and then saturated in a bath of hot gum-shellac, but this treatment
proved defective in insulating properties, for when ten miles of line
had been completed the wires were found to be wholly useless for
electric conduction.

No mode had been devised for the treatment of india-rubber to make it
available for purposes of insulation, and gutta-percha was wholly
unknown as an article of use or commerce in this country. Twenty-three
thousand dollars of the Government appropriation had been expended, and
the work thus far accomplished was an acknowledged failure. Only seven
thousand dollars of the available fund remained unexpended, and this was
regarded as inadequate to complete the undertaking under any other plan.
The friends of the enterprise were in despair, and for some time saw no
other alternative than to apply to Congress for an additional
appropriation. This, however, was regarded as almost hopeless, and the
difficulty of the situation was extremely embarrassing.

An amusing incident was related of the means used to keep from public
knowledge the desperate situation. Professor Morse finally visited the
scene of activity where the pipe-laying was proceeding, and, calling the
superintendent aside, confided to him the fact that the work must be
stopped without the newspapers finding out the true reason of its
suspension. The quick-witted superintendent was equal to the occasion,
and, starting the ponderous machine, soon managed to run foul of a
protruding rock and break the plough. The newspapers published
sensational accounts of the accident and announced that it would require
several weeks to repair damages. Thus the real trouble was kept from the
public until new plans could be determined upon.

After long and careful consideration, Professor Morse very reluctantly
decided to erect the wires on poles. This plan was, at first, considered
wholly objectionable, under the apprehension that the structure would be
disturbed by evil-minded persons. It had, however, become manifest that
this was the only mode of construction that could be accomplished within
the remainder of the appropriation, and, finally, upon ascertaining that
pole lines had already been adopted in England, it was determined to
proceed in this manner. The line was thus completed between Washington
and Baltimore about May 1, 1844, and proved to be successful and in
every way satisfactory in its operation.

Shortly after the completion of the line the National Democratic
Convention, which nominated Polk and Dallas for President and
Vice-President, assembled in Baltimore [May, 1844]. Reports of the
convention proceedings were promptly telegraphed to the capital city,
where the telegraph office was thronged with Members of Congress
interested in the news. These reports created an immense sensation in
Washington and speedily removed all doubts as to the practical success
of the new system of communication. A despatch from the Honorable Silas
Wright, then United States Senator from New York, refusing to accept the
nomination for Vice-President, was read in the National Convention and
produced an extraordinary interest from the fact that very few of the
delegates had ever heard of the telegraph, and it required much
explanation to satisfy them of the genuineness of the alleged
communication.

Having thus established beyond all reasonable question the practical
utility of the telegraph as a superior means of public and private
communication, Professor Morse and his associates offered their patents
to the United States Government for the very moderate price of one
hundred thousand dollars, with a view of having the system adopted for
general use in connection with the postal establishment. This
proposition was referred to the Postmaster-General for consideration and
report. After due deliberation that officer reported that "Although the
invention is an agent vastly superior to any other ever devised by the
genius of man, yet the operation between Washington and Baltimore has
not satisfied me that, under any rate of postage that can be adopted,
its revenues can be made to cover its expenditures." Under the influence
of this report Congress very naturally declined the offer of the
patentees, and the telegraph was thereupon relegated to the domain of
private enterprise. The result was that the patentees finally realized
for their interests many times the amount of their offer to the
Government.

During the autumn of 1844 short exhibition lines were erected in Boston
and New York, for the purpose of familiarizing business men of those
cities with the characteristics of the new invention, but they attracted
little attention and the promoters had much cause of discouragement on
account of public indifference. For the purpose of arousing more
attention to the system, appeals were made to the public press for
favorable notice, which were also generally declined. The proprietor of
one of the most prominent and enterprising of the New York daily papers
distinctly refused to encourage the establishment of telegraph lines,
for the reason, as he freely acknowledged, that if the new method of
transmitting intelligence were to come into general use his competitors
could use it as well as himself, and he would therefore be deprived of
his present advantage over them for procuring early news by the use of
an expensive system of special despatch then maintained by his paper.
Two years later he refused to join other papers in receiving the
Governor's message by telegraph from Albany, and was so badly beaten by
his rivals in this instance that his paper was thenceforward one of the
most generous patrons of the telegraph.

Early in the year 1845 a corporate organization was effected for the
extension of the telegraph from Baltimore to Philadelphia and New York,
under the name of the Magnetic Telegraph Company, for which a special
act of incorporation was obtained from the Legislature of the State of
Maryland. Nearly all of the capital of this company was subscribed by
Washington people. Baltimore and Philadelphia furnished only a few
hundred dollars, while New York contributed nothing. Slow progress was
made toward the construction of the line on account of the difficulty of
obtaining the right of way either upon railways or highways, and it was
not until January, 1846, that the line was completed to the west side of
the Hudson River, which formed an impassable barrier to further progress
for a considerable period.

