DR. BUTT ON PROTECTION TO HOME INDUSTRY. BUT for the
former position of the author as Professor of Political Econo- my in the University of Dublin, and the ingenuity and even eloquence of his lectures, this book might not challenge much attention ; as, strictly speaking, it is merely the usual fallacies of "protection to native in- dustry" disguised in a scientific form, and deriving some appearance of cogency by treating an exceptiohal case as if it were part of a general rule. Some stirring appeals after the manner of Michael Thomas Sadler are also introduced, on the rights of labour preceding the right to land, and similar topics,—very well in themselves, but as much out of place in discussing a scientific point of political economy as an evangelical sermon in a lecture on surgery or medicine. "There is a time for all things."
The lectures originated in that one of the many delusions of the Re- peal agitators which was to work some miracle for Ireland by wearing nothing but homespun. Upon this text Dr. Butt spoke with the view of tracing its consequences ; endeavouring to show that in the case of Ireland protection to home industry would be beneficial, and therefore the general economical rule of freedom of trade fell to the ground. His positions are these. With some few manufacturing exceptions, too trifling to affect the issue, Ireland is an agricultural country ; and all her wealth must be derived from and paid for with products of the land. Her ex- ports, therefore, are food ; and all her imports, whether of hard-ware, calico, broad cloth, or foreign luxuries, are purchased by means of agri- cultural produce, in some eases directly from the English manufacturer, in others by keding the English manufacturer while he is producing goods to exchange with the Portuguese for wine or the West Indians for sugar. Now, says Dr. Butt, if all this food were kept at home instead of being sent abroad, and paid to the Irish artisan for producing cloth, ale, and so forth, the results would be that numbers of the Irish people would be fed who are now starving ; the rich would go a little more coarsely clad and fare leas sumptuously every day. In this case, Ireland would be a clear gainer : therefore the principles of free trade fail in their appli- cation, and are not universally true. So far from it, that Dr. Butt con- ceives protective duties may be made to act the part of a poor-law, and as a means of regulating by government the distribution of wealth ; though he does not pat this part of his argument so prominently forward or enforce it so strenuously as his main topic. The advantage to Ireland of protective duties is dwelt upon in various ways, and often in a very ad captandum manner; but the following is a succinct account of the views, if not of the arguments by which they are supported ; and it may be praised as a statement at once brief and clear.
"There is no one who has at all reflected on those subjects who will deny that every use of foreign commodities increases exportation of something or other from the country; and as exportation from Ireland is of the produce of the soil, it increases from this country the exportation of the necessaries of life. For every bottle of wine, for instance, which we consume, something must go abroad to pay for it: and, strange, perhaps, as it may appear to those not familiar with the reasonings of political economy, there is no escape from the sternness of the deduction that forces us irresistibly to the conclusion, that every time we spend our money in buying foreign wines, we do, by the act of that expenditure, send away from our shores the value of that money in the produce of our fields, to pay for the Birmingham, or Sheffield, or other manufacture; which, in turn, must pay the Portuguese or French producer for his wines. "Just the same thing is true of the lady who purchases a dress, or the man who buys a waistcoat wrought in a foreign loom. That purchaser sends from our shores, to feed the workers on that dress or waistcoat, the rake of it in the staple export of our country. " Now, let us suppose that the man who is on his way to give an order that will lead to the importation of foreign wines, or to purchase an English waist- coat, meets upon his way an unemployed artisan. To give the picture the colour- ing of reality, let us suppose that chance leads his steps to some of the squalid abodes of oar-Liberty, La district of Dublin,1 the wretched hiding-places of a decayed manufacture, and an unemployed people; suppose him moved by some scene of distress to resolve that he will (Teny himself the wine, or that he will make his old waistcoat last him a few months longer, and to place in the hands of an unemployed weaver to purchase beef and bread for his children for many days, the very money he had intended to appropriate to the purchase of his im- ported superfluities—I suppose him to do this as a free gift—I suppose that the money is laid out as he desires it, and that beef and bread are bought with it. This otherwise would not have been consumed in Ireland; for this new destina- tion of the money has not deprived one single Irishman, except the donor him- self, of an iota of enjoyment, or the means of purchasing; all persons in the country remain as they were, except the giver and receiver of the gift. [No; there is a loss to the traders employed in selling, and the sailors in importing the articles—if Irish, as they probably are.] The object of this bounty enjoys the very produce which would have gone abroad to pay for the wine or the waistcoat, had the giver purchased them. He himself is worse off by not having the wine or the waistcoat, but is worse off in no other way. The home market for beef and bread is manifestly by so much increased: so that the mind cannot escape, turn the matter as it will, from the demonstration that forces on it the infere-nce, that the effect of this change of purpose is simply this, that the artisan of our Liberty has eaten the food, which, had the original purpose been persevered in, would have gone to feed the English weaver or mechanic.'
