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C_^ORN LAWS. 
 
 EXTRACTS -v,^ /— ' — ^ 
 
 FROM THE WORKS' OF -M^**-^ 
 
 :0L. T. PEERONET /THOMPSON, 
 
 AUTHOR OF THE "CATECHISM ON'f'HE CORN LAWS." 
 
 ^elected and CiassiSed by 2?. Cobden, IHsQ., 2^.P., and published witb 
 tlie ccnseat of tUe zi-utbor. 
 
 PBOPiiECiT. — " So long as the necessi- ; 
 of the state can be supplied without any i 
 lavkable alteration in the present mode of | 
 lection, the Cora Laws may have a cliance I 
 stand. But the first necessity for any 
 luii;e, will probably bring them in ruins i 
 an the heads of the monopolists. For in- 
 Ince, the first proposal of a Property Tax — | 
 lich is a thing already whispered as po?si- | 
 I — would set all who have properly, on the I 
 [covery, that the Property Ta.^ was only a | 
 jscripijon to maintaixi the landlords in an | 
 Ijust gain. It is in fact totally incredible ! 
 any nation would acquiesce in the im- j 
 Irsition of a Property Ta-v, when the whole ; 
 Icessify and demand for such an infliction i 
 ise out of the determination of the do 
 [nanl party to lay restraints upon the in- j 
 [stry of the community." — V'ol. I., p. 94, 
 \estmlmUr Review, 1 July, 18^29. 
 
 Another Prediction. "Ye.s, — the : 
 
 36 is to be commuted, not into a perma- I 
 [nt payment in money, but into a per ^ 
 luent payment of so many quarters of , 
 or the value thereof. And what is j 
 |e effect of this? Manifestly to attach 
 interests of the clergy for ever and for 
 r to the conservation of the Corn Laws, j 
 [clergyman is to receive annually the value ' 
 I, say 100 quarters of corn. If corn is at 
 quarter, he is to have £400 a-year; 
 |id if at 20s., he is to have £100. But : 
 J>rhaps somebody will say, this is only ^ 
 jaking the subitantial value of the clergy- 
 
 man's income permanent, or the same under 
 all variations of the price of com. No, 
 !~impleton, it is not; it is giving him a great 
 deal more when corn is dear, and a great 
 deal less when it is cheap. It makes it all 
 the same to him, ivi!h respect to that portion 
 of his income which he expend." on corn; but 
 with respect to ail the rest, it malies him 
 partake in the great plot to pillage every 
 industry in the counti-y for the benetit of tho 
 owners of the rent of land. If the clergyman 
 when he has £400 a-year spends £100 of 
 it upon bread or agricultural produce, he 
 gets exactly the same bread which he would 
 for £2o when corn was a quarter the price 
 and his income £100. But for the remain- 
 ing £300, does he get no more than he 
 would get under the other circumstances for 
 the £751 Is it not plain that he receives 
 just the sarae advaiitagt? as any other corn 
 lord ? — in other words, that he has the same 
 interest in keeping up the pillage of ihs 
 commercial and manufacturing ccmmimity. 
 Do the wages of industry and the price of 
 manufactured goods rise fourfold when com 
 rises fourfold .i* If they did, what tempta- 
 tion would there be to the landlords to 
 maintain the Corn Laws? It is because 
 they do not rise in the same proportion, 
 that the landlords persist in their iniquity, 
 and that Hull must be half a Hull, till 
 we can muster sense, and spirit, and unioa, 
 to bring them to a composition." — Vol. 
 IV., p. 68. Letters oj a Representative , 
 10 Feb., 1836. 
 
 • Exercises, Political and others, by Lietit. Colonel T. Perronet Thoniyson, in 6 Tolume*. 
 
 Effingham AVilson, Loudon. 
 [j. GADSBY, PRINTER, MANCHESTER.] . • 
 
 ivil88501 
 
tXCHANQB 
 2 
 
 rtri^- 
 
 EXCh 
 
 POT^lTICAL ECONOMY. 
 "The proper business of every man and 
 every hour, is to know as much as he can 
 pf political economy. Not but it iniay also 
 be desirable that lie should learn something 
 •1' arithmetic and book-keeping by double 
 entry, be acquainted with the properties of 
 the lever and inclined plane, and have a 
 portion of information touching the nature 
 of the planetary motions and the divisions 
 of the surface of the terraqueous globe. But 
 all these acquirements may only render him 
 a useful slave; and the other is the educa- 
 lion which must enable him to keep the 
 benefit of his labours for himself. It has 
 indeed long been defined to be the science 
 e.f preventing our iiiUters from defrauding 
 ns; -which is sLifli-iint to account for its 
 being eagerly pmsued on one hand, and 
 Tilified on the other."— Vol. IL, p. 167. IT'. 
 B.., 1 Jaly, 1832. 
 
 " Political economy might not unreasona- 
 bly be defined, the art of preventing ourselves 
 from being plundered by our betters. It is 
 Ihe grand expositor of the peccadilloes of 
 those who volunteer to benefit mankind by 
 ■governing; itsprofessors form the great Anti- 
 felony Associ;.\ti(m of modern times. It 
 picks up swindlers of all calibres, as the IJoc 
 does elephants ; and is a very ferret to the 
 rermin that nestle in our bariis and manu- 
 factories."— Vol. II., p. 15. \\\ E., 1 Jan., 
 1832. 
 
 "Object of the science which has been 
 known by the title of Political Economy.— 
 First, wluU it is not. It does not mean a 
 politic economizing at the expt-nse of the 
 poor. Next then, what it is. 
 
 " Economy means ' keeping a house in 
 erder.' 
 
 " Political , is that which 'relates to the 
 many.' 
 
 _ " Mrs. Marcpt's then, was the best defini- 
 tion of Political Economy. What domestic 
 economy is to a family," that Political Eco- 
 nomy is to a nation. 
 
 "^National Eco/iomy,' after ihe Germans, 
 is a better term. If it had been always used, 
 the ideas of the public would have been 
 tauch clearer on the subject than they are. 
 
 " National Economy has for its object the 
 best means of obtaining and distributing 
 wealth. But what is!fea/;/t ? 
 
 " Werilth is well-being. ' In all time of 
 •ur tribulation, in all time of our icealih.' 
 
 " National Economy then, applies to the 
 raising up of the greatest quantity of happi- 
 aess, through the instrumentality of the 
 products of industry. And what good thing 
 is there that is not affected from this cause ? 
 
 I "National Economy therefore is the 
 j proper business of every man and every 
 
 hour. We all practise it, either good or 
 I bad; like Ivlolidre's man, who witiiout 
 j knowing it, had all his life been speaking 
 j prose. 
 
 " It is thi science, in fact, of preventing 
 
 our being defrauded bv our betters." — Vol. 
 
 I v., p. 370. Lectures, 'Dec, 1 836. 
 
 The Poor. Rates.— "The Poor Rates are 
 God and nature'sjadgment on the dishonesty 
 of the landed interest in shutting up the in- 
 dustry oi the country by Act of Parliament; 
 '■ the einhteen-peiitiy cliihlren arc cafiiuf then 
 7ip.' Every poor man, agricultural or other, 
 that is brought ujipn the poor-rales for relief, 
 is brought there by the immediate act of the 
 j men who lord it over bim at quarter ses- 
 sions and parish vestries, as much as if they 
 liaJ made an Act of Parliament saying, ' Be it 
 enacted, tliat Hob Carter and Giles Plough- 
 man, shall never have a shilling in their 
 pockets without the squire of the parish, 
 taking sixprnce of it to keep liis coach- 
 horses.' The rural population will be long 
 before they see tins ; b!.:t all things aro found 
 out in time. Tlie object of the squirearchy 
 noil-, is to preserve the wrong and get rid o'f 
 the penalty. The whole system of Pf or Rate 
 economizing, if not combined with taking off 
 the r<!ilricti<iiis tluit create the poor, is only 
 improving the machinery f.r making tlie 
 poor die quietly, and with the least distur- 
 bance to those who live sumptuously jy 
 grinding them down."'— Vol. III., p', 69. 
 Progr. to Jr. E., 1 Jpril, 1834. 
 
 Wages and Foop.— "It is not true that 
 when corn rises, th« labourers will obtain 
 the same real wages as before. For coru 
 can only rise in consequence of its being 
 scarce ; and to say the labourers get the 
 same real w.iges when food is scarce as 
 when it is plentiful, is to say they get 
 as much food when it is not there as when ^ 
 
 it is. If the rise in the price of food is 
 permanent, their numbers will not be kept 
 up." — Vol. IV., p. 4S9. Catechism on the 
 Laws. 
 
 MASTERS AND MEN. 
 " There will always be working men de- 
 siring to have more than they get, and masters 
 desiring to pay less than they do; and be- 
 tween thewe there may always be a sort of 
 coitest going on, and it is very likely that 
 no way will ever be hit upon, for reducing 
 the matter to a settled rule which shall 
 equally satisfy all parties. But this is no 
 excuse for anybody's overlooking the truth, 
 that there are great and common interests 
 
iu seeing the general concern go on with as 
 much of success as it is possible to give it. 
 The working men may be always inierested 
 in receiving a shillint; more, and the master 
 in paying a sliilling less, anil yet this not at 
 all affect the fact, that the prosperity of the 
 eoncern at large is what all jnust stand by, 
 and that this is the thing which will settle 
 all disputes, by making the master as glad 
 to pay liigher wages, as he now is to pay 
 smaller. If any man says, the master is a 
 keen hand, and will never pay the higher 
 ■wages if the smaller ones will do; answer, 
 that it is just because the smaller will not 
 do, that he will pay the higher. An im- 
 proved trade brings better profits, and more 
 •f them to the master; and the first thing 
 this puts him upon, is bidding fer more and 
 better hands, for the sake of what he shall 
 get by it; and so he serves out one portion 
 of his increased profits in increased wages, 
 to secure the other." — Vol. V., p. 234. 
 
