From the archive, 24 March 1841: Editorial: Anti-free trade

The Morning Herald of yesterday, speaking of Wednesday's meeting of the Manchester Town Council, says that there, for the first time, "were the creeds and aspirations of our cotton lords fully developed;" and that "the utter abandonment, by these soi-disant philosophers in trade, of every moral principle and generous sympathy, was never before so unblushingly avowed."

These are hard words. What are they founded upon? Upon nothing, that we can discover, save that our merchants, in trading with the Brazils or with Cuba, are not willing to give away their goods, but desire to sell them. We never yet heard of a British merchant who refused to trade with the Brazils, or with any other country, because it still recognised the existence of slavery. It is of the essence of the British commercial spirit to push our manufactures into every land where they can be disposed of to advantage; and we have never heard of any impediment to commerce founded upon such a fact as that the moral state of the country with which our interchange of commodities took place was not such as we could conscientiously approve of. Christian or Jew, Pagan or Mussulman, it is all, so far as commercial intercourse is concerned, the same thing to us.

Not only is this the case as regards general questions of morals or faith; it is also the case as regards the existence of slavery. We have never heard it even asserted, that any restrictions should be imposed on our selling transactions with the United States, or with France, or Spain, or the Brazils, because those countries have not abolished slavery; and, so long as we are permitted to sell to them, it follows that we must also buy from them. No man would send out goods to a foreign country, but in the expectation of receiving profitable returns; and it is sheer hypocrisy, as well as the worst of folly, to say, that a merchant ought to abstain from the chance of getting such returns, because the article that the country with which he trades has to dispose of, is something produced by slave-labour.

The cotton, woollen, or linen goods, or the crockery or hardware, exported to the slave-holding country, are either clothing for slaves or for their masters who live upon their labour, or domestic stores or manufacturing utensils for their use. There is as direct an encouragement to slavery in the selling to the countries where that wretched form of society exists, as in the buying from them. But would any man on that account propose that we should abandon the largest and most profitable portion of our export trade? – that we should starve the labouring classes of free-born Englishmen at home, through spite that we cannot emancipate the negro slaves of other countries?