No method of insulation had yet been devised that would permit the
operation of an electric conductor under water, and it was doubted
whether a wire could be maintained for a span sufficient to cross the
river overhead. Finally however high masts were erected on the Palisades
near Fort Lee, and on the heights at Fort Washington on the New York
side, and a steel wire was suspended upon them. This plan was
successful, except that occasionally the wire was broken by an
extraordinary burden of sleet in the winter season. This method of
crossing the lower Hudson was continued for more than ten years, when it
was superseded by submarine cables.

During the year 1846 incorporated companies were formed, under which
telegraph lines were extended from New York to Boston, Buffalo, and
Pittsburg, and within the next three years nearly every important town
in the United States and Canada, from St. Louis and New Orleans to
Montreal and Halifax, was brought into telegraphic communication. Thus,
after fifteen years of struggle with all the pains of poverty, often
lacking even the common necessaries of life, Professor Morse and his
faithful colaborers had the supreme satisfaction, in 1847, of knowing
and realizing that the telegraph system had finally achieved, not only
scientific success, for this had been proven years before, but that
financial success, ample and complete, had come to pay them richly for
all the dark days and wearisome years through which they had passed.

Once generally established, the telegraph won its way to popular
appreciation very rapidly. It was in harmony with the spirit of the age,
and it was not long before every town of any considerable importance
regarded telegraphic facilities as an indispensable necessity. The small
cost soon induced the construction of rival lines, regardless of the
rights of the patentees, and within a very few years unwise competition
began to bring many lines to a condition of bankruptcy. The weaker
concerns soon passed through the sheriff's hands and found purchasers
only at an extreme sacrifice, at the bidding of the more provident and
conservative proprietors of competing lines. Instead of inducing a more
prudent course, these disastrous results only served to feed the spirit
of rivalry, and general insolvency seemed to threaten the permanent
prosperity of the telegraph business, in consequence of the wild and
reckless competition which appeared to be inherent in its nature.

This extremely unsatisfactory condition of telegraph rivalry drifted on
from bad to worse until 1854, when, from dire necessity of
self-preservation, a few of the more prudent and far-sighted proprietors
of telegraph property were induced to combine their interests with some
of their competitors and thus avoid the ruinous policy which had been so
rapidly exhausting their vitality. Accordingly the principal telegraph
lines in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and some of the neighboring States
were brought into fraternal relations and formed the nucleus of the
Western Union Telegraph Company.

The new policy soon brought prosperity in place of waste and
improvidence. Profits were devoted to the purchase of additional lines,
thus enlarging their domain and strengthening their position. Prosperity
increased with rapid strides; and the beneficial effects of extirpating
wasteful rivalry and building up a substantial system with superior
facilities and provident management gave the new organization a
dominating influence among the telegraph companies of America. The same
general policy has been pursued to the present time [1894], and has
resulted in the establishment of a prosperous corporation of magnificent
proportions, carrying on a useful and beneficent business under a
greater number of governmental jurisdictions, great and small, than any
other corporate organization in existence.

For the development of the telegraph enterprise in America no thanks are
due to the wealthy capitalists. As a rule they would not listen to
suggestions of investing their money in what was contemptuously termed
rotten poles and rusty wires. They wanted something more substantial and
conservative as the basis of their investments. An early pioneer and
builder of telegraph lines, whose name is now held in grateful memory
for deeds of philanthropic beneficence visited the city of Chicago in
1847 to solicit subscriptions to the capital stock of a company then
engaged in construction of the first line of telegraph between that
place and the city of Buffalo. He presented a carefully prepared
prospectus showing an estimated earning capacity of the projected line
of one hundred dollars per day. The merits of the contemplated
enterprise were freely canvassed at a meeting of bankers, at which one
of the most prominent declared that any man who ever expected to see one
hundred dollars per day paid for telegraphing west of Buffalo must be
crazy and unworthy of belief. This oracular declaration prevailed, and
the project was ignominiously rejected by the wise men of Chicago.
Fortunately, citizens of smaller towns, like Ypsilanti, Kalamazoo, South
Bend, Kenosha, and Racine, took a more sensible view of the proposed
enterprise, and the line was built despite the contempt of Chicago
capitalists. Now, however, the men of Chicago pay more than five
thousand dollars a day for telegraphing at rates far lower than would
have been thought possible in that early day.

