III.ECONOMIC REFORM
In another department the Utilitarians boasted,and also with good reason,of the triumph of their tenets,Political economy was in the ascendant.Professorships were being founded in Oxford,Cambridge,10London,and Edinburgh,Mrs.
Marcet's Conversations (1818)were spreading the doctrine among babes and sucklings,the Utilitarians were the sacred band who defended the strictest orthodoxy against all opponents.They spoke as recognised authorities upon some of the most vital questions of the day,of which I need here only notice Free Trade,the doctrine most closely associated with the teaching of their revered Adam Smith.In 1816Ricardo remarks with satisfaction that the principle 'is daily obtaining converts'even among the most prejudiced classes;and he refers especially to a petition in which the clothiers of Gloucestershire 11expressed their willingness to give up all restrictions.There was,indeed,an important set-off against this gain,the landowners were being pledged to protection,they had decided that in spite of the peace,the price of wheat must be kept up to 80s.
A quarter,they would no longer be complimented as Adam Smith had complimented them on their superior liberality,and were now creating a barrier only to be stormed after a long struggle.Meanwhile the principle was making rapid way among their rivals.One symptom was the adoption by the London merchants in 1820of a famous petition on behalf of free trade.12It was drawn up by Thomas Tooke (1774-1858),who had long been actively engaged in the Russian trade,and whose History of Prices is in some respects the most valuable economic treatise of the time.Tooke gives a curious account of his action on this occasion.13He collected a few friends engaged in commerce,who were opposed to the corn laws.He found that several of them had 'crude and confused'notions upon the subject,and that each held that his own special interests should be exempted on some pretext from the general rule.After various dexterous pieces of diplomacy,however,he succeeded in obtaining the signature of Samuel Thornton,a governor of the bank of England,and ultimately procured a sufficient number of signatures by private solicitation,He was favourably received by the Prime Minister Lord Liverpool,and Vansittart (then Chancellor of the Exchequer),and finally got the petition presented to the House of Commons by Alexander Baring (afterwards Lord Ashburton).Tooke remarks that the Liverpool administration was in advance,not only of the public generally,but of the 'mercantile community.'Glasgow and Manchester,however,followed in the same steps,and the petition became a kind of official manifesto of the orthodox doctrine.
The Political Economy Club formed next year at Tooke's instigation (April 18,1821)was intended to hasten the process of dispersing crude and confused ideas.It was essentially an organ of the Utilitarian propaganda.
The influence of the economists upon public policy was shown by the important measures carried through chiefly by Huskisson,Huskisson (1770-1830)was a type of the most intelligent official of his time.Like his more brilliant friend Canning,he had been introduced into office under Pitt,and retained a profound reverence for his early leader.Huskisson was a thorough man of business,capable of wrestling with blue-books,of understanding the sinking-fund,and having theories about the currency;a master of figures and statistics and the whole machinery of commerce.Though eminently useful,he might at any moment be applying some awkward doctrine from Adam Smith.
Huskisson began the series of economic reforms which were brought to their full development by Peel and Gladstone.The collection of his speeches 14incidentally brings out very clearly his relation to the Utilitarians.The most remarkable is a great speech of April 24,182615(upon the state of the silk manufacture),of which Canning declared that he had never heard one abler,or which made a deeper impression upon the House.In this he reviews his policy,going over the most important financial measures of the preceding period.They made a new era,and he dates the beginning of the movement from the London petition,and the 'luminous speech'made by Baring when presenting it.We followed public opinion,he says,and did not create it.16Adopting the essential principles of the petition,the government had in the first place set free the great woollen trade.The silk trade had been emancipated by abolishing the Spitalfield Acts passed in the previous century,which enabled magistrates to fix the rates of wages.The principle of prohibition had been abandoned,though protective duties remained.The navigation laws had been materially relaxed,and steps taken towards removing restrictions of different kinds upon trade with France and with India.One symptom of the change was the consolidation of the custom law effected by James Deacon Hume (1774-1842),an official patronised by Huskisson,and an original member of the Political Economy Club.By a law passed in 1825,five hundred statutes dating from the time of Edward I were repealed,and the essence of the law given in a volume of moderate size.Finally,the removal of prohibitions was undermining the smugglers.
The measures upon which Huskisson justly prided himself might have been dictated by the Political Economy Club itself.So far as they went they were an application of the doctrines of its thoroughgoing members,of Mill,Ricardo,and the orthodox school.