 " The strength of the oppressors of in- 
 dustry at the present hour, lies in the ten- 
 dency of men to look for what the Spanish 
 proverb calls 'better bread than is made of j 
 vheat.' They are gazing after some great 1 
 •hange they expect from the heavens, and j 
 all the time the liitle earthly pickpockets 
 are ridding them of their substance. To 
 have gornl trade where it can be got, and 
 ■with it good wages and good profits, is really 
 all there is in trade, and ever will be. — Vol. 
 v., p. 452. 
 
 POPULATION. 
 " It is a cruel joke to talk about the evils 
 of an increasing population, when that po- 
 pulation is cut off by law from the power of 
 Belling the produce of its labour, for the in- 
 terest of a robber caste ; who tell us plainly, 
 that like the French noblesse, they will pay 
 no taxes, unless they may have liberty 
 to take the amount again from other people, 
 and who, if speedy change of mind be not 
 Touchsafed them, will come to the same 
 rough end."— Vol. II., p. 269, W. E., 1 
 Oct., 1832. 
 
 " The time is not far off when the public 
 ■will discover, that the true criterion of the 
 general happiness, the real measure of a 
 home statesman's talent, is in the degree in 
 ■which he provides for the honest gratifica- 
 tion of the master passion, the tyrant in- 
 stinct, which alone sustains the tragedy of 
 life, and prevents its comedy from being 
 coHtemptible. To put the proposition iu 
 mathematical terms, the fluxion of the popu- 
 lation is the measure of the public happi- 
 aess. What a hateful world would tliis have 
 
 been, if in addition to all the other ills of 
 life, it had been really true, that man was 
 sent here only to wink and nod at lovely 
 woman through the grate of the preventive 
 check. For moderate prudence, decent fore- 
 sight, there must under all possible states 
 of society be an incessant call. But the 
 blunder that plays into the hands of squire- 
 made law, and cuts off all the poetry and 
 all the charities of life, to gratify the public 
 enemy with wealth which after all turns 
 only to dust and ashes in his grasp, — can 
 last no longer than till warm hearts and 
 cool heads apply themselves to crush th9 
 public feud by showing to all classes th» 
 folly of the whole."— Vol. III., p. 164. W- 
 R., 1 Jan., 1835. 
 
 " The i^lenty of food leads to population, 
 and the power of populating is the measure, 
 the gauge, of public happiness. It so hap- 
 pens that populating is the very first thing 
 men like to expend their competence upon. 
 The public in fact, takes out its happiness 
 in population. It is true that this populat- 
 ing tends directly to reduce its ciwn mate- 
 vials ; and so does eating, a pudding. But 
 the eating is the happiness. There are those 
 
 [ who counsel, there should be no piulding, 
 because, they sav, eating will reduce it. 
 
 I The best of puddings, they are prepared to 
 prove a temporary blessing; whence they 
 infer, that the whole race is naught This 
 is not an unfair representation, of some ar- 
 guments afloat on com." — Vol. II., p. 396- 
 \V. R., 1 April, 1833. 
 
 " The strength of the country must de- 
 pend upon food, population, and manufac- 
 tures ; or upon some or other of them. And 
 all these must be cut down togj3ther, by 
 having two bushels of corn instead of four. 
 
 " A country which permits a legal limit 
 to be drawn about its quantity of food, and 
 is surrounded with rival countries which 
 either are not confined liy similar enact- 
 ments, or have not reached the point whera 
 such enactments are severely felt, must de- 
 cline from day to day in relative importance; 
 — because it cuts off by its own act, the 
 means of preserving its position in the race. 
 Neither France nor America needs be anxi- 
 ous to keep down the power of Great Bri- 
 tain, as long as its landlords can decide that 
 it shall not be permitted to advance." — Vol. 
 IV., p. 485. Catechism on the Corn Laws. 
 
 " If Noah had shut himself up in his ark, 
 and let his family eat nothing but what 
 could be grown upon his decks, he would 
 soon have had an outcry against population, 
 and an Emigration Committee ; and Shem, 
 
Ham, and Japhet would have been ' dis- 
 tressed manufacturers.' And instead of 
 reading lectures on not multiplying, his 
 remedy would have been to let in foreign 
 corn. 
 
 " A commercial andmanufacturingnation 
 lias or ought to have, like Noah, no limit 
 but the world. What he was to do by dig- 
 ging, it can do by spinning and im-lucing 
 other men to dig. The steppes of Tartary 
 and prairies of America, are so macy pledges 
 that it need be yet but in the youth of its 
 existence. Wliat is to come nest, when the 
 world is filled up, it does not seem necessary 
 to determine in this present parliaraent. 
 What is clear is, that tlie felicity of the ex- 
 isting generation depends upon progression, 
 as it did with Noah. It can make no differ- 
 ence, except in the size of the experiment, 
 whether men are confined to the corn of an 
 aj'k or of an island. 
 
 « There is no doubt of the general truth, 
 that men may multiply faster than the means 
 of sui-port. But they have a right to de- 
 mand a fair field for finding their support. 
 They are not bound to exercise the Mal- 
 thiiiiian continence, upon an artificial limi- 
 tation to please the landlords." 
 
 "Mr. Malthus has described to a hair's 
 breadth the consequences of a population 
 increasing beyond the limits of its food; and 
 DO man has been aide to gainsay a word of 
 his discoveries. He has demonstrated 
 everything relating to the caged birds, ex- 
 cept one ih'mg— why there should be a rage. 
 H« has omitted to point out, that when 
 God said 'Increase and multiply,' it was not 
 added 'And let there be landlords ujron the 
 «arth,to make corn laws for them that dwell 
 therein;'— that manufactures and commerce 
 are (Jod's solution of the difficulty, and were 
 given to be a dispensing and equalizing 
 power, whereby the inhabitants of old coun- 
 tries should be partakers in His design of 
 universal replenishment, with as much com- 
 fort as the more hnmediate actors in the 
 process. And trul*a fearful thing it is, that 
 any men or set of men should be allowed to 
 stand between us and God's mercies, saying 
 to us and to God, ' Hitherto shall ye go, and 
 no farther; and here shall ye be stayed for 
 our unjust gain.' " 
 
 « All the evils produced among us by the 
 pressure of population, are of Corn-Law for- 
 mation. The landlords said Be, and it was 
 so." — Vol. IV., p. 505. Catechism on the 
 Corn Laws. 
 
 " Suppose the case ef an island newly 
 peopled. At first, probably, the occupation 
 of cultivator and manufacturer will be, to a 
 great extent, combined j but as numbers in- 
 
 crease, there will be a division of labour, and 
 the man that makes shoes, will buy with 
 them a portion of his neighbour's corn. In 
 the beginning, as is found to be generally 
 the case in new countries, these artizans 
 will be well paid, that is, they will get a 
 copious supply of corn in return for their 
 day's ATork. But if the numbers on the 
 island increase till they begin to press 
 against the food wliich the soil can supply, 
 they must bid one against another, and so 
 get" less and less. What will in fact be 
 given for com, will be just so much as vvill 
 induce the people who are to eat it, to agree 
 about the division of it. This, and this 
 only, will be the measure of the price of 
 corn. The price of corn, therefore, will 
 rise ; and as this increase of price has no 
 dependence on the cost of cultivating the 
 land, tlie price for which the corn will sell 
 will soon be more than the cost of produc- 
 tion, and the difference will be rent. But 
 to naake this rent, the manufacturers give 
 more hours' work for the same quaatity of 
 corn. 
 
 "This increase of toil to the manufHCtur- 
 ing classes in the island, will be greatly and 
 substantially alleviated, if after the popula- 
 tion has begun to press on the limits of 
 the supply of food, there are other island* 
 from which food can be procured in ex- 
 change for manufactured goods. But sup- 
 pose the landowners have the power to pro- 
 hibit foreign exchanges for food. The con- 
 sequences will be the same in kind, as if & 
 town should shut its gates, and resolve to 
 allow no food but such as was grown within 
 the walls. Estimate the consequences; try 
 all objections and proposals by this par- 
 allel. 
 
 " Suppose it were urged to yoii, that it 
 would make the landowners rich within the 
 walls, and what was good for one class 
 must be good for another. 
 
 " Suppose it was argued, as an objection 
 to opening the gates, that the growers of 
 corn within the walls would be obliged to 
 take to manufacturing pursuits, and this 
 would ruin you by reducing wages. 
 
 " Suppose you were offered a protection 
 a-piece in turn, as a bribe for allowing the 
 gates to be kept shut. 
 
 '' Would not each and every of these fal- 
 lacies be answered by you on the spot? 
 
 " Note too, how certain it is that the 
 landowners within the walls, and their la- 
 bourers, must be brought to the grindstone 
 in the end. When you ha-l multiplied till 
 you bid against one another to starvaiinn 
 point, would not the agricultural labourers 
 have done the samel Had the gates been 
 open, and you been allowed to buy food 
 
5 
 
 with your aiaiiufactures outside, the chil- 
 dren of the agriculturists might have found 
 -employment by joining in your ranks. 
 But tiiis is made impossible. They can, 
 therefore, in the end, be no better off 
 than you. There may have been a single 
 Hush of advantage to their trade at the time 
 •tha gates were shut; but when that is over, 
 they will only find they are five instead of 
 four, and that the tive are worse off' than 
 the four, and without chance of mending 
 their condition. 
 