The true spirit of enterprise, which has so grandly developed the
resources of our imperial domain, has generally been found to prevail
among people of modest means. Thus, nearly every dollar of capital
contributed toward the establishment of telegraph lines in this country
came from the offerings of people in very moderate circumstances. In
this connection, therefore, it is extremely gratifying to state that
very few enterprises of any kind have returned such generous recompense
for the amount of capital invested as the telegraph and telephone lines
in America. Considering the apparently temporary and short-lived
character of the structures erected for these purposes, it seems
difficult to comprehend the truth of this statement.

The method of telegraphic communication devised by Professor Morse has
been continued in general use in this country, but instead of requiring
separate wire for each circuit as formerly, six independent circuits are
now operated simultaneously over a single wire by the use of the
sextuplex apparatus.




(1846) REPEAL OF THE ENGLISH CORN LAWS, Justin McCarthy


After the repeal of the corn laws the tariff legislation of Great
Britain was guided by a new policy, that of free trade, and it has been
followed ever since. The reactionary tendencies of Continental Europe
after the fall of Napoleon reached also to England, where they
controlled the conduct of political affairs until Canning, in 1822,
became Secretary for Foreign Affairs. His policy was liberal and did
much in forming the public opinion that at length found voice in
Catholic emancipation (1829), in the Reform Bill (1832), and in the
abolition of slavery in the English colonies (1833). Then followed
important amendments of the poor-laws, extension of local governmental
powers in the towns, improvement of popular education, and other
reforms.

Through all this gradual progress in liberal government and public
amelioration, the need of another reform had been pointed out by some
thinkers and statesmen, and at last the condition of the country favored
the views of its advocates. The corn laws protected the English
producers by imposing heavy duties on imported grain. At one time these
duties practically prohibited such importation. McCarthy shows how the
laws operated upon the people, and his story of the memorable agitation
for their repeal and of the accomplishment of that object could not have
been better told.

In 1815 the celebrated Corn Law was passed, which was itself moulded on
the Corn Law of 1670. By the Act of 1815 wheat might be exported upon a
payment of one shilling per quarter customs duty, but the importation of
foreign grain was practically prohibited until the price of wheat in
England had reached eighty shillings a quarter, that is to say, until a
certain price had been secured for the grower of grain at the expense of
all the consumers in this country. It was not permitted to Englishmen to
obtain their supplies from any foreign land, unless on conditions that
suited the English corn-grower's pocket.

We may perhaps make this principle a little more clear, if it be
necessary, by illustrating its working on a small scale and within
narrow limits. In a particular street in London, let us say, a law is
passed declaring that no one must buy a loaf of bread out of that
street, or even round the corner, until the price of bread has risen so
high in the street itself as to secure to its two or three bakers a
certain enormous scale of profit on their loaves. When the price of
bread has been forced up so high as to pass this scale of profit, then
it would be permissible for those who stood in need of bread to go round
the corner and buy their loaves of the baker in the next street; but the
moment that their continuing to do this caused the price of the baker's
bread in their own street to fall below the prescribed limit, they must
instantly take to buying bread within their own bounds and of their own
bakers again. This is a fair illustration of the principle on which the
corn laws were moulded. The Corn Law of 1815 was passed in order to
enable the landowners and farmers to recover from the depression caused
by the long era of foreign war. It was "rushed through" Parliament, if
we may use an American expression; petitions of the most urgent nature
poured in against it from all the commercial and manufacturing classes,
and in vain. Popular disturbances broke out in many places. The poor
everywhere saw the bread of their family threatened, saw the food of
their children almost taken out of their mouths, and they naturally
broke into wild extremes of anger. In London there were serious riots,
and the houses of some of the most prominent supporters of the bill were
attacked. The incendiary went to work in many parts of the country. At
that time it was still the way in England, as it is now in Russia and
other countries, for popular indignation to express itself in the
frequent incendiary fire. At one place near London a riot lasted for two
days and nights; the soldiers had to be called out to put it down, and
five men were hanged for taking part in it.

After the passing of the Corn Law of 1815, and when it had worked for
some time, there were sliding-scale acts introduced, which established a
varying system of duty, so that when the price of home-grown grain rose
above a certain figure, the duty on imported wheat was to sink in
proportion. The principle of all these measures was the same. How, it
may be asked, could any sane legislator adopt such measures? As well
might it be asked, How can any civilized nation still, as some still do,
believe in such a principle? The truth is that the principle is one
which has a strong fascination for most persons, the charm of which it
is difficult for any class in its turn wholly to shake off. The idea is
that if our typical baker be paid more than the market price for a loaf,
he will be able in turn to pay more to the butcher than the fair price
for his beef; the butcher thus benefited will be enabled to deal on more
liberal terms with the tailor; the tailor so favored by legislation will
be able in his turn to order a better kind of beer from the publican and
pay a higher price for it. Thus, by some extraordinary process,
everybody pays too much for everything, and nevertheless all are
enriched in turn. The absurdity of this is easily kept out of sight
where the protective duties affect a number of varying and complicated
interests, manufacturing, commercial, and productive.

