediately preceding 1842, when Sir Robert Peel presented and carried his first great measure for the reform of the British tariff. The origin of customs in England was In the time of Edward I.; thenceforward duties were added and multiplied, each rate being devoted to n specific purpose, until in 1784 os many as fifteen separate duties were levied upon the same article. In 1787 William Pitt carried through an act for consolidation without reducing the number of articles taxed; this measure left 1,200 articles subject to duty, and in order to bring the act into force 3,000 resolutions were required in the House of Commons. In 1797, however, the laws relating to customs filled six large folio volumes unprovided with an index. The great subsequent wars rendered nugatory all of Pitt’s efforts to relieve commerce; between 1797 and 1815 600 additional acts were passed, and in fifty-three years of the reign of George 111. the total number of acts relating to duties on imports was 1,300. At length taxes became so numerous that nothing was left untaxed; even premiums offered for the suggestion of fresh subjects for taxation failed to stimulate invention. In 1824, under the lead of Huskisson, several of the crude materials necessary to British industry had been put into the free list, of which the most important was wool. This change had worked great benefit to both wool-grower and manufacturer; the price of domestic wool advanced, while the manufacturer was enabled to ) educe the cost of goods through the opportunity given him by freedom from taxation on Imported wool to buy, sort, and mix his wool In the most effective manner.

The first decisive step in tariff reform was brought about in 1840 by the appointment of a Parliamentary committee at the instance of Mr. Joseph Hume. The condition of the country was then desperate. The most concise account of the case is given in Noble’s "Fiscal Legislation of Great Britain," but all authorities —Liberal and Tory—are substantially at an agreement upon that point. It is written that “every interest in the country was alike depressed; in the manufacturing districts mills and workshops were closed and property daily depreciated in value; in the seaports shipping was laid up useless in harbor; agricultural laborers were eking out a miserable existence upon starvation wages and parochial relief; the revenue was insufficient to meet the national expenditure; the country was brought to the verge of national and universal bankruptcy. "The protective system, which was supported with a view to rendering the country independent of foreign sources of supply, and thus, it was hoped, fostering the growth of a home trade, had most effectually destroyed that trade by reducing the entire population to beggary, destitution and want. The masses of the population were unable to procure food, and had consequently nothing to spend upon British manufactures. ” A large part of the burden of taxation rested either upon necessary articles of food or else upon articles which were necessary component materials in British industry. At that very time, when the protective system culminated in the desperate conditions of Great Britain in 1840, it will be observed that it was at the end of a period of profound peace which had lasted over twehty-flve years, in which the personal wealth of the upper classes of Great Britain had become immense. When presenting his first measure of the tariff reform, Sir Robert Peel remarked, after stating the deficit and the financial difficulties to be met: “ You will bear in mind that this is no casual and occasional difficulty. You will bear in mind that there are indications among all the upper classes of society of increased comfort and enjoyment; of increased prosperity and Wealth; and that, concurrently with these indications, there exists a mighty evil which has been growing up for the

' last seven years,, and which you are I now called upon to meet.” This evil was the increasing poverty and destitu- ; tion of the great mass of the working ' people. The remedy was sought in a i redistribution of the burden of taxaI tioh. The tariff then covered 1,200 : separate subjects of taxation, of which seventeen yielded 94 per cent, of the revenue; the rest were petty obstruci tions to commerce, imposed for the : purpose of “protection with incidental revenue.” That purpose was not, however, avowed in these exact terms at that time, as it has lately been in this country by the advocates of McKinleyism. In the first measure Sir Robert Peel wholly abated or reduced the duty upon a consistent pion on 750 articles, and also caused an income tax of 7d. on the pound to be put upon classified Incomes, which is a fraction less than 3 per cent., all incomes below £l5O being exempt. Prom this income tax he anticipated a revenue of in the first year. It yielded £5,100,600, conclusively proving that under the previous system, while the poor had been rapidly reduced to pauperism, the rich had become richer. Like causes produce like effects. Under the pretext of protection to the miners of this country, and especially Pennsylvania, a duty has long been maintained upon the import of foreign iron ores; it is now 75 cents a ton, which is precisely equal to the labor cost of producing a ton of iron ore In Pennsylvania—according to the sworn statements of the ironmasters of Pennsylvania, by whom its iron mines are worked. The result of this system in the last census year—a year of the greatest activity ever known—was that 4,410 iron miners and workmen secured an income of $259 each, amounting in all to $1,141,239. There are ironmasters in tho State of Pennsylvania whose single incomes in a single year have exceeded the whole sum earned by the protected iron miners. The effect of the first measure of tariff reform in Great Britain —that of 1842 — was not immediately perceptible, the evil effect of the previous conditions being very deep-seated; but before 1845 the beneficial Influence upon every branch of industry, agriculture, manufactures, and commerce alike, had become so manifest that little opposition was met to Peel’s second great act of tariff reform of 184 >, by which 430 articles, consisting of the crude and partly manufactured materials which entered into the processes of domestic industry, were put on the free list, the duties on tho lessening number of dutiable imports being at the same time reduced and adjusted to thQse new conditions. In li?4« the Irish famine forced the abatement of all taxes upon food, by orders in Council, subsequently followed by the repeal of the corn laws. In 1847 Sir Robert Peel left office, but the immense benefits to every branch of British industry rendered It a comparatively easy matter to bring the tariff substantially to its present condition In 1853, coupled with a repeal of the navigation laws under the lead of Mr. Gladstone. Since that date the people of the United States have been forbidden by their own acts to'compete with Great Britain in tho construction and use of ocean steamships, while the commercial flag of Great Britain dominates every sea under tlie beneficent influence of freedom from all restrictions and by virtue of the protection which is given by exemption from taxation on all the materials used in the construction and in the subsistence of the vessels.