Note 97 — Chapter VIII

It was on this occasion that I first appeared before the public as a politician. Following in the wake, but a long way astern, of Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Gladstone, I addressed a number of letters to Lord John Russell, which appeared in the ‘Morning Herald,’ and were afterwards republished in a pamphlet. They had a very large circulation, and caused considerable excitement among shipowners at the time. They were written in a homely style, commencing, “I am a plain man of business, daily to be found at my office in one of the City lanes, in the midst of my clerks, in the centre of a large dingy room. Business is my politics, not politics my business. If I have a leaning it is towards Free-trade principles,” and so forth. But I soon learned that my “principles,” as I laid them down, were, however plausible, fundamentally and radically wrong. Sound enough they no doubt were, if all nations had been prepared to adopt them; and if they could have been applied to the world at large, no system could have been more perfect. But, unfortunately, Foreign States were not prepared to adopt Free-trade; and if we adopted retaliation against those which did not, we reverted to Protection in its most pernicious form. Consequently we pursued the policy most likely to suit our own interests, and very wisely did not attempt to enforce it on other nations. Therein Government was right and I was wrong.