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 THE 
 
 LET T E R S 
 
 OK 
 
 DIOGENES, 
 
 TO 
 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL, BART. 
 
 By repetition hammered on tliiiie uar." 
 
 LONDON ; 
 RIDGWAY, PICCADILLY ; AND lilCIIARDSUN, CORNHILL. 
 
 1841.
 
 Darling & Son, Printers, 31, Leadenhall Street.
 
 H1= 
 
 S3JSJI 
 
 TO THE MEMBERS OF 
 
 ANTI-CORN- LAW SOCIETIES, 
 
 WITH THE MOST SINCERE WISH AND HOPE, THAT THEIR 
 
 GENEROUS ENDEAVOURS, 
 
 AND 
 
 UNEXAMPLED LABOURS, 
 
 IN BEHALF OF SUFFERING HUMANITY, 
 MAY BE SPEEDILY CROWNED WITH TRIUMPHANT SUCCESS, 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
 131615S
 
 PREFACE 
 
 The Letters of Diogenes are meant to resemble the 
 strongly-marked sketches exhibited in booksellers' win- 
 dows, for the purpose of attracting customers to the valu- 
 able volumes on the shelves within. Though a vast deal 
 has been written about the Corn Laiv, daily experience 
 convinces me that its nature is far from being generally 
 understood. Indeed out of the immediate range of 
 commercial circles, I have met with many well-edu- 
 cated men, absolutely unacquainted with the provisions 
 and details of this enactment, and very small is the 
 number of those who seem to have made it a subject of 
 prolonged inquiry and regular study. Yet one would think, 
 that what has so long agitated all parties, and repeated- 
 ly threatened to separate the nation into two irrecon- 
 cilable factions, must claim general consideration. 
 Even if chance, I mean bad seasons, should occasion- 
 ally afford a temporai'y solution of the difficulty, still 
 this vital question cannot be left for ever to the de- 
 cision of such unstable arbiters as wind and weather; 
 the moment must come when an opinion or a vote 
 will be required from every one, and there can be 
 no doubt, but all rational and conscientious men ought
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 to prepare themselves for the discharge of tliis duty by 
 diligent labour and anxious investigation. 
 
 Those who are content to think on the authority of 
 others, should, it seems to me, recollect that the advocates 
 of free trade, and of the abandonment of all Corn Laws, 
 number in their ranks a great many men to whom time, 
 the safest test of true greatness, has conceded the glory 
 of immortality, whereas the opposite party cannot boast 
 of possessing amongst their supporters, even one name 
 of distinguished fame. No Smiths, no Says, no Ricardos, 
 have rendered themselves renowned by justifying or 
 demonstrating the mysteries, the infinitely intricate and 
 incomprehensible theories, of the so-coWed. practical mmi, 
 who maintains that it is the business of Government to 
 rule nations by the complicated contrivances of pro- 
 tections, restrictions, prohibitions, and sliding scales. 
 
 To those wiser persons who v^ll not be guided by 
 the authority of others, and who, divesting themselves 
 of all preconceived notions, habitual prejudices, and 
 selfish bias, choose to come to this inquiry in a proper 
 frame of mind, perhaps no better materials for useful 
 study can be recommended, than Sir Robert PeeVs 
 Speech of the 15th of March 1839, which has called my 
 Letters into existence. 
 
 The Right Honourable Baronet stands foremost 
 amongst the advocates of the present Corn Law, and 
 has even so late as the 29th of June last, most posi- 
 tively and distinctly (and that is not usual with him) 
 j declared himself in favour of its continuance ; but in 
 i the above-mentioned speech he has developed the men- 
 tal processes, by which he arrives at his decision, and I
 
 PREFACE. Vll 
 
 feel convinced, these need only to be carefully and 
 repeatedly investigated, to make every inquirer partici- 
 pate in my astonishment and indignation, that the fate 
 of a great nation should depend, to so large an extent, 
 on such a man, such a mind, and such a measure. 
 
 The most conspicuous feature in this speech is the 
 ready tact with which Sir Robert Peel avails himself 
 of the statements of his opponents, whilst he cau- 
 tiously abstains from any argument of an original na- 
 ture, or which might, strictly speaking, be called his 
 own. Cunning and wariness are the distinguishing 
 characteristics of his oration, and obtrude themselves in 
 every sentence upon our notice : but these leave the 
 question in reality where it was before, for truth is no 
 less truth, because its defenders are deficient in wisdom 
 and skill ; and as the tricks of shallow sophistry may 
 puzzle the most upright mind, and entrap us into a 
 momentary assent against the evidences of fact, or the 
 conviction of our moral sense, so Sir Robert seems 
 to have entrapped parliamentary majorities, though 
 time and experience have belied his inferences, and 
 laughed his predictions to scorn ; for time is no flat- 
 terer, truth a stern and unyielding opponent, and 
 events are not, as conservative members, under the com- 
 mand of a whipper-in. 
 
 Who can fail to perceive, that in his processes of 
 ratiocination Sir Robert Peel differs widely from the 
 habits of anxious inquirers after truth. The latter 
 shun every suspicion of ha zing strayed into the course 
 alluded to ; they feel a delicate alarm, lest they should 
 bear unfairly on their opponent, and are careful to put
 
 Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 their own views broadly forward, that there may be no 
 possibiHty of uiistakiug them. It is not in their nature 
 or phm, to take advantages, and they are as it were 
 over nice in their apprehension, that their antagonist 
 shoukl neglect those which fairly belong to him. They 
 are like the high-minded chess or card player, who, 
 looking for success to his own superiority, and not to 
 the blunders of others, will kindly point to mistakes 
 or omissions, upon which tricksters would seize with 
 avidity and pleasure. 
 
 When suspicion is once alive, faith in authority ra- 
 pidly declines. If any one will but go carefully through 
 Sir Robert's speech, he will find himself in that pre- 
 dicament, and the Letters of Diogenes are not cal- 
 culated to lessen wholesome distrust. Should they 
 induce inquirers to seek for further information in 
 the pages of the great men who have treated of political 
 science (and who will remain great notwithstanding Sir 
 Robert's sneers), my object will have been gained ; there 
 is no fear, but that whoever once sets fairly about inquiry, 
 is a recruit, on the point of enlisting in our ranks*. 
 
 I could not well avoid making use, in these letters, 
 of what may appear harsh language, but the Right 
 Honourable Baronet himself is not very chary on this 
 point ; and I mean to say, that he has damaged himself 
 materially by the gloating delight with which, under the 
 pretence of attacking an individual (Mr. Hume) he has 
 resuscitated the stale, exploded, vulgar, and futile trick, 
 
 • * Perhaps on political economy, no work is more entertaining and instruc- 
 1 live, and therefore more suitable to beginners, than that of Jean Baptiste 
 1 Say. I have earned the thanks of many people, who, reading it on my rc- 
 I commendation, were converted into supporters of the doctrines of free trade.
 
 PREFACE. ix 
 
 of disparaging the whole race of political philosophers, 
 or, if he wall, Economists — men, of whom it may most 
 truly be said, that they have brought down wisdom from 
 heaven, and fixed her in the abodes of mortals — men, il- 
 lustrious for the zeal and disinterestedness with which 
 they have applied the highest sciences to the relief of the 
 evils under which (we must be wilfully blind not to 
 see it) poor humanity still labours to an alarming 
 and lamentable extent. With this aggressive part of 
 Sir Robert's Speech, daily twice or three times under 
 my eyes, fine phrases seemed impossible, mincing lan- 
 guage became childish, and the ordinary courtesies were 
 perfectly supererogatory. To suit my words to the occa- 
 sion appeared an indispensable duty. 
 
 But I must acknowledge that I feel some compunc- 
 tions for having, in my censure of the abominable uses 
 to which Sir Robert Peel puts statistical statements (and 
 which afford an instructive instance of the abuse which has 
 frequently been made of them), indulged in certain stric- 
 tures which I might almost wish to erase from the 
 Letters of Diogenes. The gentleman at the head of the 
 statistical department of the treasury, and many mem- 
 bers of the statistical society, are men of singularly en- 
 larged minds and pure and benevolent intentions, and 
 with them statistics are so entirely the handmaiden of 
 higher purposes, that I must concede to them the right 
 to address me, as Kent is addressed in Lear — " Why, 
 what a monstrous fellow thou art, thus to rail at us, 
 that are neither known of thee, nor know thee !" 
 Many persons, however, and Sir Robert Peel among 
 the rest, seem to confound statistics with political econo-
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 my, wheroas these two branches of political science, 
 diller at least as widely as the dictionary of a language 
 from its grammar. 
 
 I It may be asked, what system of Corn Laws I advo- 
 cate, and to this question I emphatically answer, 
 none ! After a dispassionate and diligent inquiry, ex- 
 tended over fully a quarter of a century, I am quite 
 sure that none is necessary, and therefore, that every 
 one is bad ! The object of such laws is invariably to 
 curtail the supply of food, on the vulgar, but erroneous 
 supposition, that there is either too much, or at all 
 events enough : such a state of things has, however, never 
 yet existed. 
 
 If I am asked again, what I would advocate as 
 second best to no Corn Law, I should certainly say a 
 I small fixed duty, not for protection (for it is no pro- 
 tection, neither is any required), but to silence prejudices, 
 or to increase the revenue. The latter object, whilst du- 
 ties are levied on sugar, coffee, tea, and many other com- 
 modities which have gradually become necessaries of life, 
 may palliate a slight departure from a strictly sound 
 course ; and if the general principle be but agreed on, 
 details may be left to the settlement of expediency and 
 mutual concession. It should, however, not be forgot- 
 ten, that every duty on corn has a tendency to add to 
 the undue preponderance of the proprietors of the soil 
 and to foster oligarchy, which threatens ultimate sub- 
 version to the political edifice. 
 
 The attempt to rule the trade in food (which ought 
 to constitute one-half of all commerce) by the present 
 system, is an outrage on conunon sense and the age ;
 
 PREFACE. XI 
 
 it is also quite inefficient for the purposes which it was 
 intended to accomplish, and Sir Robert Peel's declaration 
 in its favour fixes his pretensions to the art of govern- 
 ing (I can hardly say the science of government, for 
 of that he seems to know nothing,) very low. He is in 
 fact perfectly ignorant of the working of the system. 
 
 Let me tell him, that the sliding rule is in a pecu- 
 liar sense " the speculators' law," and an infamous in- 
 strument for fraud on an enormous scale. It reminds 
 one forcibly of the false oaths, simulated papers, and 
 other wholesale iniquities, which in many instances de- 
 graded the mercantile profession during the late war from 
 an high and honourable pursuit, to one full of deception, 
 fraud, forgery, and debasing trickery. Great political 
 measures shape the moral temperament of whole gene- 
 rations, and there are not a few who have reason to 
 regret, that their youth fell on a period so frightfully 
 fatal to a pure and honourable habit of trade* ! 
 
 * The Morning Chronicle of the 20th April 1840, gives the following in- 
 stance of the operations of corn speculators : — " The average price," it saj's, 
 " was, in London, on the 
 
 2.5th March.. 
 
 ..72s. 
 
 lOd. 
 
 31st March . . 
 
 ..68s. 
 
 lOd. 
 
 7 th April . . 
 
 ..C68. 
 
 5d. 
 
 14th April .. 
 
 ..72s. 
 
 4d. 
 
 " Now the two low weeks originated in a quantity of Irish and Scotch 
 wheat, sold in Mark-lane at 44s. a 46s. not for human food, but for 
 pigs and poultry uses. This having ceased, the averages got up, although 
 the general prices have fallen." — " In Bristol, last week, 1000 Bnr- 
 rels of Irish wheat were returned at 258. per barrel ; they were bo\ight at 
 this price, free on board, in Ireland ; they will apjiear in the averages as 
 600 quarters at 42s. and thus the duty on human food is now regulated by 
 the price of that for swine !"
 
 XU PKKFACE. 
 
 Modifications of this absurd system will no doubt be 
 proposed by many a state quack, and perhaps meet the 
 support of some well-meaning and sensible men. In 
 proportion as they will approximate the corn trade to a 
 state of perfect freedom, or a low fixed duty, objections 
 to them would diminish, but so would also the pretext 
 for their necessity. Until it shall have been boldly 
 proclaimed by the legislature, that all such restraints 
 are absurd, there will remain something rotten in our 
 commercial policy ; when that principle shall have been 
 generally admitted, this silly contrivance will not trouble 
 us much longer. 
 
