Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, No. 362, December 1845

But suppose that, for the first two years or so, we went on swimmingly – that there were good and plentiful seasons abroad, and that corn flowed into our market abundantly from all quarters of the world. Suppose that bread became cheaper than we ever knew it before, that our manufactures were readily and greedily taken, and that we had realised the manufacturing Eden, which the disciples of Devil's-dust have predicted, as the immediate consequence of our abandoning all manner of restrictions. How will this state of unbounded prosperity affect the land? For every five shillings of fall in the price of the quarter of wheat, fresh districts will be abandoned by the plough. The farmer will be unable to work them at a profit, and so he will cease to grow grain. He may put steers upon them; or they may be covered with little fancy villas, or Owenite parallelograms, to suit the taste of the modern philosopher, and accomodate the additional population who are to assist in the prospective crops of calico. The cheaper corn then is, the smaller will become our home-producing surface. The chaw-bacon will be driven to the railroads, where there is already a tolerable demand for him. The flail will be silent in the barn, and the song of the reaper in the fields.

Let us suppose this to last for a few years, during which Lord John Russell – the Whigs having, in the meantime, got rid of all graduating scruples and come back to power – has taken an opportunity of enriching the peerage by elevating the redoubted Cobden to its ranks. But a change suddenly passes across the spirit of our dream. At once, and like a thunderbolt – without warning or presage – comes a famine or a war. We care not which of them is taken as an illustration. Both are calamities, unfortunately, well known in this country; and we hardly can expect that many years shall pass over our heads without the occurrence of one or other of them. Let us take the evil of man's creating – war. The Channel is filled with French shipping, and all along the coast, from Cape Ushant to Elsinore, the ports are rigidly shut. Mean time American cruisers are scouring the Atlantic, chasing our merchantmen, and embarassing communication with the colonies. Also, there is war in the Mediterranean. We have fifty, nay, a hundred points to watch with our vessels – a hundred isolated interests to maintain, and these demand an immense and yet a divided force. Convoys cannot be spared without loss of territory, and then – what becomes of us at home?

Most miserable is the prospect; and yet it does appear, if we are mad enough to abandon protection, perfectly inevitable. With but a portion of our land in tillage – an augmented population – no stored corn – no means of recalling for two years at the soonest, even if we could spare seed, and that is questionable, the dormant energies of the earth! – Can you fancy, my Lord Ashley, or you, converted Mr Escott, what Britain would be then? We will tell you. Not perhaps a prey – for we will not even imagine such degradation – but a bargainer and compounder with an inferior power or powers, whom she might have bearded for centuries with impunity, had not some selfish traitors been wicked enough to demand, and some infatuated statesmen foolish enough to grant, the abrogation of that protection which is her sole security for pre-eminence. What are all the cotton bales of Manchester in comparison with such considerations as these? O Devil's-dust – Devil's-dust! Have we really declined so far, that you are to be the Sinon to bring us to this sorry pass? Is the poisoned breath of the casuist to destroy the prosperity of those —

"Quos neque Tydides, nec Larissæus Achilles,

Non anni domuere decem, non mille carinæ!"

It may be so – for a small shard-beetle can upset a massive candle-stick; and it will be so assuredly, if the protective principle is abandoned. The first duty of a nation is to rear food for its inhabitants from the bosom of its own soil, and woe must follow if it relies for daily sustenance upon another. We can now form a fair estimate of the probable continuance of the supply, from the premature exultation exhibited in the foreign journals, and we shall be worse than fools if we do not avail ourselves of the lesson.