In the United States, for example, where the manufacturers are benefited
in one place and the producers are benefited in another, and where the
country always produces food abundant to supply its own wants, men are
not brought so directly face to face with the fallacy of the principle
as they were in England at the time of the Anti-Corn Law League. In
America "protection" affects manufacturers for the most part, and there
is no such popular craving for cheap manufactures as to bring the
protective principle into collision with the daily wants of the people.
But in England, during the reign of the Corn Law, the food which the
people put into their mouths was the article mainly taxed, and made
cruelly costly by the working of protection.

Nevertheless, the country put up with this system down to the close of
the year 1836. At that time there was a stagnation of trade and a
general depression of business. Severe poverty prevailed in many
districts. Inevitably, therefore, the question arose in the minds of
most men, in distressed or depressed places, whether it could be a good
thing for the country in general to have the price of bread kept high by
factitious means when wages had sunk and work become scarce. An
Anti-Corn-Law association was formed in London, It began pretentiously
enough, but it brought about no result. London is not a place where
popular agitation finds a fitting centre. In 1838, however, Bolton, in
Lancashire, suffered from a serious commercial crisis. Three-fifths of
its manufacturing activity became paralyzed at once. Many houses of
business were actually closed and abandoned, and thousands of workmen
were left without the means of life. Lancashire suddenly roused itself
into the resolve to agitate against the corn laws, and Manchester became
the headquarters of the movement which afterward accomplished so much.

The Anti-Corn-Law League was formed, and a Free-Trade Hall was built in
Manchester on the scene of that disturbance which was called the
"massacre of Peterloo." The leaders of the Anti-Corn-Law movement were
Richard Cobden, John Bright, and Charles Villiers. Cobden was not a
Manchester man. He was the son of a Sussex farmer. After the death of
his father he was taken by his uncle and employed in his wholesale
warehouse in the city of London. He afterward became a partner in a
Manchester cotton-factory, and sometimes travelled on the commercial
business of the establishment. He became what would then have been
considered a great traveller, distinct, of course, from the class of
explorers; that is, he made himself thoroughly familiar with most or all
of the countries of Europe, with various parts of the East, and with the
United States and Canada. He had had a fair, homely education, and he
improved it wherever he went by experience, by observation, and by
conversation with all manner of men. He became one of the most effective
and persuasive popular speakers ever known in English agitation. He was
not an orator in the highest sense. He had no imagination and little
poetic feeling, nor did genuine passion ever inflame into fervor of
declamation his quiet, argumentative style. But he had humor; he spoke
simple, clear, strong English; he used no unnecessary words. He always
made his meaning plain and intelligible, and he had an admirable faculty
for illustrating every argument by something drawn from reading or from
observation or from experience. He was, in fact, the very perfection of
a common-sense talker, a man fit to deal with men by fair,
straightforward argument, to expose complicated sophistries, and to make
clear the most perplexed parts of an intricate question. He was exactly
the man for that time, for that question, and for the persuasive and
argumentative part of the great controversy which he had undertaken.

Cobden's chief companion in the struggle was John Bright, whose name has
been completely identified with that of Cobden in the repeal of the Corn
Laws. Bright was an orator of the highest order. He had all the
qualifications that make a master of eloquence. His presence was
commanding; his voice was singularly strong and clear, and had peculiar
tones and shades in it which gave indescribable meaning to passages of
anger, of pity, or of contempt. His manner was quiet, composed, serene.
He indulged in little or no gesticulation, he had a rich gift of genuine
Saxon humor. These two men, one belonging to the middle class of the
North, one sprung from the yeomanry of Southern England, had as a
colleague Charles Villiers, a man of high aristocratic family, of marked
ability, and of indomitable loyalty to any cause he undertook. Villiers
for some years represented the free-trade cause in Parliament, and
Bright and Cobden did its work on the platform. Cobden first, and Bright
after him, became members of the House of Commons, and they were further
assisted there by Milner Gibson, a man of position and family, an
effective debater, who had been at first a Conservative, but who passed
over to the ranks of the Free Traders, and through them to the ranks of
the Liberals or Radicals.