 " To the landowners the evil must in time 
 extend, througk the impossibility of finding 
 maintenance for their children except by 
 subdividing their estates. And this none 
 of them can escape, except such as are 
 either to have no children, or to have some 
 yray of keeping them at the public expense." 
 —Vol. IV., p. 379. Lectures, Dec, 1836. 
 
 " If it shouM be urged, that there must 
 always come a time when population will 
 press against food, and therefore there is no 
 use in attempting to escape it; this would be 
 like urging, that there is no use in a man's 
 escaping Irom being murdered now, because 
 be will not be immortal afterwards. There 
 is all the difference in the world, between 
 enduring an evil by the will of Providence, 
 and by the act of man. Huirian life in the 
 whole, is but the procrastination of death; 
 hut that is no reason why men should be 
 killed just now, for other men's convenience. 
 There may come a time when thei-e will be 
 no coal to burn, no iron to make tools, and 
 perhaps no salt left in tlie sea; but this is 
 no reason why something should not be 
 made of the interval which must intervene. 
 The time when population will press irre- 
 mediably against food, must to a great ma- 
 nufacturing and naval people, be almost as 
 remote as the time when there will be no 
 salt left in the sea. And come when it may, 
 it must always came gradually; which is by 
 itself no small diminution of the mischief. 
 The maximum of contingent evil in pros- 
 pect, is only equal to what it is proposed to 
 bring on at once now ; and all the world 
 must be cleared and peopled, bt.: fore the evil 
 can arrive." — Vol. IV., p. 477. Catechism 
 en the Corn Laws. Feb., 1827. 
 
 " ^Vhen Prussia wants no more manufac- 
 tures, we must try Tartary ; and so on till 
 the world is filled up. As to what may take 
 place then, it is like saying to Noah, ' Never 
 think of going out of your ark. You have 
 no notion how soon the world will be filled 
 up. Show some prudence and economy, 
 and stay where you are.' " — Vol. IV., p. 566. 
 Catechism on the Corn Laws. 
 
 THE CAGED RATS. 
 
 "Suppose now, that a hundred rats, in- 
 stead of being mercifully killed in five mi- 
 nutes by the celebrated dog Billy, were 
 caged up and supplied with a limited (juan- 
 tity of food, and encouraged to multiply till 
 they starved each other Ijy the subdivision 
 of the alloivance; — and say whether this 
 picture, ugly and disgusting as it is, is not 
 a representation of the condition in which 
 the country has been placed by the influence 
 of the monopolists. Imagine next a well- 
 dressed man, with all the ensigns of respec- 
 tability and good-fellowship about him, de- 
 claiming on the misery of the sufferers with 
 the remains of a tartlet in his mouth, and 
 pointing out to the spectators the different 
 forms and aspects of the pi-ocess. ' See that 
 individual of the softer sex, with thirteen 
 helpless young ones dependent on it for 
 support. Their whole allowance is but fif- 
 teen grains a day; and there are people who 
 would ruin the whole rat-trap by letting iu 
 foreign com. Observe the ' faiher of the 
 cottage,' with his ribs clinging together and 
 no fur upon his back, brooding over the fate 
 of his suffering family, over whom his heart 
 is yearning and breaking. That poor crea- 
 ture with his ear bitten off, is from Congle- 
 ton. The insurrectionary cock-tail in the 
 middle is from Macclesfield. The Coventry- 
 rats are in a comer by themselves. From 
 Rochdale, Manchester, and Barnsley, they 
 are all alike; there is not a pin to chuse. 
 Would to God my voice could reach them 
 and be listened to" [here quote sundry texts 
 of Scripture and swallow the remains of the 
 tartlet]. Why do not they agitate for bread? 
 Why do not they turn tooth and nail upon 
 the 'wretches who would murder them by 
 letting in foreign produce!' The application 
 may not be complimentary; but till it is 
 shown in what way a starving people are to 
 be fed by shutting out supplies and taking 
 from each other, it is an exact representa- 
 tion of the politics of the monopolists." — 
 Vol. I., p. 206. W. R.,^1 Jan. 1830. 
 
 "When a great oppression is to be main- 
 tained, the most effectual way of doing it, 
 whether by design or not, is to get up an 
 outcry of another oppression somewhere 
 else. If the rats in a cage were stocking- 
 makers, the best thing that could be done 
 for keeping them from resisting the master 
 oppression which sets them all starving 
 upon a limited quantity of food, would be 
 to persuade the workmen rats it was all the 
 fault of the master rats, and so put them on 
 trying their teeth on one another, instead of 
 the cage which is the foundation of the mis- 
 chief."— Vol. VI., p. 281. Leicestershire Mer 
 
EMIGRATION. 
 "The palliative proposed at present, is to 
 colonize ; in other words, to force the people 
 of England to breed, as is done by the ne- 
 groes in some of the West Indian islands, 
 for exportation. To which the direct an- 
 swer is, that nobody has a right to make 
 laws which shall force the people of Eng- 
 land to transport themselves. They love 
 their own coanU-y; and will not have it naade 
 uninhabitable, to please the aristocracy. The 
 plan of the landed aristocracy is this ; that 
 England shall have no more corn than titey 
 shall sell, and then the competition for it 
 •will insure high prices; but to diminish the 
 danger of resistance that might ensue, the 
 people shall be taxed to pay for sending 
 «ne another a^)road. The transportation is 
 to be the landlord's valve; which shall pre- 
 rent the machine from blowing up, but leave 
 the owners as much pressure as %vithout 
 «langer can be enjoyed." — Vol. I., p. 368. 
 Westminster Review, 1 Jan., 1831. 
 
 " To pay a million for preventing the peo- 
 ple from keeping themselves, and a million 
 more for carrying part of them away, is 
 paying twice for poverty. 
 
 " Emigration may have a tendency to let 
 oflF the evil at a certain point; but there can 
 be no right to inllict the evil till men ask 
 for transportation as a relief. Emigration 
 is a valve; the pains of transportation the 
 weight upon it; and the landlords have the 
 benefit of the high pressure. 
 
 "Every English manufacturer, therefore, 
 ■who is driven to emigrate, is an innocent 
 ■man condemned to transportation for the 
 interest of the landlords." — Vol. IV., p. 506. 
 Catechism on the Corn Laws. 
 
 " When a man is found dying by strangu- 
 lation, people do not say ' Help him to 
 emigrate,' but ' Take away the rope that is 
 choking him.' If the individuals of known 
 humanity who declare themselves friendly 
 to emigration, saw^lie thing in its true light, 
 they would say to the suffering classes, ' Do 
 not emigi-ate. Stay at home and ask for the 
 removal of tlie Corn Laws. Do not do the 
 ■very thing your enemies wish you to do. 
 Things will mend. It is no more likely that 
 there will be Corn Laws a ie\y years hence, 
 than that there will be a Slave "Trade. The 
 fountry would be worth staying in, if indus- 
 try was f.-ee ; and it will have frredom by 
 and by. Do not give up everything you 
 love, because there is a majority in parlia- 
 ment this year, which may be a minority the 
 next. Every day is opening men's eyes; 
 and the wealthier classes, who have more 
 power and more means of removing a mis- 
 
 chief than you have, are coming over to 
 you, and finding out that your interests and 
 theirs coincide. And they are not all so 
 insensible to better motives as you may 
 think. They remember the time wh.n they 
 climbed iuto the same apple-tree, and swamin 
 the same brook; and they would think it a 
 bin and a shame, knowing you were wronij- 
 ed, not to move to your assistance. Be 
 patient, if you can; and we will all dravr 
 together. A time will come when a poor 
 man may sell the labour of his hands and 
 buy bread; and then you will be better. If 
 you must go, you must; for a man must 
 not be starved while he can get away. But 
 if you can contrive to hold out, stand by the 
 old house a little longer. I,et your children 
 be boni where you were born yourselves ; 
 and see if you do not get access to that fine 
 green world of corn-fields you are now shut 
 out from. Be persuaded of one thing, that 
 your opponents have just as much right t» 
 ask to have you shut out from it, as yoa 
 have to ask tl-.at they shall grow no corn 
 here;— that they have just as much right to 
 request to have you prevented from selling 
 the pioduce of your industry for corn, as 
 you have to request to be allowed to take 
 their parks and corn-fields because it might 
 be convenient to you. Do not go awayj 
 the thing cannot last; — it is by many de- 
 grees too bad.'" — Vol. IV., p. 572. Cate- 
 chism on the Corn Laws. 
 
 COST OF THE CORN LAW. 
 
 ! " It occurs to me that the piagnitude of the 
 I loss arising from the Bread Tax, is a thing 
 I scarcely capable of being reduced to nume- 
 ; rical calculation. What would be the nume- 
 , rical amount of the loss arising to a man 
 ! jrom cutting offhis four limbsin his infancy? 
 i Vv'ho can tell ? It must di^pend upon know- 
 I ing what he could have earned, and what he 
 I couldhavedone if he had been let alone. The 
 i smallest part of the evil of the Corn Laws, is 
 I what is measured by the extra price given 
 j for the bread eaten and the tax paid ; the 
 I grand loss, to which the other is as nothing, 
 I is ot the bread that is never eaten and never 
 [ earned. The only substantial approach to a 
 I measure of the evil, seems to be this. It is 
 j the difference between the value of the 
 i whole industrial produce of the country 
 j in a free market, and the value of the 
 I agricultural by itself. Or it is tha 
 I difference betvveen the value of the 
 
 estates of those whose wealth lies beneath 
 the soil or on the water, and of those whose 
 estates lie on the surface which grows corn. 
 All the difference, is confiscated at the com- 
 mand of the owners of the soil, and a frac- 
 tion of it applied to their own gain : while 
 
the remainder, being the difference between 
 what the landlords laceiiously call the 
 'home trade' and the trade of tlie world at 
 large which is cut oQ", is thrown into the 
 sea for the good of nobody. Every man 
 •who has either formed industrial establish- 
 ments for himself, or received them from 
 his predecessors, suffers confiscation; and 
 tamely allows the plunderers to run about 
 applying the same terra to anything that 
 threatens the loss of their iniquity." — Vol. 
 VI., p. 57. Lcicestei Vire Mercury. 
 