 In my Letters I found it impossible to avoid a fre- 
 quent recurrence to some points ; and others, though it 
 was my wish to pass in review every important item in 
 political science bearing on the question of the Corn 
 Law, have been neglected ; to one of these I must still 
 refer. When the object of a law is to control something, 
 say price, we ought to know what it is that is to be so 
 controlled. Price consists of several elements, amongst 
 which the proportion which the quantity of a commo- 
 dity bears to that of the precious metals stands most 
 prominent; but population, national habits, new inven- 
 tions, and a variety of other circumstances, as variable 
 in their nature as in their number, are mixed up with 
 it. Reason, as well as history, teaches us, that fifty shil- 
 lings may be an extremely low, or an outrageously high 
 price for wheat — but which, who can know ? In these 
 words, " who can know" much of the mischief of legis- 
 lative interference in matters of this kind, is to be 
 sought. It interferes in the dark, or, at best, on the
 
 PREFACE. Xlll 
 
 evidence of past occurrences, which aiford no clue to 
 the hidden future. 
 
 It will be said, that the laws may be altered to meet 
 the new emergency. No doubt they may, as they have 
 been altered twenty times before, but when ? When 
 the mischief has been done — when difficulties and dan- 
 gers intrude themselves amongst the highest ranks of 
 society, the legislating classes — when the middling 
 classes can no longer bear the pressure — when, in fact, 
 the lower classes have undergone years of suffering, and 
 their numbers have been decimated by calamities ! In 
 the annals of history, two or three years seem but a 
 point, and though millions may have perished, the short 
 words " much distress amongst the poor," will be found 
 abundantly comprehensive for the graphic pencil of the 
 historian, to chronicle the sad tale of a decennium of 
 wretchedness, struggling, and deprivation, such as we 
 witness in our own days. And who will say that we 
 are not now, even now, in a transition period, where the 
 proportion of the precious metals or other circumstances 
 would justify 30s. rather than 90s. as the proper price 
 for wheat, and that the present struggle will not be 
 justly recorded by future writers as an insane attempt, 
 parallel to some effort to keep cotton at 2s. the pound, 
 or manufactured goods at the tenfold value which they 
 bore twenty years ago ? I ask again, ivho can know ? 
 Who then would charge his conscience with having 
 assisted in upholding a contrivance like the Corn Law, 
 which may at this very moment disarrange every natu- 
 ral course of events, and, in the interim to our arriving 
 at a better knowledge, inflict a world of hardships,
 
 XIV PREFACE. 
 
 which licrcaftcr wo may all ilnd t() liave been perfectly 
 uncalled for ? 
 
 Oh that every one would consider it a solemn duty 
 to understand these matters ! Then we should, al- 
 though still subject to many ills flesh is heir to, 
 escape at least that part, and a very large one it is, 
 which can be traced to useless legislation, to unneces- 
 sary interference, to all sorts of restrictions and prohi- 
 bitions, but above all to the Corn Law. 
 
 Amongst all the thousand legislative experiments 
 with which our state doctors have quacked nations, one 
 has never yet been tried — that of leaving us alone. 
 The business of Government ought to be protection 
 from foreign aggression and domestic violence, the per- 
 fect administration of the laws in public courts, and the 
 education of the people. Security, justice, and know- 
 ledge, should occupy the entire energies of our rulers, 
 and the result would be a vast diminution of jobbing, 
 dishonesty, and trickery, together with the vices and 
 crimes which fiscal legulations have called into exist- 
 ence, and which, like all other trespasses, lead to a thou- 
 sand fresh departures from upright and honourable con- 
 duct in the ordinary affairs of life. We should then 
 have an era of simplicity and ease as yet unknown in 
 the management of public affairs, securing wealth, pros- 
 perity, and tranquillity to individuals and to the state, 
 and laying the best foundations of human happiness and 
 national greatness. Had but half the waste of mental 
 power and material treasure of our Custom-house philoso- 
 phers, been devoted to the improvement of civil law and 
 general education, what would Great Britain now be ?
 
 PREFACE. XV 
 
 — A heaven on earth ! What its people ? — Men, phi- 
 losophers, Christians, in the truest sense of the words. 
 I cannot conclude without adding my sincere thanks 
 to the Editor of the Morniyig Chronicle for th^ ready 
 insertion of the communications of an unknown cor- 
 respondent; and, in the earnest hope that my endea- 
 vours may contribute to the accomplishment of the 
 consummation most devoutly to be wished, THE 
 TOTAL ABOLITION OF THE CORN LAW, I 
 consign to the serious attention of an intelligent public, 
 the letters of 
 
 DIOGENES. 
 London, 24<A August 1841.
 
 LETTERS. 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 Sir, May 14, 1841. 
 
 By means of the Com Laws you grasp at, and, for 
 aught I know, you may succeed in holding the hehii of State ! 
 Looking at your speech of 1839 on this miglity question, I can 
 comprehend the great chancellor's dictum — " Behold, my son, 
 with how little wisdom the world is governed !" Capacities 
 which might grace a special pleader at the Old Bailey, are to 
 govern a great empire ! Such capacities you must be allowed 
 to possess, and your speech of 1839 shall justify the assertion. 
 
 Returns for a couple of years of the Savings-banks of Man- 
 chester and Glasgow satisfy you of the abundance of food ! — as 
 if you would wait till the nation were one general community 
 of paupers, before you saw reasons for suspecting the existence 
 of want and suffering ! Tables from the Custom-house, cun- 
 ningly culled for your purpose by some sycophantic aspirant 
 to a clerkship, but so clumsily done, that by slight additions, 
 they prove the very contrary of your case, are the statistics 
 with which you satisfy your conscience and your supporters ; 
 as if the triumph of one evening could outweigh the judgment 
 of a Smith, a Say, a Ricardo ; as if figures could assuage the 
 cravings of a wretched multitude ; as if the world, posterity, 
 the British empire, some thirty years hence, would take note 
 of the flimsy statements on which you rest your claims as a 
 legislator, and stake your reputation as a statesman ! 
 
 Arraign yourself before futurity ! — ask seriously wliether 
 B
 
 '2 r.RTTKHS TO 
 
 curses or lilessiiigs must thon ]k' yom* portion, and you will 
 perhaps pause ! At all events, you will bestow more thought 
 and labour on this mighty matter, than would suffice for a 
 turnpike or railroad bill. Think of the awful hour, when your 
 birth, your wealth, your station, yom- talents, shall be thrown 
 in the scale ; when you will have to balance them with the 
 results they yielded to your country and to mankind ! Will 
 your majorities then avail ? Will your ingenious pleadings 
 save you ? Will distorted facts, and the juggle of neatly-con- 
 trived rows of figures, beguile the councils of the Eternal ? This 
 is not a trivial question, for you are playing with the weal and 
 woe of millions — you are moulding the character, the habits, 
 and morals of nations, and sowing the seed of good or evil for 
 ages to come ! What will not be asked of you, to whom so 
 much was entrusted ? 
 
 I have addressed you as a man — now I will speak to you as 
 a statesman. Is it the present alone, or is it not chieHy the 
 futui'e with which you ought to deal ? Can the system last 
 for ever ? Though thirty millions may eke out subsistence 
 from the yielding of your scanty acres, will forty, will fifty 
 millions be able to do it i - Must the change, now so dexte- 
 rously opposed by you and yours, not unavoidably occur at 
 gome future period ? Will not the difficulties accumulate — 
 their solution be more perplexing, the longer you defer the 
 settlement ? Will not contending interests beget irreconcilable 
 parties in the state ? Will not wretchedness and discontent 
 on one side — wealth and habitual monopoly on the other — be- 
 come specific and solid antagonist principles, brooding civil war 
 — ^matm-ing revolution ? and will not disorder and ruin — will 
 not the sword have to cut the Gordian knot, which an act of 
 Parliament might now untie ? 
 
 You are no statesman ! A statesman would look around 
 him — he would also look a-head. He would behold steam, 
 education, and temperance, stalking abroad with giant strides. 
 He would see the new spirit which mechanical contrivances, 
 knowledge, and moral improvement are rapidly generating. An
 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL. 6 
 
 ardour hitherto unknown — enthusiasm aspiring to martyrdom 
 — agitation promoted with undying perseverance — these are in 
 motion ! — these are training to manhood a population of a dif- 
 ferent stamp from your hangers -on ! — these are instilling po- 
 litical knowledge more comprehensive and far superior to what 
 is set forth on this great argument in your speech of 1839 ! 
 What is taught and learnt weekly, daily, nay, hourly, of the 
 Com Laws, their origin, their drift, and their issue — of scarcity 
 and of abundance — of high and low prices — of rent, of labour, 
 of wages, of money, of capital, of taxation, of foreign commerce, 
 of free-trade, of commercial legislation, of custom-house and 
 diplomatic humbug, of wealth, rank, and station, of poverty, 
 wretchedness, and poor-houses, of savings-banks, and of your 
 statistical statements — with much beside — I will fully detail 
 to you in my next. Enough for to-day. 
 
 I have the honour to be, Sir, 
 
 Your most obedient servant, 
 
 DIOGENES. 
 
 LETTER n. 
 
 Sib, Ma^ 20, 1841. 
 
 Rules, regulations, and restraints, have ever been the 
 hobby of legislators, the self-inflicted task of governments, the 
 mighty business of men in office. Conscience, thought, speech, 
 writing, and printing — building, travelling — fishing, and shoot- 
 ing — acts, nameless because of their number or their nature, have 
 been subjected to official sway ! To such a climax had this 
 puny wisdom arrived, that the Earl of Ripon, as Mr. Robinson, 
 upon introducing his first great batch of liberal measures, stated 
 that he found, when coming into office, upwards of eighteen 
 hundred Acts of Parliament referring to trade ; that it would 
 take at least three lives of ordinary duration to read — but the 
 age of Methuselah to digest and understand them. 
 
 The commerce with foreign countries had obtained a largo 
 b2
 
 4 LETTERS TO 
 
 proportion of such legislative folly. The wisdom of our ances- 
 tors had bequeathed us the absurd notion of a balance of trade. 
 The Treasury and Custom-house shelves groaned under loads 
 of statutes which were meant to enrich the nation, by checking 
 the receipt of commodities from abroad. The ministers made 
 annually their boast, which the legislators applauded and the 
 multitude rejoiced to hear, that the nation had got riches, be- 
 cause forty millions' worth of goods had been received by mer- 
 chants from abroad, in return for fifty millions' worth sent away. 
 This difference they called a gain, and the greater it was, the 
 more used Mr. Vansittart and his predecessors to glory ! Ac- 
 cording to their principles, the surest road to national wealth 
 would have been to send abroad every thing produced in Great 
 Britain, and to take nothing whatsoever in return ! Absurd as 
 this now seems, long habit of false reasoning, national prejudice, 
 and a singular want of distnist of official quackery, had made 
 those notions part and parcel of the political creed ; and the 
 opposite position that nations, like individuals, could only get 
 rich by their returns exceeding their outgoings, would have 
 sent him who maintained it to an asylum as a fool, if not to 
 gaol as a traitor ! 
 
 Tliat selfishness and cunning should have begot the Com Law 
 out of such ignorance and general blindness need not surprise 
 us ; but that, after Mr. Robinson and Mr. Huskisson had sanc- 
 tioned, from their high stations, the true principles of national 
 economy, the people should have tamely submitted to the re- 
 fined intricacy and cruelty of the last Com Law, with its 
 averages, inspectors, frauds, and cruelties, will hereafter be 
 looked upon as a singular phenomenon — an extraordinary in- 
 stance of indifference to their own interests — of submission to 
 folly and injustice when established by law ! That some hun- 
 dred com inspectors should weekly, like whilom the servants 
 of the Inquisition in Spain, sneak and sniff about amongst the 
 people in the public places — that they should mark, register, 
 and report the dealings of every market — that they, with their 
 Grand Inquisitor as Inspector General, should have the power
 
 SIR KOBERT PEEL. 
 
 to apportion the supplies of food, almost as good to them may- 
 seem — and that a nation of freemen should put up with such 
 trifling, such folly, such tyranny, will in after ages seem im- 
 possible. In your famous speech of 1839, you appeal to the 
 averages of 1838, and state them to have been 54s. for ten 
 years; but I say, that in that year 1838, when the new crop 
 had been harvested in a wretched state, and was unfit for 
 food — when all the old stocks had been exhausted, and whole- 
 some bread-corn could hardly be got at 80s. — at that critical 
 moment, the difference of one halfpenny in the averages enabled 
 these inspectors to keep half a million of quarters of sound 
 foreign wheat for a whole week intact in the bonded ware- 
 houses ! Why did not the people carry these petty inquisitors 
 of the belly, tarred and feathered, to the House of Commons, 
 because of that halfpenny, which forced them to eat your most 
 unwholesome, most poisonous, and most perilous bread-stuff? 
 Tarred and feathered, as I live and write, shall the fellows one 
 of these days be paraded before your greedy, grasping, mono- 
 polising set. This is what we now teach our children, with 
 every morsel of bread we give them. A halfpenny in the 
 quarter ! Averages ! Of what consolation was it to the hun- 
 gry brats of the poor in September 1838, vfith bad bread at \ 
 the enormous price of lid. the loaf (or fully one day's labour, 
 of a hale man), that the average from the 30th of September i 
 1830, to the 30th of September 1838, was 54s.? Average 
 prices — average fools ! We want average quantities for our 
 bellies, and it shall go hard but we will teach the coming 
 generation to get them. Lest that memorable week in 1838, 
 when one halfpenny the quarter in your averages obliged the • 
 people to eat poisonous bread for a whole week should be for- ' h -^ 
 gotten, I will furnish the date and all the particulars in my . 
 next. Enough for to-day. 
 
