THE POLICY OF ENGLAND, AND HER DEVELOPMENT.
The practice of England is at variance with her precepts. Her history does not agree with her "political economy," as taught by her sophists. Her practical economists have not followed their teachings.
A short time ago,—measuring time by the life of nations,—the English were serfs, "villeins," or painted savages, and their rulers petty feudal chiefs. They then fought with each other, or disputed the possession of their little island with the Scots, Irish, Picts, and Welsh. But Christianity brought them civilization, and foreigners taught them the arts and sciences. They improved their time, and profited by their lessons. The miners of Cornwall dug tin and copper from their barren hills and sold it to the Phoenicians, who taught them the art of making iron.
In 120, a military forge was erected at Bath, near the well-wooded hills of Monmouth shire; and the bed of iron cinders in the forest of Dean, where Roman coins were found imbedded, testify the early production of iron. But during the succeeding generation our British ancestors were neither wise nor prosperous. They spent their time in brutal civil broils or fruitless foreign wars. Their sovereigns granted monopolies to favorites. The poor were tasked to pamper the noble. Manufactures were discouraged, taxes were heavy, but the revenues were small. England had neither strength, wealth, nor power.
Necessity, however, compelled the production of iron, and as early as 1620 the de struction of the forests began to alarm the manufacturer, and the propriety of making the crude iron in the North American colonies, where timber was plentiful, was pro posed. Iron was first made in Virginia as early as 1619.
The production of crude iron was encouraged by the mother-country, but her children were not allowed to manufacture it. A heavy penalty was laid on those who erected "slitting mills," steel mills, foundries, &c., and laws were passed at a later period pro hibiting the exportation of machinery or expert mechanics from England. Thus,
England at that early day encouraged the importation of raw material, as she has done ever since, when she could not produce the article herself. But as soon as the manu facturers of England discovered that wrought iron as well as cast iron could be pro duced with pit-coal, and the fear of exhausted forests no more troubled them, the importation of pig-iron was prohibited by heavy tariffs. Only the superior Swedish and Russian bar was imported to any amount, because this class of iron could not then be made in England.
England, however, had no competitor. No other European country did or could pro duce common iron cheaper than herself, and she gave the colonies no opportunity to do so.
The amount of pig-iron exported to England by the Colonies from 1728 to 1768 was about 75,000 tons, of which 26,000 were exported from 1761 to 1768. Virginia could compete with England in the manufacture of iron, if she had not been coerced by the mother-country, who dictated what she should do, and what she should not do. Vir ginia, in consequence, with all her mineral resources, degenerated into a mere agri culturist, and a breeder of slaves.
But up to the time of Elizabeth, or, we may say, of Cromwell, England pursued no fixed policy in regard to her manufactures. The emancipation of her bone and sinew by the Reformation, and the assertion of the rights of the people under the Protector, developed the protective policy of England, and secured to her population not only equal rights, but a prudent family government, which only sought for general good in England's aggrandizement.
Since then the rulers of Great Britain have not consulted the benefit or universal good of the world as the results from their policy, but how to make England rich, prosperous, and powerful; and they have succeeded not only in this, but in conferring on the world et large tenfold the advantages which could have resulted had England continued barbarous or neglected her own vital interests.