 " Our commercial policy is a mass of con 
 fluent frauds; bj' which everybody robs 
 everybody, and throws half the booty into 
 the sea. Cut they all yield in individual 
 importance to the master pustule, which is 
 the Corn fraud. By this, a gross sum of 
 twelve millions and a half per annum is 
 thrown art-ay, in order that a certain other 
 sum, amounting probably to five millions, 
 may be taken from the men who work for 
 it, and given to the landlords whose first 
 principle of law, physic, and divinity, is not 
 to work at all. In otlier words, soreiile?)) 
 millions a-year are torn from the moutbs of 
 the suffering manufacturer and his starving 
 children, in order that fivi- millions of it 
 may find their way isUo ilio pockets of a 
 dislaanest and tyrannical class who have E;ot 
 a law that nobody but a landowner shall be 
 in parliament. When pressed upon ihe 
 point, thoy bully and appeal to iheir huma- 
 nity and charity. The charity is easily de- 
 fined; — they take with a bucket and give 
 with a spoon. They take seventeen millions 
 a-year out of tlie pockets of the industrious 
 and the poor, and urgf. in return tlial they 
 sometimes give a crown to an old woman at 
 Christmas."— Vol. If., p. 398. W. R., 1 
 April, 1833. 
 
 THE DANGER OF THE CORN LAW. j 
 "Tliere certainly has been no instance in i 
 history, where two-thirds of a population, i 
 not avowedly slaves and under physical re- 
 straint accordingly, have submitted to such ' 
 an infliction, to please the remainiu',' third. 
 The process nill be brief, and ought to be. j 
 Either the fundliolders and the churcli will 
 join \rilh tlie commercial interests and the 
 rest of the public in putting down the en- 
 ormity by legislatiovi; or their possessions 
 will be taken in the first instance either by 
 the operation of legislation or otherwise, and 
 afterwards will be;,nn the attack on all pro 
 perty, hard enough upon the innocent, hut 
 the inevitable cnnsequence of the prodigious 
 provocation- The outrageous injustice of 
 the landlords is the key to the public dan- 
 ger, the spigot that coufiues the fermenting 
 
 contents of the national beer-barrel, which 
 must speedily burst if not relieved. Tf this 
 were taken away, not all at once but by a 
 moderately rapid progression, the debt and 
 taxation would be made a flea-bite, not by 
 removing ihem, bnt hy increasing the ability 
 to bear them, wliich comes to the same 
 thing. The public irritation would fall, aa 
 the fierceness of a den of hungry savages 
 might be lulled by the application of joints 
 of meat; and there would be a great calm. 
 It seems impossible that before the mischief 
 goes much further, -i government should not 
 a?'se, possessing about as nnich prudence 
 and decision as mi^ht be competent to the 
 regulation of a regimental hospital, and, by 
 speaking the truth and rallying the parties 
 concerned, cut off the progress of the evil 
 bv cutting oir its source." — Vol. II., p. 274 
 IF. E., I Oct., 1832. 
 
 JACOBINISM OF THE RICH. 
 
 " The origin and foundation of property, 
 is labour. The proposal to keep up rent by 
 restrictions virtually includes the essence J/ 
 personal slavery ; which consists in obliging 
 one man to labour for the benefit of another 
 without an equivalent. The landlords may 
 have a property in their honest rent; but 
 they have not a property in the power of 
 adding to it by viidcnce."— Vol. IV., p. 5i-L 
 Catechism on the Corn Laws. 
 
 " The poor ought to have com at the 
 cheaiiest for which it can be got; and if they 
 have not, they are to blame if they are sa- 
 tisfied. 
 
 " I f the poor wore to tell the rich, that they 
 ought to have a 'reasonable' incnme, &%, 
 for instance, one or two hundred a year, 
 and if they had this they ouglit to be satis- 
 fied,— and they, the poor, would take the 
 QiflVrimct-; it would be pronounced to ba 
 clfiiM jncoh/nisin and spoiiiition. The poor 
 have as rauLh rii;ht to do this, as the rich 
 man has to tell the poor thai sixty shillings 
 is a 'reasonaiile ' price for his quarter of 
 corn, and therefore the rich will take the 
 difference. Much has been .said of the ja- 
 cobinism of the poor against the rich, but 
 very little of the jacobinism of the ricii 
 again^'t the poor; — though oneis only matter 
 of speculation and alaim, and the other 
 meets every m-.'.n three times a-day when he 
 sits down to eat." — Vol. IV., p. 527. Cate- 
 chism on the Corn La ws. 
 
 Protection. — "'Protection' is forcing 
 people to buy the work of a man with one 
 arm. It is saying to other p'?ople, ' Yoa 
 shall not have the thing in the way you 
 m ly ha\e it best and cheapest, but it 
 
shall be artificially produced in some way 
 that is -worse. I am a man Aviih one arm, 
 in comparison of othi-rs you might have it 
 from; and you shall pay me for working 
 with one arm; and if we had one arm all 
 round it would he so much the belter for 
 u> all.' "—Vol. II., p 302. W. IL, 1 Jan., 
 1833. 
 
 Bankruptcy. — " Bankruptcy is the check 
 to the indefinite multiplication of traders, as 
 tiie evils arisingfrom diminished food are the 
 check to that »i the inferior classes of la- 
 bourers. Both talce place where they do, in 
 consequence of the limitation of commerce; 
 and the engine of the limitation is the Com 
 laws. He that was in the Gazt^e yesterday, 
 eame there by the Corn Laws." — Ibid. 
 
 Starvation. — " It is certain the weakest 
 will fail; hut whether they were weak or 
 not, somebody must fail. The case is like 
 that of a hundred prisoners, among whom 
 there should be thrown half enough for their 
 daily food. The weakest will be those who 
 starve ; but whether they were weak or not, 
 somebody must starve." — Ibid. 
 
 HYPOCRISY OF THE FACTORY CRY. 
 
 "The appeal to 'humane and Christian 
 feeling,' and all the tropes therewith cr,n- 
 nected,maTbe disposed of by the statement 
 that the appealers created, and at this hour 
 sustain, the evils they complain of. They 
 have interdicted the 'industry of the poor; 
 and then atta,ch the consequences to those 
 who oppose the attempt to relieve one suf- 
 ferer by the privation of anjther. If a 
 shipmaster had conveyed his crew and pas- 
 sengers to a month's sail from any land, 
 with a week's provision left on board, and 
 then instead of steenng ' jwards any port, 
 should ' do the pathetic' on the sorrows of 
 one part of his inmate.', and the cruelty of 
 not assisting them by taking from the por- 
 tions of some other, — he would present the 
 express image of such humanity and such 
 Christianity. It would not be that there 
 was nrt suffering, and that humanity did 
 not desire to relieve it; but that the mode 
 proposed was, like the Factory Bill, a fraud 
 got up by the authors of the general misery, 
 having in view the preservation and increase 
 •f that misery, through the instrumentality 
 of the dupes who should he induced to cry 
 out for the removal of the minor evil to the 
 perpetuation of the greater." — Vol. II., p. 
 472. W. R., 1 Oct., 1833. 
 
 " One word of advice may be not unsea- 
 Bonable. Take caie jot to be deceived by 
 
 the strategems of the enemy. Let no man, 
 for instance, unless he has a tail or some 
 other asinine appendage, be taken in by 
 such a raw jest as the Factory Bill. A 
 Tory club have cut us off from our trade, — 
 made law s that we shall not sell the labour 
 of our hands, — reduced us and ours to the 
 bare possibiiily of keeping soul and body 
 together by laboar the most excessive and 
 toil the most extravagant; and these very 
 men shall come forward and tell us, that if 
 we will send them to parliament to support 
 all tiiis alnise,— to maintain (he Corn Laws, 
 and keep down all chance of beinn; allowed 
 to sell our goods abroad, — they will do, 
 u-hat ? — pass a bill to prevent us from work- 
 ing our own children more than ten hours 
 a-day. This is kind; this is benevolent; 
 this is worth a man's going on his knees in 
 the mud to thank them for. Get liberty to 
 buv and spII, ye Issachars, ye asses couch- 
 ing between two burdens; and tlien your 
 children may live by your labour, without 
 leave from those who starve you. If negro 
 slaves did anything so absurd, the world 
 would say, how debasing the effects of 
 slavery! Feel every man for a tail, who 
 talks of such a thing. Time was, a York- 
 shireman might walk abroad, with some 
 consciousness of being supposed as knowing 
 as his neighbours. If fooleries of this kind 
 go on, Gotham will be put in Schedule A, 
 and the representation of unreason trans- 
 ferred into the West Riding." — Vol. IL, p. 
 236. IF. 11., I July, 1832. 
 