Subject to the error noticed in the text—and to the fact that in the case of the waistcoat the Englishman, of the wine the Englishman and Portuguese, go without the food and clothing which the idle or incompe- tent enjoy—there is no doubt about the facts as put here. If A give biz- dinner to B, B will dine and A will not. In like manner, the price of a bottle of wine or of a waistcoat will, so far as they go, support the receiver, to the discomfort more or less of the giver. But this cannot go on for long. Some substitute must' speedily be found for the dinner and wine, or the rich will starve instead of the poor ; and even the waistcoat must be replaced in time. Dr. Butt, no doubt, means that the Irish workman should be employed in producing a substitute for the wine and waistcoat. But trace this out, and see the danger of quitting broad and general prin- ciples on specious grounds and narrow views. In the first place, the man's health, or his habits which after a time are health itself, may require the wine ; the native substitutes of whisky or beer may create fever or indi- gestion : and, after all, he might as well drink up the agricultural produce in the shape of wine as in that of toddy or stout. The only conceivable gain to Ireland would be the surplus remaining from the difference be- tween the whisky he might be able to drink in comparison with the wine; and to calculate this exactly would be difficult. In like manner, the sage tea of Dr. Butts, as a substitute for that of China, and all other articles of corporal consumption, may be disposed of. Ireland could gain nothing but by the profit of making and selling, against which we must set off the freight and sale of the foreign articles. This argument does not apply to clothing; but if foreign commodities are preferred, we must assume, what Dr. Butt concedes, that they are better. In an instant point of view, the fact stated by Dr. Butt would follow—the artisan would get such part of the agricultural produce as is now exported to pay for clothing. But what would be the future conse- quences ?—which are what a practical statesman has got to consider, much more a philosopher laying down general rules without respect to anything save truth. The fostered and artificial trade, according to the extent of its hollow prosperity, would attract or perhaps divert capital from more natural and therefore beneficial undertakings, and stimulate population ; till in the end it would have prevented employment in other directions, and brought into being a population whose numbers would produce the same wretchedness from which "protection" had for a brief period enabled their fathers to emerge. But the effects of Berkeley's "wall of brass round Ireland," which Dr. Butt is so fond of quoting, must not be confined to such simple matters as he uses for illustrations. How would he manage with those various articles of necessity and use which go under the name of hard- ware ; how with those articles which require some intelligence to pro- duce, as well as skill and manipulating dexterity ; and how with timber and other raw materials ? We believe that if he follow out his subject upon a large scale, he will find that he must either so limit the advantages of life in Ireland, that in time he will lower the wealthy or comfortable to the position of the poor in everything save mere animal gratifications ; and degrade the poor lower than they are at present, by shutting out the lights and the stimulus of foreign importation, as well as the means of properly carrying on all such processes as require implements better than those which they can manufacture : or he must fashion a tariff for himself, in which every item must be considered with a view to all the actualities and contingencies of Ireland present and future, with a glance besides at Irish human nature, to know how far patriotism and charity will induce the wealthy to go without wine or to wear homespun. He would, in fact, revive for Dublin University the errors which prac- tical statesmen are now banishing by enactment, as they have for some time past been obsolete in well-formed opinion. There are other fallacies or errors in Dr. Butt's volume; such as con- sidering Ireland at one and the same time as part of an empire and a.s att independent kingdom ; and tracing much of its misery to absentees, yet propounding no plan for remedying that evil, for it is clear that no pro- tective duty could reach them. Exportation of Irish produce and of gold and silver must be forbidden, or their rents would reach the absentees as usual. Into these subordinate matters, however, we shall not enter; and we might not have noticed the work at this length, but Dr. Batt speaks "as one having authority, and not as the scribes." He comes before us clothed with University distinctions; and during his term of office he had charge to instruct the most influential youth of Ireland upon matters which it is probable some of them might hereafter influence as legis- lators. His errors, therefore, become of consequence, and require an examination which might not be given to a simple individual.
Previous page