Every year Villiers brought on a motion in the House in favor of free
trade. For a long time this motion was only one of the annual
performances which, by an apparently inevitable necessity, have to
prelude for many years the practical movement of any great parliamentary
question. Villiers might have brought on his annual motion all his life,
without getting much nearer to his object, if Manchester, Birmingham,
Sheffield, Leeds, and other great northern towns had not taken the
matter vigorously in hand; if Cobden and Bright had not stirred up the
energies of the whole country, and brought clearly home to the mind of
every man the plain fact that reason, argument, and arithmetic, as well
as freedom and justice, were distinctly on their side.

The Anti-Corn-Law League showered pamphlets, tracts, letters,
newspapers, all over the country. They sent lecturers into every town,
preaching the same doctrine, and proving by scientific facts the justice
of the cause they advocated. These lecturers were enjoined to avoid as
much as possible any appeals to sentiment or to passion. The cause they
had in hand was one which could best be served by the clear statement of
rigorous facts, by the simple explanation of economical truths which no
sophism could darken, and which no opposing eloquence could charm away.
The Melbourne Ministry fell in 1841. It died of inanition: its force was
spent. Sir Robert Peel came into office. Cobden, who then entered the
House of Commons for the first time, seemed to have good hope that even
Peel, strong Conservative though he was, might prove to be a man from
whom the Free Traders could expect substantial assistance. Sir Robert
Peel had, in fact, in those later years expressed again and again his
conviction as to the general truth of the principles of free trade. "All
agree," he said in 1842, "in the general rule that we should buy in the
cheapest and sell in the dearest market." But he contended that while
such was the general rule, yet various economical and social conditions
made it necessary that there should be some distinct exceptions, and he
regarded the corn laws and sugar duties as such exceptions. It may be
mentioned, perhaps, that the corn laws had, in fact, been treated as a
necessary exception by many of the leading exponents of the principles
of free trade. Thus we have to notice the curious fact that while Sir
Robert Peel's own party looked upon his accession to power as a certain
guarantee against any concession to the Free Traders, the Free Traders
themselves were, for the most part, convinced that their cause had
better hope from him than from a Whig Ministry.

The Free Traders went on debating and dividing in the House, agitating
and lecturing all over the country, for some years without any marked
Parliamentary success following their endeavors. An immense and
overwhelming majority always voted against them in the House of Commons.
They were making progress, and very great progress, but it was not that
kind of advance which had yet come to be decided by a Parliamentary
vote. Probably a keen and experienced eye might have noted clearly
enough the progress they were making. The Whig party were coming more
and more round to the principles of free trade. Day after day some Whig
leader was admitting that the theories of the past would not do for the
present, and, as we have said, the Tory leader had himself gone so far
as to admit the justice of the general principles of free trade. At one
point the main difference between Sir Robert Peel, the leader of the
House of Commons, and Lord John Russell, the leader of the opposition,
seems to have been nothing more than this, that Peel still regarded
grain as a necessary exception to the principle of free trade, and Lord
John Russell was not clear that the time had come when it could be
treated otherwise than as an exception.

An event, however, over which no parties and no leaders had any control,
suddenly intervened to hasten the action and spur the convictions of the
leaders on both sides, and especially of the Prime Minister. This was
the great famine which broke out in Ireland in the autumn of 1845. The
vast majority of the Irish people had long depended for their food on
the potato alone. The summer of 1845 had been a long season of wet and
cold and sunlessness. In the autumn the news went abroad that the whole
potato crop of Ireland was in danger of destruction, if not already
actually destroyed. Before attention had well been awakened to the
crisis, it was officially announced that more than one-third of the
entire potato crop had been swept away by the disease, and that it had
not ceased its ravages, but, on the contrary, was spreading more and
more every day.

The general impression of those who could form an opinion was that the
whole of the crop must perish. The Anti-Corn-Law League cried out for
the opening of the ports and the admission of grain and food from all
places. Sir Robert Peel was decidedly in favor of such a course. The
Duke of Wellington and Lord Stanley opposed the idea, and the
proposition was given up. Only three members of the Cabinet supported
Sir Robert Peel's proposals--Lord Aberdeen, Sir James Graham, Mr. Sidney
Herbert. All the others objected, some because they opposed the
principle of the measure, and were convinced that if the ports were once
opened they would never be closed again, which indeed was probably
Peel's own conviction; and others on the ground that no sufficient proof
had yet been given that such a measure was necessary. Lord John Russell,
almost immediately after, wrote a letter from Edinburgh to his
constituents, the electors of the city of London, in which he declared
that something must immediately be done, that it was "no longer worth
while to contend for a fixed duty," and that an end must be put to the
whole system of protection, as "the blight of commerce, the bane of
agriculture, the source of bitter division among classes, the cause of
penury, fever, and crime among the people." This letter produced a
decisive effect on Peel. He saw that the Whigs were prepared to unite
with the Anti-Corn-Law League in agitating for the total repeal of the
corn laws, and he therefore made up his mind to recommend to the Cabinet
an early meeting of Parliament, with the view to anticipate the
agitation which he saw must succeed in the end, and to bring forward, as
a Government measure, some scheme which should at least prepare the way
for the speedy repeal of the corn laws.