 I have the lionour to be. Sir, 
 
 Your most obedient servant, 
 
 DIOGENES.
 
 r.KTTKHS TO 
 
 LETTER III. 
 Sib, May 21, 1841. 
 
 Ill the memorable week ending tlie 7tli of September 
 of the year 1838, the last of those eight years of which you 
 give us so satisfactory an account of the average of the wheat 
 prices, which was, as you say, only 54s. and odd pence, the 
 returned price was 72s. 11 ^d. The best old wheat sold at 
 86s. the quarter, but the whole quantity of foreign wheat 
 cleared for consumption up to that day during the year was 
 only 15,475 quarters, at the four chief ports. The quality of 
 the crop just housed, was cold, damp, scarce half made up, and 
 unfit for human food. The lowest quality of Irish was quoted 
 at only 32s, flour had risen to 70s the sack ; yet, because of 
 this halfpenny, we had to wait another week for relief! At 
 last the corn inquisitors (whom I trust still to send tarred and 
 feathered over the land, and whom I wish to substitute for 
 Guy Fawkes, on our future 5th of Novembers, if our training 
 of the rising generation but succeed) got rid of the last half- 
 penny, and supplies of good foreign wheat poured in at the fol- 
 lowing rate, viz. : — 
 
 By the 14th Sept, duty was paid on 223,542 quarters. 
 
 21st , 825,057 
 
 28th 1,017,784 
 
 In your speech of 183.9, you say " that the argument from 
 individual cases of suffering is not conclusive ; but the parents 
 of three millions of children in that memorable week, argued 
 very conclusively, as they sliced off" with a murmuring groan, 
 somewhat between a sigh and a curse, for their young ones 
 the miserable pittance of bread. Bread, did I say ? — a filthy 
 compound of bad flour, beans, bones, alum, and, perchance, 
 plaster of Paris, or what else legislative wisdom has taught 
 the baker to substitute for the abundance of wholesome bread- 
 stuff, with which a beneficent Providence made the earth so 
 plentifully to teem. I repeat it, the parents of millions of 
 children argued cogently and conclusively, that but for this one
 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL. 7 
 
 halfpenny above mentioned, their sufferings, and those of their 
 brats, would have been less poignant. " Peculiar cases of 
 individual suffering," you blandly say in your speech. Very 
 peculiar cases indeed, when one halfpenny in seventy-three 
 
 shillings . Oh that I had the brazen tongue of the great 
 
 trump, I would blast this halfpenny everlastingly into the ears 
 of the " selfish tyrants, who fatten on the labours and sufferings 
 of the exhausted poor !" (for this sentence in your speech I give 
 you due credit) — I would drown your senses with millions of 
 individual cases of distress, " calculated " (an excellent word) 
 — " calculated," as you say, " to awaken your deepest sym- 
 pathy." A very average sort of sympathy, I guess, which 
 says to a poisoned and starving population — Wait another 
 week ; poison yourselves a little longer ; comfort yourselves 
 with the hope of the additional halfpenny in the returns ; 
 don't mind starving for a fortnight ; make your calculations, 
 accommodate your appetites, tune your stomachs to a larger 
 scale. Average them over the years 1830 to 1839 ; was not 
 the price during that period 54s. and so many pence ? and if 
 you would but multiply the price with the quantity, and divide 
 the sum total with your appetite, the result will square exactly 
 with my averages. You will find my averages excellent ; at 
 one time the quantity was large, and the price small ; and now 
 it is much the same, only the price is large and the quantity 
 small ! The averages are most excellent averages ! 
 
 But, say the squalling starvelings to their parents, we were 
 not bom when the averages were so kind to little children, and 
 gave them those large pieces of bread ! What good does it to 
 us, that they now make them so small ? Next week is a long 
 way off; we are so hungry, we don't like to wait. Wliere do 
 these gentlemen, the averages, live ? Is Sir Robert Peel one of 
 them ? Are his knobs of bread as small and as bad as ours ? 
 Has he any little children, and do they pine and hunger as we 
 do ? Does he stint himself of his allowance, as you do, that 
 mother and wo may have another moutiiful ? Docs he look as 
 sick and lean as you ? Hold your d d prattle, mutters the
 
 8 LKTTEKS TO 
 
 man, niaddeiied with anguish : he looks as sleek and fat as a 
 prize ox — he need not bolt his belly and tighten his guts, be the 
 averages high or low ! — Pardon, Sir, the vulgar language these 
 people use. 'Tis low, I grant you, and unfit for your ears ; 
 hut their feelings are no less acute, and their appetites, withal, 
 somewhat sharper than yours or mine. 
 
 When Mr. Robinson proposed to reduce the duty on foreign 
 iron, an iron master, and an alderman to boot, said that he was 
 for free trade in the abstract, only iron he must except, and if 
 the Chancellor of the Exchequer should persevere, he would 
 predict that no more iron would be made in Great Britain. At 
 that time the annual produce was three hundred thousand tons. 
 The Chancellor of the Exchequer persevered, and the production 
 of British iron — fell off ? By no means ; it rapidly aug- 
 mented ; and in the year 1840 it rose to about a million^and a 
 half of tons, being in sixteen years a fivefold increase. So much 
 for the predictions of practical men, and the advocates of mono- 
 poly ! But then we have had the railroads, of which no one 
 thought. Precisely so ; and who knows what railroad will be 
 discovered between the teeth and the belly ? — what increased 
 consumption will follow upon increased supply ? — what will be 
 the difference, when, instead of star\dng averages, competition, 
 unlimited competition — that great, that chief, that unfailing 
 means of plenty, shall rule the victualling department of the 
 people ? 
 
 This great principle, competition, deserves a letter of its own, 
 and I mean to write it. Enough for to-day. 
 
 I have the honour to be, yours, most obediently, 
 
 DIOGENES. 
 
 LETTER IV. 
 Sir, May 27, 1841. 
 
 The other day I heard the boatswain on board of one 
 of her Majesty's steam frigates say of a smart youth, who was
 
 SIK ROBERT PEEL. 9 
 
 briskly pacing the deck — " Now, if that chap were ordered 
 down to h — 11, to fetch up Old Nick, he'd go, and, by Jove, 
 he'd bring hun !" On inquiry, I found this to be the youngster 
 who, together with an Austrian middy, ran in the teeth of the 
 Egyptian guns to fetch the English standard, left by accident 
 on the gate of a fort near Beyrout, and our Englishman won the 
 race, and carried off the standard ! Now, I doubt not but he 
 would have done the same thing had he been alone ; but I do 
 think that he ran somewhat more nimbly, and showed some- 
 what more pluck, because of his German competitor — for com- 
 petition is the delight of an Englishman, and an element of 
 success. 
 
 Siu-ely we should laugh at a man for telling us that foreigners 
 had more capital, more skill, more industry, more perseverance, 
 to bring to any enterprise than Englishmen. Yet has the le- 
 gislature taught men in every trade, in every manufacture, in 
 every profession, to call for, and to rely on legislative protec- 
 tion, and to assume, a priori, that, without it, they could not 
 compete with foreigners ! Is not this simply nonsense ? 
 
 If we apply the test of reason to agriculture, and inquire 
 under what conditions it ought to thrive, we find that they 
 comprehend land, capital, climate, labourers, manure, roads, 
 implements of husbandry, and markets for the disposal of the 
 produce. Now, capital is more abundant in England than else- 
 where ; the climate enables men to work here more days in the 
 year, and more hours in the day, in the open air, than in any 
 other country ; it also favours the culture of an infinite variety 
 of products, as well as the growth of more than one crop in the 
 twelvemonth. English laljourers are well known to be douljly 
 as efficient as foreigners ; niaimre, on account of the crowded 
 towns and villages, and the immense quantity of live stock, is 
 abundant ; roads are nowhere so fine, and their cost is amply 
 compensated by the saving of time, labour, and wear and tear. 
 Agricultural implements are cheap, and of good workmanship ; 
 and, as regards the ready sale of produce, surely this country 
 is unrivalled, markets being every where close at hand ; and the
 
 M> LKTTKKS TO 
 
 demand is so various, that overytliing, animal or vegetable, 
 corn or stmw, chatV or bran, grass or turnips, finds buyers, and 
 notliing need be wasted. Yet we are told that no British far- 
 mer can compete with foreigners, and that without the Com 
 Laws " England would soon be a waste, intersected by a few 
 railroads, connecting a dull succession of manufacturing towns 
 with each other." This is to take place, as some people say, 
 on account of the taxes ; but I undertake to prove, that in 
 what affects the cost of production, England is the least taxed 
 country in Europe, and the farmers the least taxed class in 
 England. Others speak of the poor-rates ; but if the whole 
 amount were paid (which it is not) by the farmer, it would not 
 come to sixpence in the pound on the produce of the land ; be- 
 sides, the poor are not suffered to starve in other countries. 
 Then there is the rent — ah, there's the rub ! for who would 
 not shuffle off this execrable Com Law, could I but prove that 
 that would raise rents ? Leaving this item out of view, at 
 least for the present, it can be easily shown that the fear of 
 foreign competition is a phantom ; that like our two heroes at 
 Beyrout, the English and foreign farmers may well run an ho- 
 nourable race, but that the former 'will rather be the foremost ; 
 that competition will sharpen their wits — teach them to rely 
 on their owm exertions — ^break them of those habits, which you 
 so well define in your speech of 1839, namely, " want of edu- 
 cation" — " not being men of Vjusiness" — " being apt to make 
 engagements which are very unwise" — " being willing to agree 
 to any terms which landlords may propose ;" — in short,* com- 
 petition will be to them as the tree of knowledge, making them 
 ashamed of their ignorance and their sluggish reliance on Com 
 Laws, and sicken them of their slavish dependence on the 
 OAvners of the soil. 
 
 In examining the averages of 1838, which in 1839 you pro- 
 claim to have been so satisfactory — those averages, which, 
 being one halfpenny under 73s. on the 7th of September, 
 forced the people to continue poisoning themselves for another
 
 SIR ROBKRT PEEL. 11 
 
 week with the most unfit bread-stuff ever grown, I find that 
 the returned prices had advanced, without intermission, from 
 the beginning of the year, and that on the 17th of August 
 they had reached 69s. 2d. At this junctm-e, had justice and 
 mercy held the sway, an order in council ought to have done 
 away with the infamous regulations at one fell swoop. Your 
 excellent averages, high as they were, were in fact 10s. too low, 
 because of the wretched quality of the Com, most of which 
 being unfit even for cattle and swine, was nevertheless return- 
 ed as bread-corn, and served as the standard by which to dole 
 out food to a whole people ! Now you must either have been 
 aware of this or not. If you knew of this infamous state of 
 things, this pressing necessity for old foreign Wheat, to mix 
 with the wet and unwholesome English produce — more espe- 
 cially, if you were aware of the horrible circumstances attend- 
 ing the one-halfpenny week, this most refined, diabolical cru- 
 elty — this legislative mockery — this starving, as it were in 
 sport, thousands, and poisoning millions, you ought not, as a 
 wise and an honest man, to have approved of the system ! It 
 must have been the subtlety of an Old Bailey pleader, which 
 enabled you to " dish up for tlie house" (an art which Lord 
 Stanley says you understand so well) your case in these words : 
 — " But when the pressure came, was there any serious diffi- 
 culty in procuring the requisite supply." Surely there was the 
 difficulty of the bad quality keeping down the averages, and 
 the never-to-be-forgotten halfpenny ! 
 
 But if you did not know what had been going on in that 
 terrible year, then, I say, fie upon your ignorance ! fie upon 
 your presumption ! fie upon your statesmanship ! Attempt 
 no longer to rule nations, and to sway the fate of present and 
 future generations ! Redeem your error in defending a stupid, 
 cruel, and wicked law, the workings of which you do not un- 
 derstand, by resigning yourself to a befitting obscurity, and 
 proclaim to the world your bitter repentance, and give a hist- 
 ing lesson, by means of self-inflicted humiliation, as the only
 
 1 2 LETTKHS TO 
 
 amends you are capable of making for the mischief and misery 
 which you liave occasioned and countenanced. 
 Thus nuidi for this day. 
 
 I am, Sir, your most obedient servant, 
 
 DIOGENES. 
 
 LETTER V. 
 
 Sir, Ju?ie 7, 1841. 
 
