Applause and hisses.] You have got skill, you have
got capital, and you have got machinery enough to manufacture goods for
the whole population of the globe. You could turn out fourfold as much
as you do, if you only had the market to sell in. It is not so much the
want, therefore, of fabric, though there may be a temporary obstruction
of it; but the principal and increasing want--increasing from year to
year--is, where shall we find men to buy what we can manufacture so
fast? [Interruption, and a voice, "The Morrill tariff," and applause.]
Before the American war broke out, your warehouses were loaded
with goods that you could not sell. [Applause and hisses.] You had
over-manufactured; what is the meaning of over-manufacturing but this:
that you had skill, capital, machinery, to create faster than you had
customers to take goods off your hands? And you know that rich as Great
Britain is, vast as are her manufactures, if she could have fourfold
the present demand, she could make fourfold riches to-morrow; and
every political economist will tell you that your want is not cotton
primarily, but customers. Therefore, the doctrine, how to make
customers, is a great deal more important to Great Britain than the
doctrine how to raise cotton. It is to that doctrine I ask from you,
business men, practical men, men of fact, sagacious Englishmen--to
that point I ask a moment's attention. [Shouts of "Oh, oh!" hisses, and
applause.] There are no more continents to be discovered. [Hear, hear!]
The market of the future must be found--how? There is very little hope
of any more demand being created by new fields. If you are to have a
better market there must be some kind of process invented to make the
old fields better. [A voice, "Tell us something new," shouts of order,
and interruption.] Let us look at it, then. You must civilize the world
in order to make a better class of purchasers. [Interruption.] If you
were to press Italy down again under the feet of despotism, Italy,
discouraged, could draw but very few supplies from you. But give her
liberty, kindle schools throughout her valleys, spur her industry, make
treaties with her by which she can exchange her wine, and her oil, and
her silk for your manufactured goods; and for every effort that you
make in that direction there will come back profit to you by increased
traffic with her. [Loud applause.] If Hungary asks to be an unshackled
nation--if by freedom she will rise in virtue an