 "The truth is that we must wait till hun- 
 ger brings our people to their colours, and 
 some time or other we shail have a fair 
 stand-up fight to know whether we are to 
 continue to be the born thrails of the o>vn- 
 ers of the soil or not. Our Saxon ancestors 
 wore it written on a ring about their necks; 
 we wear it in an Act of Parliament. But 
 we are a long way from the time yet; there 
 must be thousands more of bankruptcies, 
 and myriads of the wives and children of the 
 working classes must die of hunger or over- 
 work in factories, that a greater quantity of 
 the produce of their industry may be given 
 to the landlords for a bushel of corn. We 
 are in the state of raising statues to any 
 Tory man who will offer to limit our work- 
 ing hours if wo on our parts will assist 
 him to keep up the oppression that creates 
 the inducement to over-work; and half our 
 people might be persuaded to turn against 
 the individual who should tell them it was 
 an invention of the enemy. But this will 
 mend ; misery and the progress of infor- 
 mation will alter it. I look to the last, 
 however, most. The working elasses, at 
 
least in these southeni parts, have proved t "The first government that will foarlessly 
 thevTselves xniequal te the question. It willj announce that it i.s not to be fooled by the 
 
 be when the capitalists and employers find 
 out where they are hurl, that the real resist- 
 ance will begin." — Vol. IV., p. 288. Let- 
 ters tif a Representative, 1 July, 1837. 
 
 THE WATER-LORDS— A SIMILE. 
 
 " Suppose, for argument's sake, that corn 
 could be obtained for positively nothing, 
 like water. I'here would be no more reason 
 why the price of corn should be kept up for 
 the advantage of the landlords, than why 
 the price of water should be kept up for the 
 advantage of men calling themselves water- 
 lords, — by prohibiting stieams and rivers, 
 and forcing the public to buy the water of 
 ■wells, from which, by dint of digging, water 
 was obtained for half as many people as 
 there otherwise might have been. If such 
 an abuse was in existence, there migiit be 
 reasons why it should be reduced gradually, 
 but none why a fragment of it should finally 
 be left. 
 
 " All the fallacies advanced in the case of 
 corn might be repeated in such a case of 
 water. The diligence of the water-lords to 
 grub for the last pint, tliey would call im- 
 provement and zeal for the multiplication of 
 water. They would descant on the capital 
 they employed, and the industry they set in 
 motion ; and be pathetic on the fate of the 
 well-digging population, if the government 
 should restore the liberty of drink. They 
 would assert that it was clear the country 
 had been supplied ; and if any complained 
 that they were dying from want of water, 
 they would tell them they were a super- 
 abundant populaiion, and ought not to e.vist. 
 They would declare that it would all be 
 easy, if it was not for taxation ; hut as long 
 as taxes were to be paid, it was impossible 
 that water should be free."— Vol. IV., p, 
 515. Catechism on the Corn Laws. 
 
 *' So far as the improvements in agricul- 
 ture -were the consequence of restrictions 
 upon importation, they were only like the 
 capital, skill, and pei-severance which might 
 be applied to digging wells, in consequence 
 of prohibiting the water of rivers."— Vol. IV., 
 p. 550. Catechism on the Corn Laws. 
 
 RECIPROCITY FALLACY. 
 
 "Reciprocity is having two good things, 
 instead of one. But if we cannot have both 
 the good things, it is no reason why we 
 should reject the one we may have. The 
 fraud of ' reciprocitij,' therefore, is like say- 
 ing, 'Don't take the half-crown yon may, 
 unless somebody will give you another for 
 taking it.' 
 
 fallacy of 'reciprocity,' will pull down com- 
 mercial restrictions all over the world." — 
 Vol. IV., p. 495. Catechism on the Com 
 Lawi. 
 
 " When the draper buys bread, it may be 
 very well if he can persuade the baker to 
 buy clothes from him in turn. But if he 
 cannot, it would be great folly to fancy he 
 must he ruined unless he refuses to buy- 
 bread. 
 
 " The Americans make a foolish tariff 
 by which they allow one half of their peo- 
 ple to rob the otker, with a general loss 
 equal to the difference in question besides. 
 But that is no reason why England should 
 do an equally foolish thing in reply. If an 
 American chuscs to put out one of his 
 eyes, there is no necessity for an English- 
 man's doing the same for reciprocity." — 
 Vcl. IV., p. 495. CathechisiH on tlie Com 
 Laws. 
 
 EXCHANGE. 
 
 "Two things are necessary to tha com-. 
 pletion of an act of commerce ; first, that we 
 should have what others want; secondly, 
 that we should be at liberty to receive what 
 they can aflord to pay in, and it will be 
 worth our while to take. 
 
 " A merchant in the actual state of things 
 can afford to sell a piece of Leeds or Man- 
 chester goods in Prussia or Poland for a 
 hundred crowns. If he could afford to take 
 eighty, he might sell two pieces where he 
 now sells one. If he was allowed to lay 
 out the eighty crowns in corn, and bring it 
 to England to a free market, he could sell 
 the corn for as much as would give him a 
 profit on the whole; and consequently he 
 would accept the eighty crowns, and sell 
 two pieces instead of one, and get twa 
 profits for himself, and give two profits t» 
 the manufacturers. He is restrained from 
 selling the corn ; and therefore he is re- 
 strained from doing all tbe rest.— Vol. IV., 
 p. 523. Catechism on the Corn Laws. 
 
 "When a manufacturer produces goods 
 and exchanges them abroad for com, he 
 may as truly be said to produce the com, 
 as if it came out of his loom or his flatting- 
 mill. And if he is prohibited from doing 
 this, it is his production that in reality is 
 stopped." — Vol. IV., p. 481. Catechism on 
 the Corn Laws. 
 
 Home Market.—" I hold to ray advice, 
 to beware of talking nonsense about a 'hom« 
 market.' The good market is the market 
 
10 
 
 that gives most. Get the value of twenty 
 shillings for your Leeds cioth abroati, and 
 you are directly to be asked, what you 
 have done with the market that would liave 
 given you fifteen at homo. If the home 
 market is to be the best, let it prove it." 
 —Vol. v., p. 20. Leeds Times. 
 
 MACHINERY, 
 
 " On the suhject of Macliinery, it may be 
 sufficient here to say, that if a prize had 
 been proposed to the inventor of the su'-est, 
 most constantly and universally acting en- 
 couragement to ihe multiplication of ma- 
 chinery, it must have been awarded to the 
 man who devised the Corn Laws. 
 
 "Evei-y master manufacturer who has a 
 chance of selling his goods abroad, has a 
 bale of his goods set before him and is fold, 
 • You shall not compete with the foreigner, 
 ■without paying a tav to the landlords first. 
 If you grumble, take it out of the war/es of 
 your opcraliues. And when you connot do 
 that any longer, sit ilmrn and invent ma- 
 chinenj.' Thus the landlords hold out a 
 premium on machinery, and the operatives 
 appear to like to have it so. The master 
 manufacturer is driven into a corner be- 
 tween the loss of liis trade, and inventing 
 machinery to help to pay the demands of 
 the landlords ; and the operative is driven 
 inta a corner between starving, and making 
 any improvement in the powers of ma- 
 chinery which he can get a few pounds or 
 shillings by selling; and by the combina- 
 tion of tlie two, machinery is carried to the 
 highest pitch th^t necessity, which is the 
 mother of invention, can devise. Surely 
 there wants no further asking, where ma- 
 chinery corass from ; and small hope there 
 is of its receiving any check, while the law 
 is thus directed to force its employment, 
 •with the power of a perpetual sorew, into 
 every corner capable of receiving it. 
 
 "But the practical question for the opera- 
 tives after all, appears to be, whether be- 
 cause they consider themselves injured by 
 machinery, they will try to mend it by pro- 
 hibiiing the sale of the things made. Tiieir 
 complaint is, that too many things are made 
 and too easily ; if the demand could be 
 caused to keep pace wi:h the increase of 
 tilings produced, they would be where they 
 were, but it does not. The conclusion 
 therefore come to, is that they will stop 
 such demand as there is. Or if it is not 
 this, it is tlie next thing to it; which is, that 
 they will not bestir themselves to oppose." — 
 Vol. VI., p. o7. Leicestershire Mercury. 
 
 " There would be no suffering frcia raa- 
 Ghinery, if the trade in food was free ; but 
 
 on the contrary great benefit. The cause of 
 the suffering, therefore, is not machinery, 
 but the refusal to allow the pri)duce to be 
 exchanged for food. 
 
 "That the use of machinery is detri- 
 mental in the long run to the manufacturiag 
 labourers, is an error wliich they ought ta 
 out-grow. Compare, for example, tlie extent 
 of the stocking traiie in the time of Queen 
 Elizabeth, — >vhen silk stockings were made 
 with men's fingers and sold for their weight 
 in gold, — with its present state ; and ask the 
 five thousand labouriugsilk stocking weavers, 
 whether they would wish to see the trade 
 reduced to what it was then. All tlie dif- 
 ference has been caused by madiinery. 
 
 " Experience has proved, that when the 
 proauclion of any commodity is facilitated 
 by machinery, the increase of consumption 
 consequent on the reduction of price, in a 
 state of freedom and under the existing cir- 
 cumstances of the world in respect of the 
 desire to consume, is such as in the end to 
 increase the demand for labour in the pro- 
 duction of that pnrticuhir commoditij. If 
 power looms could bring down the price of 
 broad cloth to a shilling a yard, and the 
 corn of foreigners naightbe taken from them 
 in return, — so many people in different 
 parts of tha world would wear broad cloth 
 who now do not, that there would be mare 
 employment for makers of broad cloth in tha 
 end than ever. If men cannot exchange 
 the cloth because the agriculturists will not 
 let them, tlie case is certainly altered. But 
 then the fault is not in the iuachinery." — 
 Vol. IV., p. 508. Catechism on the Corn 
 Laws. 
 
 " The English manufacturer has a right 
 to have the advantage of his machinery, and 
 all the advantage. Instead of which, the 
 agriculturist thinks he is doing a gracious 
 act, if he leaves the manufacturer enough to 
 placT him on what the agriculturist is pleased 
 to consider equal terms witli foreigners, and 
 puts the rest into his own pocket."— Vol. IV., 
 p. ot)9. Catechism on the Corn Laws. 
 