 In the autumn of 1838, when, owing to the bad qua- 
 lity of English com, no wholesome bread could be got — when the 
 relief which the admission of foreign wheat would have afforded 
 was impeded, because stuff not fit for dogs was included in the 
 averages, which rule the supply of the people's food — when the 
 diabolical farce of the averages being one halfpenny minus of 
 seventy-three shillings, retarded, at the moment of extreme 
 pressure, the much-wanted relief for another week — I say, in 
 that memorable autumn, several good-natured people proposed 
 to regulate the wages of labour according to the fluctuations in 
 the prices of bread-stuffs. They thought that a general agree- 
 ment could secure higher wages to the labourer, if prices (which 
 were then nearly at the highest) should advance still further. 
 
 I ^VTote forthwith a letter to the editor of the Mark-lane 
 Express^ an agricultural paper, filled with such proposals, and told 
 him that scarcity must cause a fall of wages — that no hmnan 
 power could prevent this fall, because it was in the nature of 
 things ; that it never had been otherwise, and that I challenged 
 his coiTCSpondents to furnish a well-authenticated instance of a 
 general rise of wages succeeding one or more bad crops ! My 
 letter was readily inserted in the paper, but no answer to my 
 challenge appeared ; and it is notorious, that since that period, 
 the deterioration of wages, and of the condition of the labouring 
 classes, have but too abundantly verified my prediction. 
 
 If scarcity of food could improve wages and the condition of 
 the people, then famine would advance both to an extreme de-
 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL. 13 
 
 gree ; then, to secure to the labouring classes large payment and 
 permanent well-being, it would only be requisite to destroy 
 annually half the crops, or even more ; then bad seasons would 
 be a blessing, and abundance a curse ! Blockheads as the com- 
 mon people have hitherto been, they are no longer such jolter- 
 heads as to believe theories so absurd, and propositions so 
 manifestly stupid. 
 
 Possibly you, who, in the climax of clap-trap oratory, with 
 which you roimded off your speech of 1839, threaten us with 
 " a dull succession of enormous manufacturing toiens^ connected 
 by railways, intersecting the abandoned tracts which it will be no 
 longer profitable to cultivate" hold this notion, that times of dis- 
 tress are times of general well-being ; and your reasoning must 
 be as follows : — Let scarcity and dearness of the necessaries of 
 life be but sufficiently lasting and severe, and, by destroying a 
 large proportion of the labourers, they must secure high wages 
 for the remainder ! Let misery and wretchedness have time to 
 do their work well ! Let starvation check marriages, and famine 
 stifle the new-born offspring ! Let hunger blight budding child- 
 hood, and disease speed the decay of age ! Let want and penury 
 hasten the despatch of the weak, the sickly, the least vigorous 
 in mind and body, and call in, prematurely, death — 
 " The poor man's dearest friend. 
 
 His surest and his last !" 
 
 to rid us of those who, according to some philosophers, have no 
 business to live at all, and then the small band of survivors 
 may have their own price ! Kill off, and that rapidly, a goodly 
 lot of the existing race of labourers, and then the remaining few 
 may ask, and will extort higher wages ! Sir, through the por- 
 tals of death lies the vista of improvement, which scarcity and 
 dearness, which high prices, which your reasoning opens to the 
 multitude. Rules, restrictions, and averages are the nostrums 
 of our state quacks, and the Com Law is the murderous com- 
 pound of the Eadys and Morrisons of St. Stephens*, who have 
 
 * Since then, it would seem, Sir Robert Peel has set up in a more regular 
 way of business
 
 1 4 I.KTTKHS TO 
 
 tiinu'd the country into a groat hospital for fools, and pinch the 
 poopU' in strait jackets, becauso they prove lunatic on one point — 
 too insane and too weak to hurst the halfpenny button which 
 confines thc^i. 
 
 We hear and road a vast deal about high and low prices, and 
 high and low wages, which seems vastly nonsensical. What 
 we want is a vast deal of food — a constant, large, overwhelming 
 supply of wholesome food, and then every rational and indus- 
 trious man will manage to get his full share of it. We want 
 abundance ! Abundance is wealth, and results from free and 
 unbounded competition, that great means of civilization — the 
 cause of that vast heap of luxuries, comforts, and conveniencies 
 piled up around us — and why not of necessaries ? By what 
 charter does legislative folly meddle with the latter ? Turbot 
 and lobsters it will have, without duties and without averages, 
 as the Com Law lecturers have proclaimed all over the country, 
 long before my Lord Radnor told you of it ; but the poor man's 
 quartern loaf, be it ever so small, or ever so dear, must not be 
 improved by a single grain of Foreign wheat, until the last 
 halfpenny in the accursed averages has been extorted, according 
 to the precise rules of political quackery ! It sickens me to pro- 
 ceed ! Enough for to-day. DIOGENES. 
 
 LETTER VI. 
 
 Sir, June 11, 1841. 
 
 In the climax •with which you wind up your speech 
 of 183.9, you "dish up to the house " (which, as Lord Stanley 
 says, you know so well how to do), in a sort of bombastic ora- 
 tory, all the vulgar fears and prejudices which it is common to 
 see, in one shape or other, marshalled against every kind of im- 
 provement. Since the beginning of time, weak minds have 
 predicted the most direful consequences from man's attempts 
 to obtain free scope for invention and enteii^rise, and when you
 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL. 15 
 
 shadow forth to your gaping majorities the '' phantom " of a 
 dull sitccession of enor)7wus maniifadnring towns, connected hy ■ 
 railroads, intersecting the abandoned tracts ichich it would be 
 no longer profitable to cultii-ate, you repeat what fools and old 
 women have told, whether mankind, in the wonderful advance 
 from brutality to civilization, introduced a new bodkin, or dis- 
 covered a new planet ! — printed books, or ploughed the ocean ! 
 
 The kick which you thus give to manufacturing towns, re- 
 minds me of the beetle who sprung from the dunghill ; the 
 holding out railroads as the destroyers of agriculture, shows 
 that you shut your eyes when you come from Tamworth to 
 Town. Are not the large towns the chief consumers of the i 
 produce of the land ? Have not the railroads turned the bar- j 
 ren heaths into fertile fields ? Do not thousands of cheerful ' 
 cottages, surrounded by neat gardens, spring up along every 
 line ? Did you never hear of Chat Moss, which the Manches-. 
 ter and Liverpool Railroad has changed from a forlorn wilder-, 
 ness into a smiling plain ? 
 
 Whilst I see railroads advance cultivation with railroad 
 speed and energy, you predict that they will make it " recede 
 from the hill-top," which it has climbed under the influence of 
 two hundred years' protection ! — A capital metaphor, emble- 
 matical of your mind, your statesmanship, and the empire of 
 monopoly over which it is your ambition to hold sceptred sway ! 
 The hill-top ! By your system, cultivation climbs up the toil- 
 some, ungenial, narrow hill-top — and then — it stops ! for whi- 
 ther advance from the hill-top ? Thus far, and no farther, has 
 ever been the watchword of puny intellects ! The present 
 state of things is the utmost their little mind can encompass ! 
 This is the hill-top to which they have toiled, and every ad- 
 vance beyond it is an impossibility to their shackled under- 
 standing and their barren imagination ! With the assistance of 
 two hundred years' protection, you help cultivation up the hill- 
 top ; with two years of railroading, I fix. her in the wide- 
 spreading extent beneath, visible to all but one-eyed self- 
 interest, and greedy, grasping monopoly !
 
 1<! I.KTTKHS TO 
 
 By the iiid of tho Corn La\v, you expect to prevent tlie 
 growtli of "a dull succession ot" enormous nianvitacturing towns, 
 connected by railways," as you have it in your speech. Wick- 
 ed and vain is your expectation ! Railways and manufacturing 
 towns do not spring up by magic ; they require the existence of 
 large quantities of materials, wherewith to build and establish 
 them, and of large numbers of hands, multitudes of labourers 
 fit to work and in want of sustenance and employment. If, 
 then, you really succeed in preventing the " dull succession of 
 enormous manufacturing towns connected by railways," you 
 prevent enoniious masses of people from earning their suste- 
 nance, and enomious quantities of materials from being put to 
 appropriate uses. You waste, in fact, enormous quantities of 
 property, and you starve enormous multitudes of workmen, if 
 your policy be as effective as you contemplate ! Alas that it 
 should come to this ! — that man should arraign to himself the 
 office of Providence ! — that he should dare to ape the Almighty 
 Power which disposes of life and death — which rules the sea- 
 sons and the circling year — which sends destruction from the 
 A'olcano, and makes the earth quake, as if it were a weak reed — 
 which ruins as it saves ! — that man should dare to deal out 
 death to thousands, disease and misery to millions, lest " a dull 
 succession of enomious manufacturing towns, connected by rail- 
 roads," should mar his prospect, reduce his rental, or shear him 
 of his little brief authority. 
 
 Yet, do not fondly believe that you will succeed. You may 
 stifle the birth of a coming generation, and kill oft' the present, 
 but the mighty triumph of mind over matter will overcome 
 your effoi-ts. You may beguile your conscience, and delude 
 your reason with the intoxicating influence of parliamentary 
 majorities ; but man dies, whilst mankind lives ; you must de- 
 part, but the people remain ! You may make a law, and in 
 your conceit, as you express it, " throw the fate of nations into 
 the lottery of legislation ;" but the prize of freedom must come 
 up, now or hereafter. To this it must come at last ! Weak 
 men have at all times, and in all places, spent their little ener-
 
 SIR KOBEKT PKEL. 17 
 
 gies to stem the irresistible rotation of events. They cHng in 
 the spokes of the mighty wheel ; but it whirls them along, and 
 hurls them into the onward torrent ! Fools, content with the 
 schooling they have learnt, oppose innovation, lest they should 
 have to recommence their learning, — but what avails their op- 
 position ? Behold, everything has changed befoi'e they open 
 their mouths to inquire what innovations are projected. Ency- 
 clopaedias are written to fix the limits of arts and sciences ; 
 dictionaries are composed by academies, to settle the meaning 
 of words, and the sense of language ; but, before they are 
 finished, supplements become necessary, to proclaim that art 
 and language have equally altered, and that nothing hu- 
 man is permanent ! To-day constitutions and laws are de- 
 creed, — lo ! to-morrow sees them vanish from among the people, 
 and the wisdom of one hour is the derision of the next ! Yet 
 will man meddle with every thing, and rule the actions of 
 myriads of minds, as if they were the strings of a lute ; mea- 
 sure out the food of thirty millions of people to the accu- 
 racy of a scruple, by an average of one halfpenny in 73s., 
 though he load his conscience with the murder of thousands 
 and the poisoning of millions ; prevent the growth of " dull 
 successions of enormous manufacturing towns, connected by 
 railroads ;" though, to effect his purpose, he must starve enor- 
 mous multitudes of his fellow-men, and stifle whole genera- 
 tions, that still sleep in the womb of time. Man, who knows 
 not what to-morrow — what the next hour will bring forth, 
 will venture to do all this ; and you are the man ! I shudder 
 to think of it ; but you will not succeed. Thus much for to- 
 day. DIOGENES. 
 
 LETTER VIT. 
 
 Sir, June 14, 1841. 
 
 When, in the session r)f 1839, you committed the 
 supply of food for the thirty millions composing this great na- 
 
 C
 
 18 1,KTTKHS Til 
 
 tion, for a further period of two years " to the lottery of legis- 
 lation," as you aptly express it, you, fortunately, printed your 
 speech, and every one may buy it for half-a-crown, at Mr. Mur- 
 ray's, in Albemarle-street. 
 
 In that speech you dwell with much satisfaction on your own 
 statistical statements, and ridicule the fears of others that the 
 Corn Laws must deteriorate the condition of the working classes 
 — that they must derange commercial dealings — that " by the 
 suddenness of demand for foreign corn, when the pressure does 
 arise, the risk of derangement of the currency and stoppage of 
 payment by the bank is incun'ed," — and you sneer more specifi- 
 cally with infinite self-complacency at the app-ehensions of Mr. 
 Philips, the member for Manchester, " for the future stability 
 of our manufacturing and commercial prosperity," of which you 
 dispose as '■'•predictions without argument^ and apprehensions not 
 sustained by official returns" and therefore " not conclusive." 
 Alas, how is it now with your official statements, and the ap- 
 prehensions and predictions of Mr. Philips and others ! 
 
 Preston, from whence you exhibited a letter, " especially 
 calculated to mitigate the apprehensions on this head" — Preston 
 has now 1600 houses untenanted, and factory upon factory 
 closed. Leeds, with 3500 houses, Sheffield, with 2000, be- 
 sides many warehouses, shut up, — Manchester, Binningliam, 
 Wolverhampton, Bradford, all involved in the general chaos of 
 ruin, — do they not proclaim indubitable tidings of " deteriora- 
 tion of the W' orking classes," and " derangement of commercial 
 dealings ?" Do they not confirm but too unquestionably that 
 the apprehensions and predictions of Mr. Philips were entitled 
 to more respect than the arguments and official documents with 
 which you supported your shallow pleadings ? 
 
