where our people lie under
heavy disadvantages in obtaining the raw material, and where their habits
have been formed in their particular occupation, wholly under the shelter,
and therefore upon the responsibility of the law, she has retained duties
in some cases as high as thirty per cent _ad valorem_, but yet has reduced
them to rates insignificant in comparison with those formerly charged.

"9. In her colonies, she has fixed the ordinary rules of differential
duties upon foreign productions at four and seven per cent, with
exceptions altogether trifling in amount, on which a higher charge has
been laid for special reasons.

"10. She has withdrawn the prohibition to export machinery, except so far
as regards the linen manufacture, and the spinning of the yarns employed
in it.

"11. With regard to many other articles, such as butter and cheese, indeed,
with regard to all articles to which the simple and essential interests of
the revenue will allow the same rules to be applied--it has been declared
that they are only temporarily exempted from the operations of those rules,
and it is well understood, that no time will be allowed to pass, except
such as is necessary, before the work is completed; and lastly,

"12. She has not even excluded from the benefit of these reductions the
very countries under whose simultaneous enactments, of a hostile character,
she is at this moment suffering: these advantages will be enjoyed by the
tar and cordage of Russia; by the corn and timber, the woollens, linens,
and hosiery of northern Germany; by the gloves, the boots and shoes, the
light writing-papers, the perfumery, the corks, the straw-hats, the
cottons and cambrics, the dressed skins, the thrown silk, and even (from
an incidental charge with respect to the charge of duty on the bottles)
the wines of France; by the salt provisions, the ashes, the turpentine,
the rice, the furs and skins, the sperm oil of America; and she in
particular may expect to derive advantage from the alteration in our
colonial import duties upon the great articles of flour, salt, provisions,
fish and lumber."[15]

[15] _Foreign and Colonial Review_, Vol. i. p. 235.

Such have been the sacrifices which Great Britain has recently made in
order to secure a system of free commercial enterprise throughout the
world. Let us now enquire what return she has met with for these
concessions; and the recent occurrences in this respect are detailed in
the same