A Cabinet council was held almost immediately after the publication of
Lord John Russell's letter, and Peel recommended the summoning of
Parliament in order to take instant measures to cope with the distress
in Ireland, and also to introduce legislation distinctly intended to
prepare the way for the repeal of the corn laws. Lord Stanley could not
accept the proposition. The Duke of Wellington was himself of opinion
that the corn laws ought to be maintained, but at the same time he
declared that he considered good government for the country more
important than corn laws or any other considerations, and that he was
therefore ready to support Sir Robert Peel's Administration through
thick and thin. Lord Stanley and the Duke of Buccleuch, however,
declared that they could not be parties to any legislation which tended
toward the repeal of the corn-laws. Sir Robert Peel did not feel himself
strong enough to carry out his project in the face of such opposition in
the Cabinet itself, and he tendered his resignation to the Queen. The
Queen sent for Lord John Russell, but Russell's party were not very
strong in the country and they had not a majority in the House of
Commons. Lord John tried, however, to form a ministry without a
Parliamentary majority, and even although Sir Robert Peel would not give
any pledge to support a measure for the immediate and complete repeal of
the corn laws, Lord John Russell was not successful.

Lord Grey, son of the Lord Grey of the Reform Bill, objected to the
foreign policy of Lord Palmerston, and thought a seat in the Cabinet
ought to be offered to Cobden. Lord John Russell had nothing to do but
to announce to the Queen that he found it impossible to form a ministry.
The Queen sent for Sir Robert Peel again and asked him to withdraw his
resignation. Peel complied, and almost immediately resumed the functions
of First Minister of the Crown. The Duke of Buccleuch consented to go on
with him, but Lord Stanley held to his resolution and had no place in
the Ministry. His position as Secretary of State for the Colonies was
taken by William E. Gladstone. Gladstone, however, did not sit in
Parliament during the eventful session when the corn laws were repealed.
He had sat for the borough of Newark, which was under the influence of
the Duke of Newcastle; and as the Duke of Newcastle had withdrawn his
support from the Ministry, Gladstone did not seek re-election for
Newark, and remained without a seat in the House of Commons for some
months.

Parliament met on January 22, 1846. The "speech from the throne,"
delivered by the Queen in person, recommended the legislature to take
into consideration the necessity of still further applying the principle
on which it had formerly acted, when measures were presented "to extend
commerce and to stimulate domestic skill and industry, by the repeal of
prohibitive and the relaxation of protective duties." In the debate on
the "address" Sir Robert Peel rose, after the mover and seconder had
spoken and the question had been put from the Chair, and at once
proceeded to explain the policy which he intended to adopt. His speech
was long and labored, and somewhat wearied the audience by the elaborate
manner in which he explained how his opinions had been brought into
gradual change with regard to free trade and protection. He made it,
however, perfectly clear that he was now a convert to Cobden's opinions,
and that he intended to introduce some measure which should practically
amount to the abolition of protection.

It was in this debate, and immediately after Peel had spoken, that
Benjamin Disraeli made his first great impression on Parliament. He had
been in the House for many years, and had made many attempts, had
sometimes been laughed at, had sometimes been disliked, and occasionally
for a moment admired. But it was when he rose immediately after Sir
Robert Peel, and denounced Peel as one who had betrayed his party and
his principles, that he made the first deep impression on the House of
Commons, and came to be considered as a serious and influential
Parliamentary personage. "I am not one of the converts," Disraeli said,
"I am perhaps a member of a fallen party." A new Protection party was
formed almost immediately under the leadership of George Lord Bentinck,
a man of great energy and tenacity of purpose, who had hitherto spent
his life almost altogether on the turf, who had had almost no previous
preparation for leadership or even for debate, but who certainly, when
he did accept the responsible position offered to him, showed a
considerable capacity for leadership and an unwearying attention to his
duties.