 If statistical documents could be prepared of the privations 
 and miseries endured by the working classes since you made 
 your speech ; if official returns could be laid on the table of ma- 
 nufacturers ruined, artizans heart-broken, habitations deserted, 
 chambers stripped of furniture, pawnbrokers overwhelmed with 
 pledges, families degraded to pauperism and vice, poorhouses
 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL. 19 
 
 crowded, hospitals thronged, jails crammed — shame and dis- 
 grace must be your portion, pretending, in 1839, to political 
 foresight, and amusing your parliamentary audience with stories 
 about mousetraps (as Nero fiddled, when Rome was bm-ning) — 
 whilst dire calamity, lurking at your heels, within two short 
 years, in scorning derision of your political arithmetic, broke 
 through every floodgate of safety, and verified to the utmost 
 those apprehensions and predictions, which, because unsupported 
 by documents, you fancied you could dispel with the magic of 
 a supercilious sneer! Oh for the "lottery of legislation!" 
 Within the brief space elapsed since your speech of 1839, the 
 whole monetary system has been entirely deranged ; the Bank 
 has been twice within a few days of suspending payments ; 
 more than half our merchants have been on the verge of bank- 
 ruptcy ; the working classes have been, God knows, sufficiently 
 deteriorated ; the most solid interests have been shaken to the 
 very foundation ; and the dice-box of desperate enterprise, the 
 offspring of your lottery of legislation, gambling on the people's 
 wretchedness — playing hazard with your halfpenny averages — 
 has found the life and death of millions a legitimate and feiiile 
 mine for diabolical speculation and infamous profit ! 
 
 The lottery of legislation ! Truly, the Corn Law is such a 
 lottery — a lottery full of blanks, and worse than blanks, for all 
 but the landowners, *•' those selfish tyrants, fattening on the 
 labours of the exhausted poor," as you so wisely say ; laws on 
 such matters ever have been, and ever must be, lotteries, with 
 this special advantage, that the law-makers may settle where 
 the prizes shall fall. Have not rents risen even since your 
 speech of 1839, and how much since the law was enacted? 
 
 The rents are the prizes in this " lottery of legislation," and 
 
 if the landed proprietors were not " selfish tyrants, fattening 
 
 on the labours of the poor," they would offer, for the uses of 
 
 the state, the surplus rents got by this " lottery of legislation ;" 
 
 they would disgorge the excess of income extorted by the Corn 
 
 Laws, and eagerly cleanse themselves from the suspicion that, 
 
 as managers of this great " lottery of legislation," tlicy hail 
 
 f 2
 
 '20 1,1'TTKHS TO 
 
 distributod tlu' tickets so dexterously and so dishonestly, that all 
 the prizes must come to them, and all the blanks to the peojilc. 
 I would have you, who are so fond of statistical papers, call for 
 detailed accounts of the past and present rents of the " selfish 
 tyrants," lay on the table statistical returns of the revenues of 
 the owners of the soil, exhibit a comparative view of the dele- 
 rioration of landlords and of labourers, and I'll warrant that 
 my arguments, " so fortified by official documents," will be 
 found " conclusive, and entitled to the utmost respect." 
 
 Statistical accounts, no doubt, have their value ; but seeing 
 that your triumphant resistance of inquiry into the Com Law 
 in 1839, when the tide of distress had fully set in, and was 
 fast flooding to that extreme height which now fills every one 
 with dismay, was leased on such accounts, their value would 
 appear to be indeed small. They are, in fact, the hobby of 
 third-rate statesmen — the idols of a calygraphic bureaucracy — 
 the pet bantling of little intellects, who know how to grapple 
 with the multiplication table, and do not even suspect the ex- 
 istence of principles either in morals or politics ! Statistical 
 statements are excellent instruments for gulling mankind, and 
 puzzling unthinking men ; but in reality, even if accurately 
 constructed, which they rarely are, or honestly applied — which 
 was not the case with yours in 1839 — they simply tell us 
 what has been, but hardly justify any fm-ther conclusions*. 
 
 Tables of exports only prove that goods have been sent away, 
 and no more : profit or loss may result from such exports, but 
 that the tables cannot tell us. Tables of imports do not prove 
 that merchants have gained, or that the country has been bene- 
 fited. These are gratuitous conclusions, which may be well 
 or ill-founded. A class, the receivers of rent, for instance, 
 may have swallowed up the imports, whilst the people have 
 gone to the poor-houses for shelter and sustenance. Even if 
 such tables were to exhibit a general improvement, the ques- 
 tion still remains, whether greater advance might not have oc- 
 curred under different circumstances ? — whether if, notwith- 
 * See Preface.
 
 SIB ROBERT PEEL. 21 
 
 standing, your squares and sliding rules, the body politic looks 
 fair, it would not have looked fairer without them ? — whether, 
 in fact, though you prove most satisfactorily the excellency of 
 your lottery of legislation, we should not have been all the better 
 had it never been used for distributing food among the people ? 
 In your speech of 1839, you call for documents to prove 
 fears and apprehensions. You say, show me that our lottery 
 of legislation has deranged commerce — has deteriorated the 
 working classes — has forced the Bank to suspend payment — 
 has sown the seed of ruin in abundance, and has ripened a rich 
 harvest of bankruptcy, wretchedness, pauperism, vice, crime, 
 despair, disease, and death — of which my own tables say 
 nothing ; and then, when you support your apprehensions by 
 such " satisfactory statements" — when you convince me by facts 
 that your predictions were ••' entitled to the utmost respect," 
 (I am fond of using your own words) because efficient docu- 
 ments prove that the empire is shaken to its foundation, and 
 the population steeped in misery — when you show us all this, 
 I will concede a committee of inquiry — I will think of mend- 
 ing matters ! In vulgar words, prove to me that the horse has 
 been stolen, and I will try whether the stable-door ought not 
 to be looked after. 
 
 Such is your reasoning, based on statistical documents ; and 
 truly may it be said, that 
 
 " If they always serve you thus, 
 You'll find them but of little use." 
 
 Had Satan himself laid a trap for you, it could not have been 
 
 more complete than your speech of 1839, to which subsequent 
 
 events have given, in every respect, the lie direct. When the 
 
 poet drew up his sad catalogue of ills that besiege mankind, 
 
 " War, famine, pest, volcanoes, storm and fire, 
 Intestine broils !" 
 
 he should have added, statesmen, legislative lotteries, statistical 
 
 documents, political arithmetic — or some term which my poor 
 
 powers of language do not furnish me with, to express suitably 
 
 a perfect compound of refined cruelty and fiendish wickedness —
 
 I.KTTKUy TO 
 
 of wliolesalc torture, diiibolicul ciiitt, and asinine stupiditv • 
 perhaps, " Com Laws" niiglit W tlu- word ! Thus much 
 for to-day. DIOGENES. 
 
 LETTER Vin. 
 
 Sir, June 17, 1841. 
 
 Statistical accounts of your own country — tliough, 
 as was the case with yours in 183!), events should belie the 
 conclusions drawn from them, most speedily and most awfully 
 — having proved so useful for gulling and plundering the com- 
 munity, statements, however stupid or mendacious, referring 
 to foreign parts and distant empires, would naturally he still 
 more convenient for the purposes of political humbuggery, be- 
 cause less liable to the test of examination and experience. 
 
 There is nothing unfair in the assumption, that the man, 
 who, either from ignorance or deceit, asked, in 1 839 (not- 
 withstanding the difficulty of the bad quality of English keep- 
 ing the averages in 1838 too low for the admission of foreign 
 com, and the never-to-he-forgotten halfpenny in 73s.) " when 
 the time of pressure came, was there any serious (! ) difficul- 
 ty ?" — there is nothing unfair in the assumption, that, when 
 dishing up your case for the house (which Lord Stanley says 
 you know so well how to do), you would avail yourself of the 
 popular fallacy, that the foreign grower " is free from the in- 
 cumbrances of public and local taxes," whether you did, or did 
 not know any thing about the taxation of other countries. 
 
 The accuracy of statements may well be questioned, when 
 they tell us that wars of thirty years' duration, causing in the 
 best-7-egulated country an enomiious public debt, and a heavy 
 amount of public and local taxes, have produced, with less fa- 
 voured and worse-governed nations, an opposite, a most cheer- 
 ing result — a state of pristine happiness, and exemption from 
 such " incumbrances." 
 
 Large fleets captured or destroyed, aiTnies, to the number
 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL. 23 
 
 of many millions of men, incessantly overrunning the vast 
 area of the Continent, enomious quantities of materials and 
 treasure squandered in preparing for, or in perpetrating the 
 bloody process of destruction, the population nipped in the bud 
 by the absorption of boys and youths to fill the ravages of 
 marches, hospitals, and battles — public works neglected, roads 
 ruined, industry and trade pressed into the miserable business 
 of war, commerce reduced to smuggling, navigation annihilated, 
 fields ravaged, crops devastated, cattle destroyed, human life 
 disregarded, nations slaughtered, death indeed devouring " his 
 thousands at a meal — " such was the sad portion of those whom 
 you proclaim " free from the incumbrances of public and local 
 taxation." What conjm'ors they must have been ! What a 
 reflection upon the statesmen who ruled Great Britain all the 
 while ! Secure from inost of these evils and losses, free from 
 invasions, marches, counter-marches, sieges, and battles, safe 
 in the pursuits of industry, of navigation, commerce, manu- 
 factures, and agriculture — bearing the " pomp," but not suffer- 
 ing from the direful circumstances and afflictions of " war," 
 yet they loaded her with enormous debts and taxes, whilst the 
 hundredfold suffering foreigners remained, as you say, "• free 
 from the incumbrances of public and local taxes !" Why not 
 send for a few of these "■ Wizards in statesmanship," to show 
 you and others how such miracles can be performed ? 
 
 In sober sadness, it is a discredit to your present reputation 
 and future fame to garnisl: the case which you had to dish up 
 for the house and the country, with such absurd, such vulgar 
 fallacies ! Had truth been your object, you would not have 
 failed to discern that the war expenditure of the Continent 
 must have been infinitely more costly ; fiiir inquiry would have 
 shown you, that taxation had been carried everywhere to the 
 utmost; and you would have discovered, beyond that, im- 
 mense burdens, not likely to be accurately registered in tables 
 and records, but not on that account less destructive of wealth 
 and productive power. 
 
 Expenditure, carefully determined upon, scrupulously con-
 
 24 I.KTTFKS TO 
 
 trolled, wisoly appliod, fairly registered, and honestly met, 
 weighs less heavily, and impairs the productive powers of na- 
 tions to a much smaller degree, than that which is arbitrarily 
 imposed, collected by caprice and tyranny, and as recklessly 
 and wastef'ully disbursed as it was got together ! 
 
 In Great Britain an accurate account of the war expenditure 
 was kept, and by loans and taxes a near approach to its fair 
 distribution, according to every man's ability, was intended, if 
 not completely attained. 
 
 On the Continent they managed matters differently. Exac- 
 tions, requisitions, and confiscations, were substituted to sup- 
 ply the ways and means, whenever and wherever taxation was 
 found to do its work too uncertainly and too sluggishly. Armies 
 were raised by conscription, at a treble sacrifice of life, but 
 with more rapidity than by the means of ordinary enlistment. 
 Quarters and maintenance for the military were required from 
 farmers and citizens without pay, by friend and by foe. Im- 
 mense amounts were levied by kings, marshals, generals, in- 
 fonners, and the numerous tribe of extortioners, who seized the 
 occasion of universal confusion and violence to fill their cofFers, 
 Paper money was used for a Avhile as a silent and an efficient 
 help to exhausted treasuries ; but it proved an insidious enemy, 
 and the evils it inflicted were found to be both insupportable 
 and irremediable. In Russia that species of currency was ra- 
 pidly reduced to one-fom-th of its value, at which, after many 
 financial struggles, it has been finally fixed. In Austria it fell 
 to one-twelfth, in Denmark to one-twentieth ; France and 
 Holland had recourse to national bankruptcy. 
 
 Need I go on with this enumeration of incumbrances ? Sir, 
 if you were a statesman you would have known of them, you 
 would have estimated them at their tioie value ; you would 
 not have soiled your pretences to wisdom and honesty with the 
 childish twaddle that Englishmen could not compete with the 
 foreign grower, because the latter was free from the " incum- 
 brances of public and local taxes." Such burdens must be 
 tested }»y the way in which they are raised, and the manner
 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL. 25 
 
 in which they are expended, as well as by their amount ; and 
 I repeat it, without fear of contradiction, and quite safe of re- 
 futation, that, taking these tests separately or in the aggi-egate, to 
 try the question, an unprejudiced searcher after truth will say 
 with me, that England is the least taxed country in Europe, 
 more especially as taxation affects the cost of production. 
 
