BUT if these 84,000,000 had a tariff as free as ours* — or a moderate tariff, say, or 5 or 10 per cent, on imports from England — the trade of this country with Russia would gradually and certainly increase, and as it increased our suspicions of Russia would gradually fade away, and the hostile feelings which Russia necessarily has towards us would also rapidly subside, and the blessed effects of trade, which some people call selfish and low, but which God has made to be one of the most beneficent influences among mankind — the great and blessed effects of trade, I say, would put an end to the animosity which has existed between these two great nations, and enable Russia, and ourselves also, to diminish to a large extent military expenditure, and to do what can be done to promote a happier and more tranquil condition of things throughout the continent of Europe.*
* Low or zero tariffs on overseas trade were a relatively new feature of British policy, one for which John Bright and his mentor Richard Cobden (1804-1865) could claim much of the credit. The Russians had flirted with Free Trade some years earlier, but lost their nerve and gone back back to Protectionism, which uses tax and regulation to cosset domestic producers and discourage foreign competition. Consequently, British people buying goods from Russia had few or no import duties to pay, whereas Russian people buying goods from the UK had to pay very high import duties.
* Cobden and Bright objected to Protectionism not only because it raised prices and stifled smaller businesses, but also because Protectionist politicians thought of other peoples as rivals rather than customers, and geared their economic and military policy towards beggaring or even annexing their neighbours: see David Hume on The Jealousy of Trade. Bright’s solution to Anglo-Russian relations was neither to humble Russia nor to absorb her into the Empire, but for Britain to propose a free-trade treaty like the Cobden-Chevalier Treaty of 1860, which had marked a welcome new era in Anglo-French relations. In a debate in the House on May 19th that same year, Robert Bourke, MP for King’s Lynn, reminded the Commons that European countries which had such tariff treaties with the UK had seen their economies leap, whereas those which did not were stagnating.