The Industrial Revolution

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1027928145

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-159926

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Cunningham, William http://d-nb.info/gnd/128907487

Title:: The Industrial Revolution

Place of publication:: Cambridge

Publisher:: The University Press

Year of publication:: 1922

Scope:: xxii S., S. 404-886

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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868 POSTSCRIPT the subject. “I think,” he wrote in 1785 to John Adams, whose views, like those of Franklin, were in close accord with his own, “all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty’.” But events proved too strong for the young Republic. Both France and England were anxious to maintain their own commercial systems, and though it was possible to adjust trade differences with France? the English shipowners were unwilling that the Americans should com- pete with them on even terms in any branch of trade®. Had the Bill¢ which Pitt drafted in 1783 been adopted, America might have grown up as a Free Trade state, but Fox and his supporters® succeeded in maintaining the exclusive policy of the Navigation Act. American statesmen had reason to fear that their nascent commerce would be crushed out of exist- ence. It thus came about that, under English influence, the inclinations of the leaders of opinion in America were modified? ; the transatlantic Republic, which adopted internal freedom of commerce and industry with enthusiasm, did not rely on the new principles for foreign trade, but set herself to carry on the old nationalist tradition in the New World. The ideal of perfectly free commercial intercommunication and roused Was not abandoned, however; it took a hold of the imagina- i J tions of the Englishmen who agitated against the high pro- ea tective duties on corn, which pressed so severely after 1815 yf tks Gore o0 the manufacturers and the poor. The principles of the ’ Anti-Corn-Law League were so clear that anyone who opposed them seemed to be actuated by selfish prejudices rather than by any reasonable objection. The Free Traders were con- vinced that if England took the bold course, and abandoned her merely nationalist system, all other countries would be inspired by her example. The national prosperity of England has increased by leaps and bounds since 1848. far beyond the i Randolph, Memosrs, Correspondence, ete. of Thomas Jefferson, 1. 264. On political grounds Jefferson would have preferred that American citizens should keep to rural pursuits and not develop commerce, or manufacturing. Tucker. Life of Jefferson, 1. 200, also Notes on Virginia, 275. ? McMaster in Cambridge Modern History, vir. 823. 8 See p. 674 above. V CommBns Journals, xxx1x. 239 ; Leone Levi, op. cit. 57. 5 Compare Disraeli’s speech in 8 Hansard rxvr., Feb. 14, 1843. 8 Austin, Soundness of the policy of protecting domestic Manufactures, 1817. Hamilton, Report on Manufactures, pv. 4. 31.

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