ART. IV. On Protection to Agriculture. By David Ricardo, Esq. 8vo. pp. 94. 3s. Murray. 1822. ART. V. Practical Observations on Mr. Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. By John Stuckey Reynolds, Esq. 8vo. pp. 99. 4s. Longman and Co. ART. VI. Considerations upon the Agriculture, Commerce, and Manufactures of the British Empire, with Observations on Mr. Peel's Bill, &c. and on Mr. Ricardo's Pamphlet, entitled “ Protection to Agriculture." By Samuel Turner, Esq. F. R. S. 8vo. pp. 111. 3s. 6d. Murray. 3 IT is mortifying to make the admission, but we are impelled to acknowlege that every day subtracts something from our confidence in the general positions of political economists; although their definitions, problems, demonstrations, (as they have been sometimes called in very unwarrantable language,) and their corollaries, are often so skilfully and ingeniously wrought together as to bear the similitude of truth, and to carry with them a persuasion which only a second and more subtle examination can efface. The doctrines, as Mr. Turner well observes, that agricultural distress proceeds not from excessive taxation but from superabundant produce, — that taxes are paid not by producers but by consumers, that high rents are the consequence, not the cause, of high prices, that taxes which affect the whole community, such as a property-tax, do no injury to any person, and various other similar paradoxes, are far too congenial with the interests of ministers and their adherents, to cause it to be a matter of wonder that they eagerly catch at any semblance of an argument to support such convenient speculations. Of this deseription, likewise, is the doctrine of a perfect identity of interests among all classes of the community; being an attempt to reconcile the simple-minded farmer to his own ruin, by directing his imagination to the prosperity of the fundholder and manufacturer when they are thriving at his expence, and sucking the very marrow from his bones; - "Ah! who can hold a fire in his hand By thinking on the frosty Caucasus, Or wallow naked in December's snow Of this description, also, is the doctrine of the impossibility that two rates of profit can co-exist in a country, when every body knows that there are twenty, arising from the im practicability of transferring capital and the personal acquirements of skill from one business to another. Let us take the case of a farmer, again, who invested two or three thousand pounds pounds six years ago in cultivating his landlord's estate: he sunk two-thirds of the money at first, in ditching, marling, draining, and stocking it with implements and horses: the other third, carefully laid by for contingencies, has gone for rent in the course of the last three years; the proceeds of his farm during the last three years having been entirely swallowed up by parochial rates, taxes, wages of labour, and the maintenance of his family. He is now insultingly told that, if farming be a speculation which does not answer, he may transfer his capital to something else! Where is his capital? annihilated. Then as to the personal skill and knowlege of a farmer and his labourers, can they be transferred? — can a farmer be converted into a man-milliner, and employ the iron fingers of his ploughman in filling bobbins or stitching buttonholes? Mr. Reynolds takes Mr. Ricardo's work on the " Principles of Political Economy" as a text book, and comments with various success on different passages; sometimes, we think, without throwing much light either on his author or his subject. His notions respecting taxes and the national debt are not a little singular. Insensible to the varied charms of her daughters, he is deeply enamoured of the matron graces of the mother herself, whose portly bulk and lofty carriage are more attractive to his eyes than the restless, roguish, and tormenting antics of her innumerable progeny; he toys, however, now and then, with the latter, but so cautiously as not to excite the jealousy of his favorite mistress. It may be stated,' says Mr. Reynolds, as the general result of taxes, that, under ordinary circumstances, they take accumulated labour from individuals, or annual produce from productive labourers, whether employed in agriculture, manufactories, or otherwise, and transfer it to labourers who do not produce, and that they require from all the different classes of society either additional labour or diminished consumption.' This is very well: let us go on: A government may, by taxation and loans, take from the people not only the net surplus of their revenue, but a portion of their accumulated labour, and even of their "active capital." A nation may in consequence be put to inconvenience or distress but it does not admit of argument, that by no means, except by * With reference to Mr. Ricardo's statement, p. 164., I am not quite sure that this was not the case in Great Britain during the latter part of 1814, and the beginning of 1815; if it were so, however, the deficiency was speedily made up by the diminished expenditure of the government in the months immediately ensuing.' contracting debts in a foreign country, can a nation in one year anticipate the revenue of a future year. Whatever is raised by taxes, whatever is obtained by loans and expended within the year, must come either out of the revenue of that year, or from the accumulated labour pre-existing in the country. An individual may anticipate his next year's income and expend it, but thanks to the Almighty, with a nation this is impossible. A very slight knowledge of political economy will therefore be sufficient to carry conviction to the mind, that no loan negociated three or four years ago can have any effect on the existing state of this country.' If a loan negotiated three or four years ago has no effect on the existing state of the country, à fortiori, neither can any loan which was negotiated thirty or forty years since; nor, consequently, all the accumulated loans which constitute the national debt. This must be a most convenient theory to all future Chancellors of Exchequer, not to say a word about the present. When the expenditure of a nation continues year after year to exceed its revenue, it may, in plain unsophisticated language, be said to anticipate its future income; like the poor Irish Redemptioners who cross the Atlantic, it mortgages its future liberty and labor for an immediate maintenance. In separating the case of an indivídual from that of a nation, a fanciful distinction is drawn without any real difference. If we understand Mr. Reynolds, his meaning is this an indi vidual may anticipate his next year's income because he can borrow of his friend: but a nation, if it contracts no debts in a foreign country, can only borrow from itself. Its wealth, therefore, can never be exhausted; that which it pays with the right hand it receives with the left: there is a rapid circulation of wealth without any loss, since all that is raised from the people in one shape returns to them in another by means of the public expenditure; the dew which rises from the surface falls again in gentle showers to refresh the soil from which it rose. We should be sorry to mistake his meaning, and therefore let Mr. R. be his own commentator: The agriculturists, accustomed to speak against taxation during the war, when by its operation, their rents were increased, infinitely beyond the amount they paid in taxes, now feel the difference, and universally join in deprecating taxation, they call for a reduction in the "wasteful and extravagant expenditure", of government; or, in other words, a reduction of consumption, in order to remedy-what? An evil, arising from excess of production beyond demand.