 At the enactment of the Com Law in 1815, you had not 
 reached that period of life when man, according to Young, 
 suspects himself a fool ; but in 1839 you had passed the time 
 when he knows it; nay, when you delivered your famous 
 speech, you had even overstepped the fatal year, after which, 
 according to the same authority, " he dies the same." Were I 
 to consider your apparent unacquaintance with the fiscal regu- 
 lations of the Continent venial at i\\Q former period^ yet, at the 
 latter, no palliation can rescue you from the dilemma of igno- 
 rance, or wilful deceit, in this matter. In 1839, at the age of 
 fifty-one, you either did know, or you ought to have known, 
 that as in England, so on the Continent, is every article which 
 you recapitulate with so mucli facetiousness, as " plate, paper, 
 china, clocks, thread, pots, wax, wire, every letter in the alpha- 
 bet heading some article of domestic manufacture," protected by 
 taxation from foreign competition, for every legislative folly 
 perpetrated in Great Britain, has been aped elsewhere with a 
 vengeance ; but, worse than that, burdens unheard of and un- 
 known here, oppress the miserable inhabitants of every conti- 
 nental clime. 
 
 The passport system interferes sufficiently with the develop- 
 ment and the pursuits of active and enterprising minds ; re- 
 strictions on thought, speech, and writing, stint, more or less, 
 the growth of intellect ; a swarm of petty officials interferes 
 with every man's business and comforts ; but, worst of all, 
 enormous military establishments prey, in various shapes, on 
 the very vitals of nations, and retain the population in the 
 trammels of poverty and barbarism. Need I point to the do- 
 ings of France in Algiers, to the anticipation of <S(>,()()() men 
 of the conscription of 1842, or to the Brogdignarian childish-
 
 26 LETTERS TO 
 
 ness of fortifying Paris, to show that piihlic or local hurdens are 
 loss oppressive and less obnoxious to production in England 
 than elsewhere ? In Prussia, all men must serve three 
 years as soldiers, except those who equip themselves at their 
 own cost ; they are let off with one year's service. In Russia 
 the feudal system, the least favourable to cheap production, 
 still prevails ; one-half of the peasants are serfs of the crown, 
 the remainder belong to the proprietors of the land. The go- 
 vernment accepts of eighty pounds in lieu of a recruit ; but 
 when levies are ordered, villages will raise as much as a hundred 
 and fifty pounds to escape the visit of the officials appointed to 
 select the poor fellows ; for expence, caprice, tyranny, and in- 
 justice, are tlie natural attendants on such unwelcome guests. 
 The enormous annies of Austria are raised by a method some- 
 what different, but not less oppressive. The scenes that ac- 
 company such a system — but I spare to recount them — would 
 make your hairs stand on end ; suffice it to state, that mutila- 
 tion of male infants is a popular crime, so anxious are parents to 
 save their children from the calamity of military service ; and 
 lame, blind, or defomied offspring, over which we weep in pity 
 and in sorrow, is greeted by the afflicted mothers as a greater 
 blessing than the image of an angel. The system of quarter- 
 ing the troops on the inhabitants is still in existence, and in 
 many parts is more dreaded than the plague or the cholera. 
 
 Sir, whether taxation has or has not any thing to do with 
 the cost of production, it appears to me unnecessary to discuss 
 with you. Before you make another speech in favour of the 
 Com Laws, let me advise you to inquire into it, and I am cer- 
 tain that you will be ashamed to repeat the fallacy that the 
 foreign growers of com are, or ever were, " free from the in- 
 cumbrances of public or local taxes." So much for to-day. 
 
 DIOGENES.
 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL. 27 
 
 LETTER IX. 
 
 Sir, June 22, 1841. 
 
 As He of Sinope went about with his lantern, in 
 broad daylight, seeking for an honest man, so have I sought by 
 daylight and by lamplight through your speech of 1839 for an 
 honest sentence, for one straightforward expression, for one great 
 thought, for a single generous sentiment, but in vain ! I am 
 lost in the barren \vildemess, where thorny sarcasm and thistly 
 sneers obstruct all progress, where a tissue of mis-statements 
 and inconsistencies nauseate the feelings and harass the under- 
 standing. 
 
 Oh, how different are the speeches, the writings, the doings 
 of great men ! The more we extend our acquaintance with 
 these, the more are we fascinated ! Spell-bound with the lustre 
 of sincerity — ^the charm and beauty of truth, we luxuriate in 
 the feast of delights, spread for the enraptured mind, often 
 unable, always unwilling, to break away from the rich board of 
 intellectual plenty, 
 
 " As if increase of appetite had grown 
 By what it fed on." 
 
 But not so your oration on the Corn Laws ! Oh, what a fall- 
 ing off is there ! I defy any one to peruse, and re -peruse it, as 
 I have done, without increase of satiety and disgust, or without 
 an irrepressible feeling of mental despondency, such as travellers 
 in the frigid regions of the pole, or the sandy tracts of the equa- 
 tor, tell us of, where desolate emptiness begets despair, and an- 
 nihilation of mind and body seems preferable to the gloomy 
 horror of vacuity which overspreads their field of inquiry. 
 
 Rent is a subject, beyond all others, about which one would 
 suppose you to be well-infomied. Your steward gives you 
 quarterly lectures on the matter. In speaking of it, a fair 
 opportunity occurred for establishing the claim to candour 
 which you have lately set up, by imitating the example of a
 
 28 I.FTTKUS TO 
 
 noble lord, who plainly told us, that he would stand by his 
 order, and not coneede any relaxation in the Com Law, which 
 might lower rents ; but such plain sailing lies not in your track. 
 On this occasion you presume, with almost sacrilegious audacity, 
 to make sport of the honoured names of Smith and Ricardo — 
 men, whose good fame will endure long after your little repu- 
 tation shall have been effaced from the tablets of time, where 
 none but the truly good and great leave a lasting impression. 
 You irreverently shuffle about the result of their researches on 
 the nature of rent, heedless of the modifying process of time and 
 experience, which might fairly be expected to throw additional 
 light on inquiries of this kind ; but whilst you thus trifle with 
 the opinions of men so supereminently your betters, what light 
 do you yourself shed on the matter ? Whilst you acknowledge 
 your incapacity to unthread the labyrinth — whilst you confess 
 that, after having read " all that has been written by the gravest 
 authorities in political economy, on the subject of rent, wages, 
 taxes, tithes, the various elements, in short, which constitute or 
 affect the price of agricultural produce," the question remains to 
 you darkness visible, confusion worse confounded, difficulty 
 greatly increased — what is the course you steer amidst this sea 
 of troubles ? You forthwith make a law ! You found a system 
 of legislation, vast and wide-spreading in extent, incalculable 
 in its effects, full of balances and counterpoises, of averages and 
 restrictions, calculated to the nicety of a half-penny in seventy- 
 three shillings, on a basis, of the nature of which you proclaim 
 yourself totally ignorant ! Strange perversity ! Incomprehensi- 
 ble infatuation ! Unmeasured presumption ! 
 
 From their topmost eminence the great men, whom you 
 ridicule, unanimously promulgate this one conclusion, that we 
 should not meddle with matters we do not understand, nor legislate 
 at all on what is so far beyond our ken and control. They who 
 fondly fancied that their untired labours and dispassionate re- 
 searches had enabled them to unveil the mystery of rent, said, 
 that no laws should be made which might influence that or the 
 other great interests connected with the supply of the daily ne-
 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL. 29 
 
 cessaries of SO many millions of human beings. Abstain from 
 legislation, was the modest motto of the wisest of men ; interfere 
 not, lest you should make a mistake, was the conscientious ver- 
 dict of the apostles of that "• noble science," as you profess to 
 call it, " which is conversant with the laws that regulate the 
 production of wealth, and seeks to make himian industry most 
 conducive to human comfort and enjoyment." But you^ in de- 
 rision of " the respect for that scietice and its brightest Imninaries" 
 which you profess, and of the acknowledgment that " as you 
 proceed, your path becomes more intricate and obscure," deter- 
 mine, in verification of the saying, " that a little learning is a 
 dangerous thing," to legislate in avowed ignorance — in darkness 
 visible to meddle with what you say is beyond your comprehen- 
 sion — in complete obscurity to enact the most absurd, the most 
 intricate, the most mischievous of all laws — the Corn Law ! 
 Truly, 
 
 " Fools rush, where angels fear to tread ! " 
 
 Oh age ! oh men ! Is this the brazen image we are now to 
 worship ! ^'e worthies of former days, ye Bacons, ye Lockes, 
 ye manly spirits, who, by a mere scintillation of exalted reason, 
 advanced your nation centuries before all others, look down with 
 pity on the petty generation of om- days, when, at the sound, 
 not of the great alarums, which commanded them of old to fall 
 down, the cornets, sackbutts, and psalteries of great intellects, 
 but of the penny whistle of tricky eloquence — the tweedle-dum 
 and tweedle-dee of Sir Robert Peel's political philosophy, com- 
 mon sense, truth, consistency, freedom, and humanity, must 
 hide their diminished heads, and every great, and generous, 
 and bold attempt must undergo the ordeal of being torn to very 
 rags and tatters by the sacrilegious derision of his sneers, to 
 split the ears of applauding parliamentary groundlings! 
 
 You gloat on the likeness, tlie faithful resemblance of the 
 harsh, the cold-blooded economist, as if that leaden visage, that 
 wayward and unstable look of yours, bore not abundant testi- 
 mony of the amphibious nature of your own blood ! You fear 
 to be haunted by the portrait of the political economist, as if
 
 .>() LKTTERS TO 
 
 tlu' roniinisoenco ot" your speech of 1 .s;l'), the assertions of which 
 were belied forthwith, by the ruin and decay now overwhelm- 
 ing us, ought not to haunt you everlastingly, and to annihilate 
 the last remnant of your authority in political science. Oh 
 that an epitome of your speech, plain, intelligible, and true, 
 
 " Nothing extenuate, nor ought in malice," 
 could be printed and put into the hands of every man, woman, 
 and child in the realm, to hold up to the world, as a warning, 
 the quality of the A\nsdom of him who sneers at Smith and 
 Ricardo, at those tmly great men, \vho devoted the vast powers 
 of their minds to the happiness and exaltation of the great hu- 
 man family, and who will be an honor and a glory to Great Britain, 
 long after the shallow pretences of mere political trickery shall 
 cease to have access to her coimcils ! Such an epitome ought to 
 be published ; I will think of it. Enough for this day. 
 
 DIOGENES. 
 
 LETTER X. 
 
 " And be those juggling fiends no more believed, 
 That palter v* ith us in a double sense ! " 
 
 Sir, 
 
 The penny whistle of political trickery, to which I 
 alluded in my last — the epitome of the Com Law oration, 
 which you delivered in 1839 — the tweedle-dum and tweedle- 
 dee of your legislative philosophy, ought to be sketched by a 
 vigorous hand, by a Hudibras, a Cobbett, or, best of all, a 
 Brougham — some skilful artist, to whom even the repulsive and 
 unseemly lump of dross would furnish fit material for striking 
 off impressions, likely to obtain currency in all ages and amongst 
 all people ; yet will I make the attempt, lest diffidence should 
 be taken for idleness ; and proceeding at once, I merely premise, 
 that what is put between inverted commas are your own words ; 
 the remainder is, nevertheless, part and parcel of your speech.
 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL. 31 
 
 though deprived of its pristine verbosity, which I could not find 
 it in my heart to bestow on my readers. 
 
 Epitome of Sir Robert Peel's Speech on the Cm-n Laws, 
 delivered the 15tk March 1839. 
 
 " Mr. Speaker. — I have no hesitation in saying, that vmless 
 the Com Laws can be shown to be consistent, not only with 
 the prosperity of agriculture, and the maintenance of the land- 
 lord's interest (in the house you said — of the rent of the land- 
 lord), but also with the protection and the maintenance of the 
 general interests of the country, and especially with the im- 
 provement of the condition of the labouring class, the Com Law 
 is practically at an end." Tweedle-dum ! " If you had called 
 on us to abandon this protection, with the exhibition of supe- 
 rior sagacity and triumphant reason, we should have been deaf 
 to your appeal." Tweedle-dee ! " So intimate is the sympathy 
 between the condition of agriculture and trade, so powerful and 
 immediate is the force of their reciprocal action upon each 
 other, that if the prosperity of trade be endangered, the narrow- 
 est and most exclusive advocate cannot be blind to the conse- 
 quence." Tweedledmii ! " The honourable member for Man- 
 chester, Mr. Philips, says to-night, that there are great appre- 
 hensions with regard to the decay of trade ; but however much 
 I respect the honourable gentleman and his knowledge, I wish 
 that he had fortified his arguments and his prophecies by some 
 reference to public documents." [^Hear, and laughter.] Pre- 
 dictions, unless proved to be already accomplished (a sort of 
 Irish predictions), are nonsense. He should have done as I 
 have done. I draw my conclusions from statements made up 
 for the occasion ; true, by adding one year to my statistical 
 tables, my conclusions would not have been so conclusive ; 
 but what of that ? They serve my present purpose, even 
 though subsequent events should give the lie most speedily and 
 most awfully to my conclusions, and should verify in every 
 respect the predictions of the honourable gentleman. I pay 
 the greatest respect to the honourable gentleman's statement ;
 
 o2 I.KTTKHS TO 
 
 and if ho proved to me that manufactures were declining, 
 (and that the mischief which he prophesies is already accom- 
 plished), he would have adduced the most powerful argument 
 that could have been brought to influence my mind as to the 
 necessity of a change ; " but predictions without argument, and 
 apprehensions not sustained by official returns, cannot be con- 
 sidered conclusive." (This must be called both tweedle-dum 
 and tweedle-dee) ! 
 