 "Machinery then, like the raiu of 
 heaven, is a present blev-sing to all con- 
 cerned, provided it comes down by dr-ps, 
 and not by tons together; and anything 
 which prevents its .''ree and expanded ope- 
 ration, has an efl'ect of the same kind as 
 would be produced if the rain should be 
 collected into waterspouts. It remains 
 tiierefore to be seen, what laws and human 
 I institutions have done towards securing the 
 free diffusion of llie advantages derivable 
 I fiora God's gift of ingenuity to man. And 
 1 here the first thing apparent ia our own 
 
country is, that the aristocracy have made 
 a law, that no use shall he derived from it 
 at all. They have determined by Act of 
 Parliament, that men may invent as many 
 machines as they think proper, but shall 
 not be allowed to sell the produce; or which 
 comes to the same thing, shall not be al- 
 lowed to sell for what is wanied in return. 
 The whole misery about machinery, — every 
 atom and fragment of sufferin?^, alarm, and 
 wretchedness directly or iudiiectly conse- 
 quent thereon,— is the pure and necessary 
 result of the gross fraud and half-witted 
 idiotic cruelty pei-petrated hy the majority 
 of the landlords upon the rest of their own 
 order and of the community." — Vol. I., p. 
 356. Weslminster Rcvhio, 1 Jan., 1831. 
 
 Manufactdrers. — "A common charge 
 against manufactures is, that they contract 
 the faculties of the labouier. One equally 
 useful when occasion suits, is that the ma- 
 nufacturing labourers are too knowing. 
 The manufacturers are tlie Helotes of so- 
 ciety; but their dav will some time come." 
 —Vol. II., p. 23. ' W. R., 1 Jan., 1832. 
 
 "The sulTerings of the manufacturers 
 
 show themselves by fits, like an ague. But 
 an ague may be a ptrnianent evil, and have 
 a permanent cause." — Vol. IV., p. 509. 
 Catechism on the Corn Laws. 
 
 MUTUAL DEPENDENCE. 
 " Does any mystery of nature conceal the 
 fact, that different countries have been 
 created under such circumstances as make 
 it practically impossible, that a partial failure ' 
 in the harvests of one should not be reme- 
 diable by communication with the others, if 
 man, in the wisdom of his absurditj', could 
 be persuaded not to stand by to prevent ? j 
 And is it not plain, that the suffering to one ! 
 country, would be balanced by a correspond- [ 
 ing profit to the other; and thus, as nature | 
 presented the cup of suffering and of profit 
 to each by timis, the movement of the great 
 machine would be kept up with the least 
 practicable aggregate of human evil!" — Vol. 
 II., p. 160. W. R., 1 April, 1832. 
 
 "Experience proves, that it is not the 
 improved and manufacturing nation, but 
 the growers of rude produce, that are the 
 dependents. Thus England can do without 
 the trade with Russia, better than Russia 
 Tvithoutthe trade with England. When the 
 Czar attempted to stop the supply of naval | 
 stores, he was off his throne in an instant. I 
 And ten years afterwards, the inability of 
 the Russian government to enforce the ex- ! 
 ecution of a treaty in opposition to the com- 1 
 
 mercial dependence of Russia upon Eng- 
 land, was the cause of the ruin of Napo- 
 leon."— Vol. IV., p. 564. CaUthism on the 
 Corn Laws. 
 
 " There is no more evidence that nature 
 intended every man to be fed by the land he 
 lives on, when she has made "provision for 
 his being fed better by the produce of soma 
 other, — than that she intended every man 
 to use no iron but what was dug in his own 
 back garden. It is a baseless effort to cut 
 men off from mutual assistance and the divi- 
 sion of labour, for the advantage of a few 
 monop.dists."— Vol. IV., p. 574. Catechism 
 on the Corn Laws. 
 
 ROBBING ONE ANOTHER. 
 
 " What the landowners really say, ij, 
 ' Let us rob you all, and then you shall rob 
 one another.' This is the bargain they offer; 
 and the manufacturers swallow it open- 
 mouthed. 
 
 " Of all the petitioners upon this subject, 
 the men of Stroud appear to be the wisest; 
 for they petitioned, that all the monopolies 
 of the manufacturers might be taken away, 
 on condition that the great monopoly of all 
 went along with them. How the 'men of 
 Stroud came by their wisdom, those wh» 
 know them can best tell ; bixtit isclear they 
 are wise in their generation. 
 
 " The amusing part of the proposed fraud 
 is, that we are all to get rich by robbing 
 one another. The leader of the adminis- 
 trati' n himself does not pretend to believo 
 it. He knows full w>?ll, that the plan is as 
 stupid as it would be to attempt to doubl® 
 tlie strength of an army by doubling each 
 battalion in turn by drafts from the others. 
 Nobody believes it but idiots. Rogues pre- 
 tend to believe it, that they may feather 
 their own nests." — Vol. IV., p. 4^6. Cate- 
 chism on the Corn Laws. (This part teas 
 written during the administration of the Duke 
 of Wellinyton. 
 
 THE CORN LAW A QUESTION OF 
 
 RENT. 
 " The landlords, by the exercise of their 
 power in the legislature, lay a tax to keep 
 out foreign corn. Their unaisguised object 
 in tills is to raise their rents; for whether 
 there be reason in the various excuses they 
 offer for it or not, they do not deny that they 
 do it to raise thrir rents. And their rents 
 are raised accordingly ; that is to say, in the 
 contracts which they offer to the competi- 
 tion of the farmers, the bidders, knowing 
 that more money will come in, offer more 
 for the conti-act. If the tolls on a givea 
 road were made twopence for a horse in- 
 
12 
 
 stead of a penny, and otiier things in pro- 
 portion on the same principle, the turnpike- 
 men would increase their biddings. The 
 landlords tlien, having got out of the farm- 
 ers by competition the highest biddings 
 they can aflford, next set the farmers to 
 ery out, that they want nothing but what 
 •will enable them to pay. In the same 
 manner if there were a proposal for lowering 
 the tolls on a tunipi'ne-road, the turnpike-\ 
 men might be set to cry out, that they 
 ■wanted nothing but what would enabie ihera 
 to pay, and nobody could be so hard- 
 hearted as to refuse the tn^opcuce for his 
 horse. 
 
 " If the tHnipike-men set up this plea, 
 they would be told immediately they must 
 go and amend their contracts;— that tlieir j 
 having jobbed the road, might be a reason ! 
 for giving them a fair time to renew, but if i 
 they should have been absurd enough to j 
 enter into contiacis for seven years or for 
 ninety-nine, this would form no reason why 
 the tolls should go on without diminution 
 to pleasure them. A case might even pos- 
 sibly arise, for legislative interference be- 
 tween the contractors and the lessors of the 
 road ; but the last thing any man could 
 make out of the matter, -would be a reason 
 ■why the high tolls should be continued. 
 
 " In the same manner the farmers must 
 not be allowed to be pushed forward, as the 
 people whom we must support at the ex- j 
 jpense of paving a high price of corn be- j 
 cause they bargained for it. Like the turn- i 
 pike-men, they must go and bargain for ; 
 less. Or if by their own incaution they j 
 have hampered themselves with leases, 
 they must take it for their pains. Nobody 1 
 has a right to lease out the public wrong, ; 
 and expect the wrong to be continued in 
 eonsequence of his contract. The landlord 
 pockets all that the farmers can by compe- 
 tition be induced to spare ; and he would do 
 just the same, if the price were carried to 
 any imaginable height. If the monopoly 
 of com were enforced and men multiplied, 
 till they were glad to p-ay for growing corn 
 upon flag-stones, and of course the rent upon 
 all that was better than flag- stones was of 
 enormous height,— the landlords would as 
 much as ever be found sending the farmers 
 round with the begging-box, on the plea 
 that they wanted nothing but a remunerat- 
 ing price,— that is to say the price which 
 ■would pay them for growing corn upon flag- 
 stones, they having at the same time bar- 
 gained with the landowners for making 
 over all the excess that should accrue upon ; 
 the better lands, in the shape of rent. Rent 
 is the difference between the total value of : 
 the produce of land, and what the farmer ' 
 
 can cultivate it for with a living profit. If, 
 therefore, there is land of all sorts of quali- 
 ties, as in most countries is the case, the 
 worst land cultivated will be that which 
 will give the farmer's profit but no more, 
 and in all the better lands the excess above 
 this will be the rent. Hence the pretence 
 that the farmer only wants what will pay him, 
 is an ever-growing claim,— a claim which 
 if corn were raised to aguinea a pock, would 
 be as strong as ever in favour of its being 
 two, — a claim which like the shoe to a wag- 
 gon-wheel, is dragged along with the wheel, 
 and is just as much there as ever, whatever 
 progress may have been made. 
 
 The farmers are beginning to understand 
 this, and to know that, with the exception 
 of a portion of trouble they might have 
 about their leases, they have no direct inte- 
 rest in keeping corn at a monopoly price ; 
 for the simple reason, that it is the land- 
 lords, awd not they, that take the dif- 
 ference."— Vol. v., p. 413. Suffolk Chro- 
 nicle. 
 
 THE FAIR PRICE OF CORN. 
 
 " The price of corn ought to be, what men 
 will voluntarily give for it in the absence of 
 restrictions. No trader has a right to say 
 his goods shall be bought from him at a cer- 
 tain price whether the buyer wants them or 
 not. If one trader has the right, another 
 has ; and where would be the end ? 
 
 " A fair remunerating price is what other 
 men will voluntarily give. It is the dealer's 
 business to see that the supply is accom- 
 modated to the demand ; not to use violence 
 to make the demand equal to the supply." 
 — Vol. IV. p. 527. Catechism on the Corn 
 Laws. 
 