On January 27th Sir Robert Peel explained his financial policy. His
intention was to abandon the sliding scale altogether, to impose for the
present a duty of ten shillings a quarter on corn when the price of it
was under forty-eight shillings a quarter, to reduce that duty by one
shilling for every shilling of rise in price until it reached
fifty-three shillings a quarter, when the duty should fall to four
shillings. This, however, was to be only a temporary arrangement. It was
to last but three years, and at the end of that time protective duties
on grain were to be wholly abandoned. We need not go at any length into
the history of the long debates on Peel's propositions. The discussion
of one amendment, which was in substance a motion to reject the scheme
altogether, lasted for twelve nights. The third reading of the bill
passed the House of Commons on May 15th, by a majority of ninety-eight.

The bill went up at once to the House of Lords, and at the urgent
pressure of the Duke of Wellington was carried through that House
without any serious opposition. The Duke made no secret of his own
opinions. He assured many of his brother peers that he disliked the
measure just as much as anyone could do, but he insisted that they had
all better vote for it nevertheless. Sir Robert Peel had triumphed, but
he found himself deserted by a large and influential section of the
party he once had led. Most of the great landowners and country
gentlemen of the Conservative party abandoned him. Some of them felt the
bitterest resentment toward him. They believed he had betrayed them,
although nothing could be more clear than that for years he had
distinctly been making it known to the House that his principles
inclined him toward free trade, and thereby leaving it to be understood
that, if opportunity or emergency should compel him, he would be glad to
declare himself a Free Trader, even in the matter of grain.

Strange to say, the day when the bill was read in the House of Lords for
the third time saw the fall of Peel's Ministry. The fall was due to the
state of Ireland. The Government had been bringing in a coercion bill
for Ireland. It was introduced while the Corn Bill was yet passing
through the House of Commons. The situation was critical. All the Irish
followers of Daniel O'Connell would be sure to oppose the Coercion Bill.
The Liberal party, at least when out of office, had usually made it
their principle to oppose coercion bills if they were not attended with
some promises of legislative reform. The English Radical members, led by
Cobden and Bright, were certain to oppose coercion. If the
Protectionists should join with these other opponents of the Coercion
Bill the fate of the measure was assured, and with it the fate of the
Government. This was exactly what happened. Eighty Protectionists
followed Lord George Bentinck into the lobby against the bill, in
combination with the Free Traders, the Whigs, and the Irish Catholic and
national members. The division took place on the second reading of the
bill on Thursday, June 25th, and there was a majority of seventy-three
against the Ministry.

The moment after Sir Robert Peel succeeded in passing his great measure
of free trade he himself fell from power. His political epitaph,
perhaps, could not be better written than in the words with which he
closed the speech that just preceded his fall: "It may be that I shall
leave a name sometimes remembered with expressions of good-will in those
places which are the abode of men whose lot it is to labor and to earn
their daily bread by the sweat of their brow--a name remembered with
expressions of good-will when they shall recreate their exhausted
strength with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is no
longer leavened with a sense of injustice."

With the fall of the principle of the protection in corn may be said to
have practically fallen the principle of protection in that country
altogether. That principle was a little complicated in regard to the
sugar duties and to the navigation laws. The sugar produced in the West
Indian colonies was allowed to enter that country at rates of duty much
lower than those imposed upon the sugar grown in foreign lands. The
abolition of slavery in the colonies had made labor there somewhat
costly and difficult to obtain continuously, and the impression was that
if the duties on foreign sugar were reduced it would tend to enable
those countries which still maintained the slave trade to compete at
great advantage with the sugar grown in the colonies by that free labor
to establish which England had but just paid so large a pecuniary fine.
Therefore the question of free trade became involved with that of free
labor; at least, so it seemed to the eyes of many a man who was not
inclined to support the protective principle in itself. When it was put
to him, whether he was willing to push the free-trade principle so far
as to allow countries growing sugar by slave labor to drive our
free-grown sugar out of the market, he was often inclined to give way
before this mode of putting the question, and to imagine that there
really was a collision between free trade and free labor. Therefore a
certain sentimental plea came in to aid the Protectionists in regard to
the sugar duties.

Many of the old Antislavery party found themselves deceived by this
fallacy, and inclined to join the agitation against the reduction of the
duty on foreign sugar. On the other hand, it was made tolerably clear
that the labor was not so scarce or so dear in the colonies as had been
represented, and that colonial sugar grown by free labor really suffered
from no inconvenience except the fact that it was still manufactured on
the most crude, old-fashioned, and uneconomical methods. Besides, the
time had gone by when the majority of the English people could be
convinced that a lesson on the beauty of freedom was to be conveyed to
foreign sugar-growers and slave-owners by the means of a tax upon the
products of their plantations. Therefore, after a long and somewhat
eager struggle, the principle of free trade was allowed to prevail in
regard to sugar. The duties on sugar were made equal. The growth of the
sugar plantations was admitted on the same terms into that country,
without any reference either to the soil from which it had sprung or to
the conditions under which it was grown.