 Manufacturing towns are productive of nuisances : I came 
 myself from one of them. The establishment of " a dull suc- 
 cession of enormous manufacturing towns, connected by rail- 
 ways," would be a great nuisance, and we must put them 
 down ; therefore, I vote the Com Law ! The Com Law, 
 by making food scarce, starves the superfluous population, who 
 would, if they had plenty of food, build this " dull succession 
 of enormous manufacturing towns," and " connect them by 
 railroads." Down with the railroads ! down with the " dull 
 succession of enonuous manufacturing towns !" The Com 
 Law for ever ! 
 
 " By the silent and unaided assistance of the existing Corn 
 Law, when the pressure anived, the ports were opened to 
 foreign grain, free of duty, and there was no serious difficulty 
 in procuring the requisite supply," The average for the nine 
 years, ending in September 1838, was not more than 54s, 
 per quarter." It does not suit me to state, that the average 
 of the last three months of 1837 was 53s. ; that during the 
 harvest of 1838 it rose to 69s. ; and that, during the last three 
 months of that year, it was 76s. " The ascent from the lowest 
 to the highest point was as gradual as it could be under any 
 system of Com Laws ;" so gradual, that by the 7th of Sep- 
 tember 1838, only 15,000 quarters of foreign wheat had been 
 cleared for consumption, although the pressure was extreme, 
 and English wheat quite unfit for use ; — so gradual, 
 
 " Small by degrees, and infinitely less," 
 
 that because the average was one halfpenny under 73s.
 
 SIR ROBERT PREL. 33 
 
 no foreign wheat was entered for another week, but when 
 that halfpenny had at last been added to the return, 800,000 
 quarters were thrown into the market at one fell swoop. I 
 say little of this, lest the farmers, hearing of it, might have 
 their eyes opened. Let it pass ! 
 
 The stupid people who grumble at the present scarcity 
 should think of the abundance of fornier years, and average 
 their appetites, as I average the prices. If they had filled their 
 bellies in 1833, 1834, and 1835, when there was abundance, 
 they might now do very well with less, and so make an aver- 
 age of it. I don't look so much to quantities as I look to 
 prices. If the quantities are not large, the prices at least are 
 high : this is a comfort of which the swinish multitude should 
 think, instead of " denouncing the aristocracy and the landed 
 proprietors as selfish tyrants, fattening on the labour and suf- 
 ferings of the exhausted poor, and provoking (if other means 
 should fail) the resort to physical force." This is a lesson 
 they should teach their brats : when these squall for a piece of 
 bread of the average size, stop their mouths with average 
 prices ; tell them to wait for a year or two, when there will 
 be again an average quantity, coupled with the unfortunate cir- 
 cumstances of prices below the average ! 
 
 " I have read all that has been written by the greatest au- 
 thorities on political economy, on the subject of rent, wages, 
 taxes, tithes, the various elements, in short, which constitute 
 or affect the price of agricultural produce." — " Far be it from 
 me to depreciate that noble science, which is conversant with 
 the laws that regulate the production of wealth, and seeks to 
 make industry most conducive to human comfort and enjoy- 
 ment." — " But I find in it no solution of my difficulties," and 
 therefore, being quite ignorant of the matter, I vote for the 
 Com Law. I do not know whether rent is the cause of the 
 Com Law, or the Corn Law the cause of rent. " With all 
 respect for that science and its brightest luminaries, they have 
 failed to throw any light on the matter ;" therefore 1 vote for 
 
 I)
 
 34 I.FTTFRS TO 
 
 the Corn Law. Mr. Humo lias sat for tho likoncss of one of 
 these bright luminaries, '■'• the faithful resemblance of the harsh, 
 cold-blooded economist, icho regards money as the only element 
 of natitral happiness." What's money? — Trash! The price 
 of wheat has nothing to do with money ; therefore I vote for 
 the Com Laws. 
 
 The Enp;lish growers cannot sell wheat for as little money 
 as the foreigner, who is unencumbered with public and local 
 taxes, who is a conjuror, cares not for money, can do every- 
 thing for nothing, and will give you all his wheat — for no- 
 thing ! 
 
 Finally, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. 
 " What is good for Corn., is good for Buttons ! There is no dif- 
 ference in the application of a principle, and if no tax on com is 
 admissible, there ought to be no tax on silk, on hats, on brass, on 
 buttons." It would not be gracefid and decorous to apply the 
 principles of free trade to the famiers, before they are applied to 
 the manufacturer ; — " let honourable gentlemen shear the pigs 
 
 before they fleece the sheep !" Shall I proceed with my 
 
 elegant extracts ? Heaven forbid ! Those who are anxious tho- 
 roughly to fathom the depth of your political wisdom, should 
 search your speech, both in the original reports, and in your 
 corrected copy ; they ■will soon see that I want the power to 
 do you justice ; but they will also see that a prostration of rec- 
 titude exists in high places, which leaves the turpitude, the 
 vices, and crimes of low life at an immeasurable distance ; and 
 whilst dumb-founded with your ingenious turns and most ela- 
 borate passages, they will frequently have an echoing on their 
 mental ear of the lines which I have affixed as a motto at the 
 beginning of this letter. May many try the experiment ! 
 
 DIOGENES.
 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL. 3') 
 
 LETTER XI. 
 
 Sib, Juli/ 13, 1841. 
 
 When I look at one of the beautiful charts of the 
 world, which it has taken the labour of ages, and of thousands 
 of intelligent men, with an outlay of money and materials be- 
 yond all calculation, to bring to their present perfect state — 
 charts of which no person of your stretch of mind would have 
 foretold us some fifty years back, that they would be within 
 every man's reach for the small sum of two guineas, or one 
 month's wages of an ordinary labourer — charts, which by the 
 process of calico piinting, we shall presently buy at half-a- 
 crown, I say, when I look at such a chart, and see the British 
 isles occupy but the five-hundredth part of the habitable globe, 
 can I avoid asking — " Whence the importance, the wealth, the 
 influence, the power of England? Whence her greatness, 
 whence her might ? What are the foundations of her universal 
 sovereignty ? What is the cause of her wide-spread sway ? 
 Was it the extent and quality of her soil, or of her intellect, by 
 which she gi-ew so big ? Was it the plough or the steam -en- 
 gine ? Has her agriculture conquered the world, or have her 
 merchants planted her standard in every clime and on every 
 shore ? Did her wares and fabrics, or her wheat, purchase the 
 homage of the human race ? Is it the keel which ploughs the 
 main, or the share which turns up the trodden clod, at the 
 thought of which English bosoms swell highest ? Does the 
 heart thrill with a keener perception of national greatness, 
 when Britannia rules the waves, or when she drives her teams 
 a-field ? The answer is plain : 
 
 'Tis passed conjecture ! All things rise in proof!" 
 'Tis father Thames, and not the clayey soil along his shores, 
 which begat this huge accumulation of wealth, this great con- 
 course of people, this multitude of pursuits and enjoyments, 
 that have stamped London the metropolis of the world. The 
 merchant's toil secures a princely revenue to the possessor of 
 
 D 2
 
 3({ J-KTTKRS TO 
 
 one acre of pi'ound in the city ; traile ol>tains thouRands per 
 annum for estates, which were bought in perpetuity a century 
 ago for as many hundreds ; not agriculture, but the fortuitous 
 workings of commerce make land at Kensington yield double 
 to what is got for it at Hammersmith, give us ten pounds at 
 Brentford, seven at Richmond, four at Kingston, and fix the 
 annual rent every where in an inverse ratio to the distance from 
 the neighbouring emporiums of wealth. 
 
 And yet (will ye believe it, ye future ages of superior know- 
 ledge and honesty ?) there is a petty statesman, the type and 
 image of our puny times and petty spirits, who, from cunning 
 or ignorance, at the suggestion of sheer stupidity, or the most 
 depraved duplicity, stretches out his tiny arm to thwart the 
 natural progress of solid improvement — raises his childish treble 
 in defence of imbecility's everlasting twaddle, and the bullying 
 clamour of monopolists — and, substituting effects for causes, pro- 
 fesses to apprehend from the tribute of foreign commodities, 
 which British ingenuity, enterprise, navigation, and commerce, 
 pour so abundantly upon British shores, and which, in its 
 exuberance, spreads cultivation, raises towns, builds docks, 
 erects mansions, establishes canals and railroads, and renders 
 the possession of a yard of land, however sterile, or however 
 inaccessible, an invaluable privilege, destruction to agiiculture, 
 a source of danger and ruin to every national interest, and of de- 
 pendence on foreigners. 
 
 If the argument were good for anything, yet it comes some- 
 what late in the day, this fear of dependence on foreigners, and 
 it soxmds most especially ridiculous in the mouth of wealthy 
 landowners. For one who, whether awake or asleep — lying, 
 sitting, or standing — in dress or in undress — eating or drinking 
 — at breakfast, dinner, or supper — in his vices, or in his virtues 
 — in the House of Prayer, or at Tattersall's — at home or 
 abroad — in the senate, or on the bench — in health, or in sick- 
 ness — in life, or in death — moves and has his being in the cot- 
 tons, the silks, the cashmeres, the wines, the liqueurs, the spices, 
 the coffee, tea, and sugar, the music, the opera, and the pi-
 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL. 37 
 
 rouettes, the mahogany and the rosewood, the silver and the 
 gold of foreigners — and who, stripped of all these, would find 
 iiimself more helpless and miserable with thirty thousand a 
 year, than the clown who lives on a shilling a day — for such a 
 one to talk of dependence on foreigners as an evil, is as impu- 
 dent as it is farcical. Who will believe him ? Who will trust 
 the generous patriotism of this wolf in sheep's clothing, the 
 landowner, the receiver of rents, when he warns us against de- 
 pendence on foreigners, and is alarmed, lest, accustoming our- 
 selves to an abundance of wholesome bread, we should barter 
 away the independence of the British nation for Dantzig wheat ? 
 This fallacy, so replete with stupidity and duplicity, cannot 
 be too abundantly exposed. The working man, if he must be 
 dependent, had better be so on the millions of landowners abroad 
 than on the few thousands at home. Which of the two can 
 more effectually combine to extort from him his last penny for 
 his daily bread ? Which of the two can starve him with greater 
 facility, the growers and merchants of the wide regions of two 
 or three continents, or the compact phalanx of representatives of 
 a few counties, in Parliament assembled ? Here the attempt at 
 redress is pronounced treason, and the suffering wretches float 
 everlastingly between the Scylla of starvation, and the Charyb- 
 dis of transportation and the gallows ; there money will purchase 
 relief, if not from one quarter, from a hundred others. No 
 power on earth can resist the ingenuity and contrivances which 
 want, and the chance of profit, beget out of commerce ! It is 
 false what you say — "that the insane ambition of one man 
 overruled the impediments which the love of gain, or the pro- 
 secution of peaceful industry, would offer to his reckless course;" 
 for his decrees and his restrictions were the causes of his fall : 
 commerce triumphed over him and all his forces ; colonial pro- 
 duce and British merchandise moved on every high road and 
 every by-way of Europe, notwithstanding his douaniers and 
 his burnings; and even in IHIO, when Napoleon had readied 
 the zenith of power, and when lie fancied that his non-inter- 
 course was most firmly established, more corn was brought to
 
 3.S LETTEKS TO 
 
 England, because wanted, than had ever before been imported 
 in one year, during tlie most pressing periods. 
 
 But the babbling of fools will not be silenced by common 
 sense, nor by abstract reasoning, nor by experience. Napoleon 
 fell because he meddled with the coffee-pots of toothless old 
 women ; the Emperor Paul stopped the trade with England, 
 and lost his throne and his life, and his successor would have 
 met with the same fate, had he not reluctantly broken through 
 the fetters in which the amis and the fascinations of the great 
 adventurer had entangled him. Nay, at this present day, 
 though at war with China, we receive plenty of tea, and it 
 may be bought at lower rates than were charged during pro- 
 found peace by the East India Company — ^the honourable com- 
 pany, whose directors gave it in evidence, upon oath, that, if 
 they lost their charter, the Chinese would no longer serve us 
 with any tea whatsoever. 
 
