650 fotes of the Month on [June, 
shame of our commercial code. As to the gratitude of foreigners for our 
custom, it will be pretty much the same in both cases ; for a Portuguese 
vineyard-owner looks upon thé Englishman as much a heretic as the 
Frenchman possibly can; and the only question is, our own convenience. 
_ The old supposition that Portugal must perish unless London burns its 
throat with bad port, and plunders its pocket to fill that of Lisbon and 
Oporto, is nonsense: Portugal will keep up its connexion with England 
as long as it can, for the sufficient and only reason that Portugal or any 
foreign nation ever thinks about—its own interest. Let it break up its 
English’ alliance, and it falls into the jaws of Spain; and this it will 
avoid at all risques, if it never sold a bottle. But then we are 
told, that France will not lower its duties on our manufactures, 
and take five thousand bales of Manchester cottons, or five thousand 
bags of Sheffield nails, which France does not want, in consideration 
of our taking five thousand hogsheads of cheap, good, and palatable 
wine, which England does want. This has been the argument of 
all the wiseacres, for the time being, and will always be, until 
some man of common sense, if such a man is ever to be minister, 
brings in a bill to let us buy claret as cheap as we can—and we can 
import it into London, from the South, at a lower rate than they can 
buy it in Paris ; then the wiseacres will change their hereditary choras 
and all will be wonder at ministerial sagacity. And this is no emanation 
of the free-trade system, no offspring of the mischievous foolery of the 
Huskisson school. We have no vineyards to be plucked up in the 
collision of the trades, no wine-growers to bid wait without food for 
the next fifty years, till “the supremacy of the steam-engine, and the 
vigour of British credit, beat foreign rivalry out of the market,” and 
similar stuff. The whole advantage would actually be on our side ; for 
we should have good wine instead of bad, and wine for a sixth or a 
tenth of the price that is now extorted from us. Even, if there were 
lovers of the gout and palsy still among us, they might enjoy their 
favourite aliment on easier terms, for the inevitable consequence would 
be to lower the rate of all foreign wines together ; the Portugal market 
being now a monopoly, and as it has been declared, of the most scanda- — 
lous kind, But the statesman must be shortsighted, who cannot see, in 
the admission of French wines, a rapid completion of his object as to. 
reciprocal trade. . The French vintager commencing an intercourse 
with England in one commodity will naturally extend it to others ; 
English money in his hands, will allow him the opportunity of indulging 
his taste in the purchase of English goods, The prohibitions which — 
now exist, will gradually give way to the national wish. France will — 
discover how far it may be for her advantage to withdraw the restraints on 
manufactures which she cannot provide for herself as cheap as we can 
sell to her. ‘The Anglomanie is common among our neighbours, and it — 
would not then be confined to our dandyisms and affectations. =~ i ; 
The final argument of the wiseacres, that we should be enriching an — 
enemy, is just as palpable nonsense as the rest. All the money that 
France could make by the opening of the wine trade for the next twenty 
years, and have so far disposable as to be at the service of government, 
would not equip a single seventy-four. |The money would go in good ~ 
living, in cleanlier clothes, in more decent cottages, in more cows and 
pigs, chickens and cabbages; it would be as much beyond the grasp of 
government as the dinner of last Lord Mayor’s Day. But it would have 
an expenditure of the highest advantage to both countries. Commercial 