 " The landlords' theory ef remunerating 
 price is a bottomless pit. When they talk 
 of their barely obtaining a remunerating 
 price, they mean o/i the worst land on which 
 the present price 7nakes it practicable to grow 
 corn. Hence they would equally be found 
 talking of a remunerating jnice, if corn had 
 risen to its weight in gold. 
 
 " Since, then, in every imaginable state 
 of the supply there must be some land or 
 or other that is paying a barely remunerat- 
 ing price, this proves nothing with respect 
 to the market being plentifully supplied, or 
 the propriety of piohibitiug foreign corn. 
 
 " They want to be paid with a profit, for 
 growing corn on the sand above high-water 
 mark if it suits them ; and to have an equal 
 price for all they grow elsewhere besides." — 
 Vol. IV., p. 526. Catechism on tite Com 
 Laws. 
 
13 
 
 The Landlords' Case.— "To say tliat 
 the removal of restrictions would reduce the 
 incomes of the land-owners, is atmostonly 
 saying it would take away from them what 
 they ought never to have had. And there still 
 remains the (luestion, of whether they,wouUl 
 be any real losers in the end. Is this clear 
 enough to them, to goto war with the rest of the 
 communilij? It may be very possible for 
 them to draw money from the public loss, and 
 be no gainers after all ; just as a pond may 
 draw water from another pond, and lose 
 more at some other end than it takes in. 
 And this other end, is found in the impossi- 
 bility of finding profitabie employments for 
 their sons, or marrying their daughters to 
 the sons of other people who can do the 
 same. A landlord is uo gainer, though in 
 spite of poor rates, he has t:600 a year 
 instead of £500, if the consequence is that 
 he has eight sons and as many daughters to 
 keep as miserable annuitants. This reason 
 therefore applies to all except those who 
 calculate on quartering their children on the 
 public." — Vol. IV., p. 643. Catechism on the 
 Corn Laws. 
 
 The Farmers' Case.— "The Com Laws 
 got up a spirt of prosperity for larmers attheir 
 neighbours' expense, in the same manner as 
 a spirt of prosperity for linen-drapers might 
 be got up by an Act "of Pailiament that should 
 prohibit the wearing of woollen coats, But 
 that was seventeen years ago. The only 
 consequence now left is, that there are per- 
 haps five farmers where there would have 
 
 at all events no urgent interest in the con- 
 tinuance of the public wrong. They gained 
 for a season when the mischief was brought 
 on, but their share m the general suflering 
 has long since eaten up the benefits. By 
 the converse of the case, it may be undeni- 
 able that the return to justice will be at- 
 tended with some present exacerbation of 
 their condition, but wi;h the prospect of 
 overpowering improvement at no verj' re- 
 mote period. This is not the most favour- 
 I able position imaginable to invito men t» 
 resort to; but it is a position which there is 
 no reason to despair of inducing a great 
 number of intelligent individuals to resort 
 to in the end. There will be a desertion, 
 or at least a slackness, first among the far- 
 mers and agricultural labourers, next among 
 those descriptions of landlords who are 
 obliged to provide for their children in the 
 world themselves, and have no hopes of 
 quartering them on the public purse; and 
 the end will be, that the remaining class of 
 landlords with their few adherents, will 
 have the honour of going to the bottom in 
 a minority together." — Vol. II,, p. 191. W, 
 It, 1 July, 18J32. 
 
 Mistakes of the M ultitcde.— " Every 
 man who chuses to run in the teeth of com- 
 mon justice and make himself the enemy 
 of the multitudinous classes, must make 
 up his mind to take the chance not only 
 of what they may do right, hut of what 
 they may do wrong. There is no use in 
 banditti being pathetic on the way in which 
 
 been four, and that the five are much worse they are sometimes treated when overpo 
 
 off than the fowr. If the five were as well 
 off as the four, the farmers might plead tiiat 
 it would be all clear loss to go back again. 
 But they are not; they suffer under all the 
 difference that aiises from the general state 
 of the country being incomparably worse 
 tkan formerly. Their children cannot all 
 be farmers ; and the Corn Laws have brought 
 on a state of things where they can be no- 
 thing else. So sure as there is a Providence 
 above, is it written that theie shall be al- 
 ways ways in which those who wrong and 
 defraud their neighbours shall in the end 
 find out that they have made a rueful bar- 
 gain."— Vol. 1 1., p. 3 19. W.R., 1 Oct., 1832. 
 
 Farmers and Labourers. — "The la- 
 mentable circumstance for the supporters 
 of the corn law is, that little by little all 
 their friends will be picked away from 
 under them. The most feasible thing in 
 the world, when information has taken a 
 very few strides more, will be to convince 
 the farmers and agricultural labourers, or 
 
 ered by the country-side, and getting up a 
 tragedy upon the sutTerings of felons tied om 
 their backs in carts, and considerably over- 
 twitched about the wrists by the premature 
 application of a halter. A humane hrigndier 
 will hinder it when he can ; but he will not 
 see in the possibility that he muy not always 
 be able to hinder it, the smallest reason 
 why the country should be given up to the 
 heroes with high crowns and cross garters. 
 It is by no means certain that the oppressed 
 classes in England will he moderate, if the 
 concession of justice be put oft' till the hour 
 when it can no longer be withheld. But 
 their friends and leaders are not therefore 
 the frank asses that should exhort them to- 
 sit down in sufferance for fear their enemies 
 should be hurt. Let all sides take care of 
 themselves; our bxisiness is to putyoudown^ 
 at all events till you show something like a 
 (lag »f truce. That the operatives are at 
 presentnat going right ;— that they are going 
 the way which tiireatcns more evil than is 
 necessary to their enemies, without acccrm- 
 
 aa efficient portion of them, that lliey have I j.lishing the good they desire to themselves 
 
14 
 
 — may be what any man has a right to hold, 
 who is eaough of an engineer to know that 
 to try to scramble over the walls is not al- 
 ways the nearest way to take the town. But 
 because the Lord's host is going wrong, is 
 not a reason why a man should abandon the 
 Liord's host; still less why it should be 
 agreed and settled, that the good cause is a 
 tiling to be delivered up into the hands of 
 its enemies."— Vol. III., p. 75. W. R., 1 
 April, 1834. 
 
 No Compromise. — " No man ever got 
 anything by giviuij np his just right where he 
 had pov.-er to enforce it. To give up apart to 
 Bave the rest, is a perfectly different question ; 
 but the people have no occasion to give up a 
 tittle here. Tiiey have only to understand the 
 thing, and use the means ; and first or last, 
 their enemies must be at their feet. And 
 whenever that happens, they will overturn 
 the most cruel, dishonest, and insulting 
 structure of human wmng, that with the 
 exception of tlie West-Indian tyranny, has 
 sullied the page of history. The landowners 
 will call this, selling one part of society 
 against ar.olher. Is not tlie New Police, 
 setting one part of society against anotlier? 
 There is no use in mincing phrases; the 
 people are trampled on by the rank and 
 gross oppressions of an insolent order, who 
 push their injustice to the cottage of the 
 starving man and the bed-side of the dying, 
 and feed their hounds on the blood and si- 
 news of the industrious population. Two 
 points are their law and their gospel; one, 
 that they will not pay taxes and otlier people 
 shall ; the other, that fortunes shall be made 
 for them at the expense of other people. All 
 this they consider as tlieir birth-riglit; and 
 they turn like banted wild beasts upon any- 
 body who talks of taking it from them. The 
 people have the legal and parliamentary 
 means of relieving themselves, if th',^y Have 
 union and sense." — Vol. II., p. 399. W. 
 R., 1 April, 1833. 
 
 now THE MONOPOLISTS BEHAVED 
 FIVE YEARS AGO. 
 « On Thursday (18th March, 1837) Mr. 
 Clay brought on his motion for an altera- 
 tion in -the Corn Laws. As soon as Mr. 
 Clay had finished speaking, an agricultural 
 member (Mr. Cayley) rose with ilie second- 
 er, and endeavoured to stop proceedings by 
 •ounting out the House. The number was 
 found abnve forty, and the seconder went 
 on. Their first movement having thus 
 failed, the landowners mustered kin and 
 elan, and finally came down to the nsimber 
 of above two hundred. The ordinary rou- 
 tiue of a-thou5and limes-answered fallacies 
 
 was put forward, and received as might be 
 expected in an assembly where ever}- man 
 had made oath that he had a pecuniary in- 
 terest in the question before him. At the 
 instance of friends about me, I made re- 
 peated attempts to offer reply, as also to 
 explain my reasons for not voting upon the 
 actual question; but was imable to gain a 
 hearing. Thank God, I have many better 
 places ! If I had been a jobber in a rail- 
 road or a dabbler in some monopoly, wish- 
 ing to make a similar explanation, 1 should 
 have been heard with reverential sympathy, 
 to the extent that human ovgans could sup- 
 ply. Sir William Moles worth entered upun 
 a demonstration of the mode of operation 
 of the competition generated by the limita- 
 tion of food, which was perfect in its way, 
 but confined to a portion of the field. Mr. 
 Hume was received with groans and hide- 
 ous laughs when he attempted to open the 
 case of that part of the community who 
 have not three hundred pounds a year ia 
 laud; and when he proceeded to connect 
 the question with the New Poor Law, the 
 sounds that issued from the landed benches 
 had a touch of tlie New-Zealander. — Vol. 
 VI., p. 227. Lethrs of a Jlepreseiitotwe. 
 
