Published by
Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, 0X14 4RN
by arrangement with Oxford University Press.
First Edition | 1928 |
Second Edition | 1967 |
Transferred to Digital Printing 2006
ISBN 0714614564
Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure
the quality of this reprint but points out that some
imperfections in the original may be apparent
INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION
T HE first edition of this monograph has been out of print for many years. There is still a demand for it. Copies seldom enter the market and are then highly priced. In view of these circumstances reprinting was thought desirable, even though revision and enlargement of the text was not practicable. It is, therefore, presented in its original form as an essay on the significant changes in commercial and imperial policy in the 1820's with which the name of Huskisson was associated.
Since the first edition of this book two volumes on Huskisson have appeared and are mentioned here as useful supplements: The Huskisson Papers, edited by Lewis Melville (London, 1931) and Huskisson and His Age by C. R. Fay (London, 1951). The Huskisson Papers is a selection of the statesman's correspondence, from his stay in Paris during the early period of the French Revolution to his death in 1830. In one respect the selection is disappointing: it contains few letters on the critical measures of policy with which he was concerned and which were debated intensely in the houses of parliament. It contains, however, some revealing letters on political practice in the pre-Reform era, the winning of elections, the formation of ministries, the distribution of patronage, and the constant intrigues and jealousies involved in the contests for place and power among members of the governing class. It also has letters showing Huskisson's wide and acute grasp of finance and commerce and the high opinion of his judgment on these matters entertained by colleagues. On Huskisson's political milieu and associates, however, more information is found in A. Aspinall's essay, The Canningite Party, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Fourth Series, volume XVII (1934). Professor Aspinall traces in much detail the fortunes and misfortunes of the Canningite group within the Tory ranks. He illustrates convincingly a point cited in the introductory chapter of the present book that not until 1823 did Huskisson's intimate connection with Canning permit him to obtain a ministerial position which in the next four years enabled him to achieve distinguished reforms. It is fair to admit, however, that had Huskisson come to the Presidency of the Board of Trade much earlier it hardly follows that he could have carried the same measures. The temper and circumstances of the time now favoured the kind of enactments he sought. A period of reform succeeded a period of reaction; the social environment and currents of opinion in the 1820's were notably changing.
The late C. R. Fay, a memorable personality to academic friends in both England and Canada, acquired an impressive knowledge, perhaps unequalled in his day, of British commercial and imperial policy in the first half of the nineteenth century. His chief hero was Huskisson, whose life and times he undertook to write in two volumes. Huskisson and His Age, the only volume completed before his death, is at once fascinating and puzzling. It almost totally ignores the conventional rules of biography. No discernible logic but only a wayward fancy seems to dictate the order and arrangement of its contents. It opens with the dramatic death of Huskisson and only in the tenth chapter discusses his youth and education. The book illustrates again the comment of Fay's friend, Maynard Keynes, on an earlier volume that in its immense disorder there are the qualities of a work of art". It is scarcely suitable for the undergraduate, at least until he has first acquired a knowledge of the period and perhaps read an earlier book by Fay, The Corn haws and Social England. But with this reservation it is to be strongly recommended as a rewarding study. Most of its chapters are separate and enlightening tours in the social, political, and economic byways of Huskisson's age. Fay did not neglect the permanent officials who contributed to the story of reform. He paid special tribute to the formidable figure of James Deacon Hume, Huskisson's trusted ally and admirer at the Custom House, whose codification of the custom laws facilitated their reform.
Fay's gleanings in manuscripts turn up interesting items. He finds, for example, a discerning contemporary assessment of Huskisson's major reforms by Kirkman Finlay in a letter of 1826 to John Gladstone, William Ewart Gladstone's father: It is very cruel in Baring and some other persons who ought to know better to press the Government and mainly Mr. Huskisson with the attacks they do that the present ministers have done more good to trade and manufactures by the new principles they have introduced and acted on than any Ministry which has preceded them, no rational man can deny. But the rational men are quiet and say little, while the noise and nonsense get possession of the fools, who will in all kingdoms form an immense majority.
It is hardly necessary to re-emphasize that Huskisson's reforms when President of the Board of Trade were directly related to deep changes in British commercial and industrial life, the progress of inventions, the growing political power of the middle class, and a fresh outlook on the assets and liabilities of colonies which was influenced not merely by the mounting pressures within Britain's Second Empire, but indirectly by the disruption of the Spanish and Portuguese empires in South America and the opportunities thus afforded for British trade. These and allied factors continued to exert an influence in the twenty odd years after Huskisson left Wellington's ministry.
The chief governing idea in Huskisson's statecraft was that of an imperial economy, sustained not as in the past by monopoly but by preferential tariffs, and bolstered by regulations that would permit both colonies and metropolis to augment their wealth through trade with other nations on a basis of reciprocity. The idea had critics among those who wanted no interference with long-established regulations and those who wanted different devices more favourable to their own vested interests. But the British and colonial commercial classes generally welcomed the reforms. A Halifax newspaper saw the new colonial freedom introduced by Huskisson as creating a generous flame of enthusiastic and patriotic joy". Yet the important fiscal preferences, such as those on timber, corn, and sugar, primarily benefited the products of the British North American and West Indian colonies. They were not extended to the then small and remote settlements in Australia and South Africa, although in 1825 Mauritius was granted the same preference for its sugar as the West Indies. Some preferences were more prized in the colonies than others. The timber preference was not merely highly controversial in Britain but evidently for Canada a mixed blessing. There its critics asserted that it led to ill-planned and wasteful exploitation of the forest and discouraged the best forms of settlement.