It had for a long time been stoutly proclaimed that the abolition of
slavery must be the destruction of our West Indian colonies. Years had
elapsed and the West Indian colonies still survived. Now the cry of
alarm was taken up again, and it was prophesied that although they had
got over the abolition of slavery they never could survive the
equalization of the sugar duties. Jamaica certainly had fallen greatly
away from her period of temporary and factitious prosperity. Jamaica was
owned and managed by a class of proprietors who resembled in many ways
some of the planters of the States of America farthest south--of the
States toward the mouth of the Mississippi. They lived in a kind of
careless luxury, mortgaging their estates as deeply as they possibly
could, throwing over to the coming year the superabundant debts of the
last, and only managing to keep their heads above water so long as the
people of England, by favoring them with a highly protective system,
enabled them still to compete against those who grew sugar on better and
more economical plans. The whole island was given over to neglect and
mismanagement. The emancipated negroes took but little trouble to
cultivate the plots of ground they had obtained, and were quite content
if they could scratch enough from the soil to enable them barely to
live. Therefore Jamaica did at a certain time fall far below the level
of her former seeming prosperity.

The other islands had been better managed. Their estates were less
encumbered by debt, and they passed through each successive crisis
without sustaining any noticeable injury. In most of these islands the
product increased steadily after the emancipation of the slaves. The
negroes then began to work earnestly, and education grew not greatly but
distinctly among all classes. Jamaica, the most unfortunate among the
islands, has been constantly the scene of little outbursts of more or
less serious rebellion. As the late Lord Chief Justice of England
observed in a charge on a famous occasion, "The soil of the island might
seem to have been drenched in blood." But these disturbances, or
insurrections, or whatever they may be called, did not increase in
number after the abolition of slavery and after the equalization of the
sugar duties, but, on the contrary, decreased. During our time only one
considerable disturbance has taken place in Jamaica, and in former years
such tumult was of frequent recurrence. In the West Indies we have,
therefore, the most severe test to which the principle of free trade
could well be subjected. It is not too much to say that in the more
fortunate of these islands it has established its claim, and that even
in the least fortunate no evidence whatever has been given that the
people would have been in any way the better off if the old system had
been retained.

The navigation laws had, too, a certain external attraction about them
which induced many men, not actually Protectionists, to believe in their
necessity. The principle of the navigation laws was to impose such
restrictions of tariff and otherwise as to exclude foreign vessels from
taking any considerable part in our carrying trade. The law was first
enacted in Oliver Cromwell's day, at a time when the Dutch were rivals
on the sea, and when it was thought desirable to repress, by protective
legislation, the energy of such experienced seamen and pushing traders.
The navigation law was modified by Mr. Huskisson in 1823, but only so
far as to establish that which we now know so well as the principle of
reciprocity. Any nation which removed restrictions from British merchant
marine was favored with a similar concession. The idea also was that
these navigation laws, keeping foreigners out of England's carrying
trade, enabled her to maintain always a supply of sailors who could at
any time be transferred from the merchant marine to the royal navy, and
thus be made to assist in the defence of the country.

Of course, the ship-owners themselves upheld the navigation laws, on the
plea that, if the trade were thrown open by the withdrawal of
protection, their chances would be gone; that they could not contend
against the foreigners upon equal terms; that their interests must
suffer, and that Great Britain would in the end be a still severer
sufferer, because, from the lack of encouragement given to the native
traders and the sailors, England would one day or another be left at the
mercy of some strong power which, with wiser regulations, would keep up
her protective system and with it her naval strength.

Nevertheless, the ship-owners and the Protectionists and those who
raised the alarm-cry about England's naval defences were unable to
maintain their sophisms in the face of growing education and of the
impulse given by the adoption of free trade. In 1849 the navigation laws
were abolished. We believe there are very few ship-owners who will not
now admit that the prosperity of their trade has grown immensely, in
place of suffering, from the introduction of the free-trade principle in
navigation as well as in com and sugar.




(1846) THE DISCOVERY OF NEPTUNE, Sir Oliver Lodge


Among modern astronomical discoveries none has been regarded as more
important than that of Neptune, the outermost known planet of the solar
system. It was a rich reward to the watchers of the sky when this new
planet swam into their ken. This discovery was hailed by astronomers as
"the most conspicuous triumph of the theory of gravitation." Long after
Copernicus even, the genius of philosophers was slow to grasp the full
conception of a spherical earth and its relations with the heavenly
bodies as presented by him. So it was also with the final acceptance of