 AN IMAGINARY PICTURE OF THE 
 STATE OF A COUNTRY UNDER A 
 CORN LAW, DRAWN IN 1827, AND 
 SINCE REALISED IN ENGLAND. 
 " In such a country there would bs seen 
 crowds of youths of the middle classes, at- 
 tempting to maintain themsidves in credit by 
 industry, and only dispersing the accumu- 
 lation of their fathers by a fatality that 
 nothing could warcf off; families lamenting 
 the ruin of their hopes, and men looking on 
 the faces of their children as pU-dges of 
 coming sorrow instead of aid. In such a 
 country there would be campaigns against 
 starving manufacturers; and men who had 
 fought nations' quarrels, would be called 
 upon to finish the sufferings of dying arti- 
 sans. There would be a law to determine 
 that eveiy legislator should be a landowner, 
 and a class of laws to make the poor dia 
 quietly, and without disturbing the higher 
 orders by their efforts to escape. To be 
 found houseless would be made a crime; 
 because he that has parted with his house, 
 has manifestly not starved when he ought 
 To be detected with horse-fiesh in a bag, 
 would be punished with fine or imprison- 
 ment; because a man who descends to such 
 disgusting methods to save life, is evidently 
 making efforts unfair upon his fellows. In 
 such a country there would be troops of 
 
15 
 
 juvenile offenders in the towns ; and regi- 
 ments of poachers ia the fields, living des- 
 perately on pheasant, because men are not 
 permitted to buy bread. There would be 
 •distressed manufacturers,' and 'commer- 
 cial crises,' and ' a general glut,' and ' depra- 
 xity of the lower orders,' and ' apprehensions 
 for i-ropcrry,' and ' fears for establishments,' 
 and ' danger to social order,' and every man 
 asking his neighbour how these evils had 
 arisen. On one side would be seen the rich 
 few, enjoying with trembling; and on the 
 other, industrious and able-bodied men, 
 dying because working would not support 
 existence as it ought to do ; women and cl:il- 
 dren trodden down in the mass of suffering, 
 and retiring into corners to die without re- I 
 sistance, as is their nature j— woe, and want, 
 and wretchedness, and wrong,— and all this, 
 that the squire's bitch hound miglit v,help in 
 safety. If any legislators ever had a heavy 
 responsibility, it would be those who tole- 
 rated such a state of thin7s an hour after 
 they had power to remove it. If any ever 
 had a claim to the support of a grateful peo- 
 ple, it would be those who ventured power 
 and place, by resisting the demands of the 
 encroaching order, nnd putting themselves 
 upon their country for their deliverance. — 
 Vol. IV., p. 476. 'jiilrodticlhn to Cahclihm 
 on the Corn Laws, fust published in 1827. 
 
 THE NATURAL AND UNNATURAL 
 SUFFERINGS OF THE PEOPLE.— DIS- 
 TINCTION BETWEEN THEM. 
 
 « To the Editors of the Sheffield Iris. 
 
 " Sirs, — Too much can never be done, to 
 impress in season and out of season, the 
 images and feelings conveyed in the ex- 
 tract from your co-labourer of the Lnds 
 J'imes in your paper of the G;h. But always 
 weigh heaviest upon this point, — that the dis- 
 tress, the agony, the woe, are the results not 
 of the natural concomitants of human life, 
 but of a distinct organization of law lo that 
 effect made and provided, as the means of 
 placing a greater portion of the labour of 
 the poor at the command of the sworn inte- 
 rested law-makers. 
 
 " When we view the spectacles of misery 
 80 forcibly described, let us always summon 
 the reflection, that these are not the conse- 
 quences of the primaeval curse which des- 
 tined man to toil or woise suffering during 
 his residence on earth ; nor are they con- 
 tained in the most undeniable of all as- 
 sumptions, that ' the poor we shall have al- 
 ways with us.' Tliey bear precisely the 
 relation to these facts, which murder, whole- 
 'Bale or retail, does to the truth so gravely 
 
 cited by Justice Shallow, that 'death is cer- 
 tain to all.' There is a natural suffering, 
 and there is an unnatural ; there is one 
 sorrow at the hands of Almighty God, and 
 another sorrow of the landlords, and the pro- 
 portions between the two are ahnost in the 
 inverse ratio of the magnitude of the willers. 
 "To go over it again, — we are not griev- 
 ing over the fact that every man, woman, 
 and child, must at some time or other be 
 brought with pain and lamentation to the 
 grave. We are not rending our garments 
 nor our hearts, because among the chances 
 and changes of this mortal life, there must 
 always be some who either through defect 
 of conduct or of fortune, will find them- 
 selves disappointed in their plans for honest 
 success, and be bound to submit to the ills 
 of poverty, or the still greater ones of de- 
 pendence on the charity of their fellows. 
 But we are bowed to the earth with the 
 thought, that in this country so full of pietj 
 which is of no use, and of knowledge which 
 settles the anise and cummin of Greek ac- 
 cents andonyts the weightier matters of the 
 law, there sliould be a distinct organization 
 by legislative enactment, regular, long-de- 
 bated, iJremeditated, for raising and ' kill- 
 ing-off' a population of the poor, in order 
 that as they come in succession like the 
 grains of coffee to the grinders in the cof- 
 fee-mill, a pleasant flavour from their de- 
 struction, like that which saluted the nos- 
 trils of Jupiter from a sacrifice, may meet 
 the organs of the tyrants of the soil, in the 
 shape of increased rents created out of the 
 oppression of industry and commerce. 
 
 " It is not that such things are ; it is that 
 such things are done on purpose. It is that 
 we have them done by regular human or- 
 ganization. God willed it not ; the Devil* 
 did not think cf it, or at all events there are 
 no traces of it in his history. The mixture 
 of daikness and evil which m.ade up the in- 
 termediate thing called man, was the only 
 hot-bed in which could be concocted such a 
 fungus, as a legislative assembly adminis- 
 tering an o.alh to an interest against the 
 public, and being quietly allowed ia the 
 possession of its prey. 
 
 " London, April lO.Vi, 1841." 
 
 —Vol. VI., p. 287. 
 
 " As an old dealer in these subjects,'! 
 woald suggest to the Operatives at large, that 
 the points on which clear views are most 
 wanted among their class, and to which con- 
 sequently their eOorts should be directed, 
 are the following: — 
 
 " 1. That whenever anything is bought at 
 a dearer market ^hen it could have been 
 
16 
 
 bought at a cheaper, the difference of price ] 
 is lost to the consumer as if it was thrown | 
 into the sea, and without anj' the smallest I 
 gain or increase of employment or wages to j 
 worlcing-men in the aggregate. The work- j 
 man who is employed in the home mono- | 
 poly may gain ; hat he take 
 the pocket, not only of the co 
 some other workman hesiii< — 
 consumer would have emidoy. u u; .^t 
 penditure of the difference. I 
 
 " 2. That this principle tells with horrible j 
 effect, when the consumer is the workinii 
 man, and the article to be cousumedts what 
 he cannot live without, food. . j 
 
 " 3. That the consequence of such a sys- j 
 tem is that there must be a perpetual 'hU- \ 
 lingoff of the population of tlie working \ 
 classes, from the moment their numbers ! 
 have begun to press against the food pro- j 
 duced at home. If only a certain number 
 are allowed to be fed, all the rest must be ! 
 brought to the grinder in succession, like the j 
 grains of coffee in a cofl'ee-mili. And the | 
 New Ror Law will be that mill^ "Ift I 
 
 " 4. That for wages not to decv^asAmder | 
 such a system, is a thing impossible ; and I 
 he that says so, ought only to be laughed at, 
 for he in fact says, that many people shall 
 be fed out of the' same food that would keep 
 a iev^. Still more ought he who should say, j 
 that to remove present prohibitions on food 
 would cause wages to fall; for it is saying 
 that less shall be eaten out of much than 
 out of a little, , ' 
 
 '< 5. That the agricult-iral labourers are in 
 the end brought to suifer, as much as the 
 manufacturing. For as they have. t,hc same 
 teadency to mulliijly, it is iE^b'fesible 'fli^y 
 <Lould not bid against each r. b :r for a 
 limited quantity of food like ti.o rest. 
 
 "T. That the mischief comes, by a process 
 more or less roundabout, act only to all 
 
 who are engaged in the various professior 
 and occupations of life which have no in: 
 mediately apparent connexion with either 
 agriculture or roawufactures, but to the 
 farmers, and even to the owners of land, 
 with the exception of such as either are to 
 no children, like the Fellows of C'ol- 
 i;j', or who have some patent for keeping| 
 
 em I Hit of tb public stock. 
 
 ''io'! 'on, Ainllllh, 1841." 
 
 —Vol. VI , p. 304. Sheffield Iris. 
 
 "MERCHANTS OF HULL! 
 
 " Why are there bankruptcies and failures! 
 among you ? 
 
 " Is it not because the trade to be divided| 
 is limited by law, while your numbers ir 
 crease? 
 
 " The trade is to be limited to what can| 
 be carried on in exchange for a given quan- 
 tity of corn. Hence merchants bid againstl 
 one another for taking lower profits, as the! 
 operatives for taking lower wages ; and thej 
 weakest go to the wall. 
 
 " The country may possess commerciall 
 capabilities for the maintenance of ten times 
 the merchants, and ten times the populalior 
 of every kind. But all shall be cut dowr 
 to the tenth ; the population in the poor-] 
 house, and the merchants in the Gazette. 
 
 " Suppose that in old time. Tyre, Venice^ 
 or Genoa, had declared they would eat no 
 corn but what was grown in their 
 territory. Where would the " Merchant 
 QuEE>is" of the Mediterranean have been" 
 
 "You are told-not to Shave .trade, lest £ 
 some time it should bo cut off. Would 
 not be as weU BOt to have legs, for the sam^ 
 reason ? 
 
 "Bull, June 23, 1841." 
 Vol. VI., p. 386. Election Proceidinyi. 
 
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