This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1860 edition. Excerpt: ...proportion of the goods sent to France in 1858, amounting to 9,819,000, raw materials, upon which no labour whatever had been employed, and the great bulk of which were not of British origin, but merely passed through our warehouses, were 8,070,000, and half-manufactured articles were 1,060,000. The total amount of manufactures which we send abroad every year is about 130,000,000; but in 1858 our exports of manufactured goods to France were only 688,000. It is worth while to go yet one step further in the analysis. Of that 688,000, 208,000 were for Cashmere shawls, which merely came here in transit, and 217,000 for machinery, which our friends over the water have been pleased to admit under some notion of special advantage. The value of all the other manufactured articles sent from the United Kingdom to France was 263,000. I want to know whether that is a state of things so satisfactory that when we have an opportunity of amending it we should refuse to do so. I understand the statement of the moderate free-trader who says that half a loaf is better than no bread, that all breaking down of restrictions is good, and that it is wiser to break down our own restrictions and leave those of our neighbour standing if we cannot touch them than to perpetuate both. That is true and reasonable; but I cannot understand those immoderate and unmanageable free-traders who come from other quarters, many of whom have not long been thus fastidious and jealous on behalf of free trade in its most rigid purity, and who seem to think it is a positive evil to induce our neighbours to break down their restrictions. They do not see that what they condemn is a doubling of the benefit. They think there is a...