* Surely the readers of Mrs. Marcet must be amused with this profound specimen of modern logic.' -- If the amount received for taxes were expended by government on luxuries only, to take off those taxes and discontinue the expenditure, would diminish the consumption of luxuries the producers might be ruined the accumulated labour, however, instead of being consumed, would remain with individuals—it would soon operate to raise wages, more than the discharge of those employed to produce luxuries could diminish them it would therefore increase the consumption of agricultural produce. The very reverse however is the fact; the main bulk of the taxes is expended in agricultural produce, or in the payment of such moderate wages to individuals as enable them to consume few other things. The persons who now pay taxes, are in general enabled to command the necessaries of life; any diminution in those taxes, therefore, though it may, and as we see by the revenue does increase the demand for luxuries, cannot increase the demand for agricultural produce whilst the direct and obvious tendency of all reductions in the army, navy, or in other departments of government, is to prevent the individuals reduced, from consuming the agricultural produce they have been accustomed to do to increase the number of labourers in the market -to lower the wages of labour and consequently to diminish the consumption of agricultural produce, and increase the existing distress of that important class of the community. If all existing taxes, and with them all the national debt were swept away, the only effect would be, to enable some individuals to consume more, and to require others to consume less, and in the existing state of society the direct effect of such a measure, would be to diminish and not increase the consumption of agricultural produce.* To put the case in another view : If the government of a nation take a part of its annual produce for many years, to maintain a portion of the people in idleness, and suddenly cease to take that annual produce, and to maintain the people; is it not evident, that such produce will remain in the hands of some of the individuals of that nation? • If the government during the period in question, had given the people it maintained, sufficient to enable them to live well, to be well clothed, and well armed, and had taken the surplus pro * It might be curious to trace how far the presence of, and contributions to the allies, assisted the agriculture of France, by withdrawing capital, &c., and enabling the supply to suit itself to the demand, delaying, if not entirely mitigating the evils the agriculturists of other nations are suffering. It might be equally curious to enquire how far the late discussions on the poor laws (thought to be so necessary for the farmers' relief), have operated to prevent the consumption of agricultural produce in this country, and thereby assisted to overload the market, and add to the existing evils under which the agriculturists are suffering. "A man's heart deviseth his way; but the Lord directeth his steps.' "Proverbs xvi. v. 9. duce of the nation in the shape of corn, cloth, &c. for that purpose, would not those be the commodities which would be left in the hands of the individuals until the direction of the capital employed in producing them, had been changed?' A number of queries follow, having the same instructive. tendency; namely, to prove that the country is benefited rather than injured by the expenditure of government. If the nation, says the writer (p. 81.), has annually borrowed forty millions, it has saved twice that sum; and, unless the evidence of every sense that we have means nothing, the nation is now richer in all that constitutes riches than it was before the first 100l. was borrowed. Here Mr. Reynolds betrays a little inconsistency. We had before been told that a loan negotiated three or four years ago had no effect on the existing state of the country;' now, it seems it has a very important effect, for the nation is actually become richer by the operation of its national debt; - during the whole period of its expenditure the national wealth or accumulation has continued to increase.' (P. 80.) The payment of the interest on the debt is only a transfer of a part of the labor of the whole community to a seleet number, who, either by themselves or their ancestors, have chosen to lend the state their accumulated labor rather than expend it themselves. If they had so expended it, ‘I may be allowed to doubt,' says Mr. R., whether, taking into the estimate, the increased labor which has resulted from taxation, the nation would have had greater riches than it has now.' Nothing can be more gross and preposterous, than the daring attempt to persuade the people of any country that its government can manage their property better than they who earned it; or that they who have labored to acquire wealth expend it with less regard to economy and reproduction, than others who receive it for doing nothing. It was not a very uncommon notion, a few years ago, that, when money raised from the people in taxes is afterward expended among them, the sum total of national wealth is undiminished. Mr. Reynolds has enlightened our understanding on this subject, and assisted us in solving the problem: wealth, we find, consists in commodities, commodities are produced by labor, and increased labor has resulted from taxation. Yes it has, indeed; people labor, in the first instance, to obtain the means of paying taxes; and having paid them, they must labor as much again to get back a part of these taxes from those who receive them, in exchange for still more labor in the shape of commodities. Such is the. solution of the problem that taxes spent at home find their |