 In the ordinary course of business, the seller is ever depend- 
 ent on the buyer. With a free trade in com, the foreign 
 grower would be the truly dependent party. Once used to 
 you as his regular customers, he could not do without you ; but 
 a chance huyei\ such as you have made Great Britain by your 
 starvation laws, yoiir averages, and your sliding rules, is in his 
 power. The purchaser on whom he has not calculated he may 
 tum away, or screw him to his heart's content. Yours is the 
 system to render the nation truly dependent, fearfully so — 
 doubly so ! First, on the landholders and jobbers at home, and 
 then on the dealers abroad, to whom you suddenly and loudly 
 proclaim your pressing necessities at the last pinch ; tell them 
 that, with all your struggles for independence, you can no longer 
 be independent ; that now they com catch you for once upon the 
 hip ; that you must come and say — Shylock ! we would have 
 so many wheats — we spurned you such a year — we spat upon 
 you last season, when we were independent — we footed you, as 
 a foreigner — as a stranger cur, fjut now we would have so many 
 wheats ! And will they not say with Shylock, you scorned our 
 nations, you mocked at our grains, you thwarted our bargains ;
 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL. 39 
 
 the independence you teach us, we will practise ; and it shall 
 go hard but we will better the instruction ! 
 
 The independence of nations, as of individuals, must be 
 based on truth, justice, wisdom, and honour, not on slippery, 
 sliding rules, and halfpenny averages ! Those who will fairly 
 buy, when all the world are sellers, will have the best of the 
 bargain ; those who are always in the market will be readily 
 and cheaply served. The gambler boasts of wanting nothing, 
 and, putting off the evil day till the last moment, surrenders 
 his independence to the mercies of the usurer, and the liberality 
 of the pawnbroker. This is the independence which you advo- 
 cate ; a system by which the low cunning of publicans and ex- 
 tortioners thrive ; the matchless wisdom of the whole tribe of 
 those who find their best source of revenue in the stupidity and 
 distress of their neighbours — a sliding rule which may well suit 
 "• the selfish tyrants, fattening on the labours and sufferings of 
 the exhausted poor" — sure cards to the landed proprietors, but a 
 desperate, a losing game to the ragged regiment, whom you 
 lead on to the glory of independence, through the slippery and 
 sliding paths of starvation. 
 
 Childish as the fear of dependence on foreigners is, still more 
 so is that of overwhelming supplies threatening destruction to 
 British agi-iculture, and annihilation to every blade of grass in 
 the land. If reason did not, yet has experience refuted, in 
 every instance, the silly anticipations of shallow-pated alarm- 
 ists, and the deceitful predictions of political jobbers. When 
 the navigation laws were relaxed, there was to be no more 
 shipping in these seas than in Bohemia ! Behold, now a thou- 
 sand steamers proudly 
 
 " beat the surges under them, 
 And ride upon their Ijiiuks!" 
 
 The shipowners of Bristol petitioned Parliament in 1827, 
 against the use of steam boats for commercial purposes ! Lo, 
 in derision of themselves, they have since built the Great 
 Western ! Not to mention the fools of Gravesend, Margate, 
 and llamsgate, who saw destruction in the new-born element,
 
 40 LETTKRS TO 
 
 or the sapient alderman and iron-master, of whom I wrote to 
 you in my No. 2, have we not in the history of silks, oils, cop- 
 per, lead, and wool, proofs abundant of the fallacy of all such 
 notions ? Why are we not suffocated with flax and hemp, 
 which come in free ? Why are we not steeped in tallow, on 
 which the duty is only ten per cent. ? Why not overburthened 
 with gold and silver, on which there is no duty ? Why not ? 
 Because foreigners will give none of these things for nothing ; 
 because they adjust their supplies not by the dreams of drivel- 
 ling idiots, or the fraudulent delusions of a peculating legisla- 
 ture, but by their own powers of production, and our wil- 
 lingness to consume, which is more accurately measured by the 
 desire to purchase, and the ability to pay, than by sliding rules 
 and weekly averages. 
 
 It is you who, laying claim to much wisdom and much can- 
 dour, ought to know and to tell us all this ! If you do not know, 
 where is your wisdom ? if you do, where is your candour ? 
 
 Thus much for to-day. DIOGENES. 
 
 LETTER XII. 
 
 Sir, Jidy 20, 1841. 
 
 " Shear the pigs before you fleece the sheep," you 
 triumphantly cried, as you beheld the dawn of victory on the 15th 
 March 1839. " Shear the pigs before you fleece the sheep," you 
 shouted, in allegorical ecstacy, sure that this refined war-whoop 
 would drag the valorous phalanx of landowners through mires of 
 ignorance, casuistry, and falsehood, to the honourable goal of a 
 parliamentary majority. " Shear the pigs before you fleece the 
 sheep," was the poetical trope which presented itself to the 
 great politician and legislator so readily at the stirring moment 
 of success, when conceptions are most vivid, and intuitive lan- 
 guage limns our pet thoughts with unfailing precision — as if he had 
 already entered on his great offices oi shearing and fleecing (the
 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL. 41 
 
 Alpha and Omega of his political science) the two great cate- 
 gories of pigs and sheep — apposite emblems to his mind of the 
 British people ! 
 
 I have heard it suggested that it was not fair to quote this 
 sparkling hon mot, because you omitted it in the corrected copy 
 of your speech published by Mr. Mun-ay. Most excellent 
 suggestion ! Did you obtain your majority by your corrected 
 speech, or by that delivered in the house ? and did not loud 
 laughter and applause greet this brilliant sally of your wit ? 
 That there may be no mistake, I will copy the report verbatim, 
 and let the pigs and sheep, I mean the people, judge between 
 us ; it is, besides, pregnant with several absm'dities. " If it 
 were wise, under all circumstances, to purchase in the cheapest 
 market, the farmer ought to have the benefit of the same prin- 
 ciple in the purchase of the articles he might require [|hear, 
 hear]. What, however, was the condition of the unfortunate 
 farmer, and the unfortunate owner of the land ? It was said 
 that his burdens were not greater than those of the rest of the 
 community, but he (Sir R. Peel) much doubted that fact Qhear, 
 hear]. The land was tangible, the land was within reach, and 
 as many burdens as could be had been imposed upon it [^hear, 
 hear]. Of course, if they were about to apply the doctrine of 
 going to the cheapest market, they must extend it to the long 
 list of manufactured articles which he held in his hand, and on 
 which there were protecting duties. Of course they did not 
 mean to say, that what was good for the manufacturer was not 
 good for the farmer ; and as com was to be obtained where it 
 was cheapest, so silks were to be obtained where they were 
 lowest in price — so wines were to be bought where they were 
 cheapest Qhear, hear]. But did not honourable gentlemen 
 think that it would be graceful and decorous, before they came 
 upon the farmer to apply this principle, first to apply it to the 
 manufactures ? Let them shear the pigs before they fleece the 
 sheep ! Poud laughter] before they taxed the farmer with this 
 principle, let them apply it to themselves ! If it were good 
 for corn, it was good for buttons ; although corn was a neces-
 
 42 LETTEns TO 
 
 sary of lifo, it »ioi/f no (lilfi-rcnre in the appllmtion ofaprin- 
 cijile." But 
 
 " I'll leave this keen encouuter of your wit, 
 
 And ftill into a somewhat slower method i" 
 
 I'or tlic words following the 
 
 " Let them shear the pigs before they fleece the sheep," 
 
 deserve particular attention ; they lead you, if you are consist- 
 ent with yourself, to a most extraordinary result. What is 
 good for corn is good for buttons : there is no difference in the 
 application of a principle. The sliding rule is good for com, 
 therefore it is good for buttons, for there is no difference in the 
 application of a principle, and the sliding ride is your principle. 
 Averages, ascending and descending scales, slidings and slippings 
 of prices, with all the paraphernalia of inspectors general and 
 special, returning officers and jobbers, being good for com, are 
 good for everything else, for there is no difference in the applica- 
 tion of a principle. Sugar, coffee, tea, pots, wax, and wire (I 
 thank you for the list), in fact, articles beginning with every 
 letter in the alphabet, ought to be subject to this process, for 
 what is good for corn is good for buttons — there is no difference in 
 the application of a principle. Landowoiers, famiers, merchants, 
 dealers, and consumers, are subject to your slippery slidings ; 
 why not every other pursuit, every profession, every trade, 
 every art ? for what is good for corn is good for buttons — there is 
 no difference in the application of a principle. To such a con- 
 clusion your premises manifestly lead ; and tmless you revoke 
 your sapient dictum, you must apply the restraints and regula- 
 tions which you advocate in com to every occupation. The 
 meddling system of China and Japan, the castes of Hindoo, the 
 guilds and family trammels of ancient Egypt, would be trifles to 
 the intricate and minute system of sliding and slipping, of su- 
 perintendence and interference, which you advocate, and which 
 you would apply to every individual action, nay, to every indi- 
 vidual thought — for what is good for corn is good for buttons ! 
 You interfere with every man's belly, why not with every
 
 SIB ROBERT PEEL. 43 
 
 man's brain ! There is no difference in the application of a prin- 
 ciple ! And — 
 
 " Can such things be, 
 And overcome us like a summer's cloud 
 Without our special wonder ?" 
 
 Alas ! they can, and many equally absurd ! Thus, for instance, 
 I find the following exquisite bit of political philosophy in your 
 oration : — " The right honoui-able gentleman (Sir Robert Peel) 
 proceeded to observe, that this paper, in the first place, gave us 
 the total amount of British commerce and manufactures sent 
 out of the United Kingdom in the year 1837, as £36,228,000. 
 Now observe, that in the year 1837 the price of com was com- 
 paratively low. In the year 1838 an advance was made, and 
 what effect had the high price of corn in diminishing our ex- 
 po)is ?" Why, surely, com being dear, and large quantities 
 being imported, exports must increase to pay for the excess ;— 
 this common sense would at once suggest ; but not so thinks our 
 prime minister — ^that is to be ! Hear him. " Why, in the 
 year 1838 we exported to the value of £43,000,000 [loud 
 cheers]. So that in the dear year, when ike price of corn 
 ought to have contracted our manufactures, their export was 
 £43,000,000, whereas in the preceding year it was but 
 £36,228,000 [[cheers]." " Then, as to shijyping, the total num- 
 ber of ships was in 1837, 18,113; in lii38 it was 19,616," 
 [[cheers.] 
 
 I have spoken of mires of ignorance through which you drag- 
 ged your followers — ^here we have oceans ! Surely, when two 
 millions of quarters of wheat are suddenly added to the impor- 
 tation, there must be as sudden an increase in the shipping em- 
 ployed to bring this enormous quantity ; but in this case the 
 increase is a consequence of our distress, not, as you would have 
 it, a symptom of prosperity ! Every broker's clerk knows this, 
 and must laugh at your egi-egious ignorance ; so also does every 
 broker's clerk know that, in this instance, the increase of ship- 
 ping has proved a curse instead of a blessing, because the large 
 fleets built under the excitement of that period, are now a source
 
 44 LKTTF.RS TO 
 
 of eiiornious loss and ruin to every seaport in the kingdom. 
 Every broker's running porter will predict, that more goods 
 must lie exported when a bad harvest calls for a forced impor- 
 tation of foreign corn, long before you perceive the fact from 
 Custom-house returns and official documents ; and he knows, 
 moreover, that such specific increase would be occasioned by 
 the pressure of scarcity and distress, and prove the very oppo- 
 site from that state of prosperity which your worehipful states- 
 manship sees in it. 
 
 Truly may you call the people pigs and sheep, when they 
 gulp as absolute wisdom such wholesale absurdities — truly may 
 you think them fit for nothing but shearing and fleecing, when 
 you can make them believe that black is white, and when the 
 dire evidences of distress can be turned by the magic of your 
 sweet voice into proofs of prosperity ! But I say that you ought 
 to be heartily ashamed of such ignorance, and endeavour to 
 know better. I'll warrant that to-moiTow's post (I write on St. 
 Swithin's day) will carry out more solid political economy to 
 foreign coimtries, in the circular letters of the city merchants, 
 than all your orations in and out of Parliament can teach, and than 
 you, notwithstanding your long official life, and ex-official leisure, 
 have been able to learn ; they will say, one and all, that the 
 weather is threatening, the crops wear a doubtful aspect, that 
 com may be dearer, and ships may be wanted — but that in 
 that case the exchanges would be lower, money scarce. Colonial 
 and British exports cheaper, and the opportunity favourable for 
 making cheap purchases, cheaper in proportion as corn gets 
 dearer, for the distress occasioned by a bad harvest, they will say, 
 is sure to force the holders of goods into the market, and put 
 them at the mercy of the buyers. Now this statement is based 
 
 ! on common sense, and infinitely superior to your miserable 
 jumble of pseudo-political economy, the grotesque and base 
 
 : coimterfeit of the noble science, your ignorance of which you 
 need not acknowledge, as you sufficiently prove it, but which 
 you have sufficient conceit to disregard and to disparage. 
 Had I space, I would have said much more. I would, more
 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL. 45 
 
 especially, have written about the property tax, to which you 
 have persuaded youi- phalanx to agree, in the hope of further 
 deluding the people. Property tax ! as if a property tax could 
 make plenty where there is a scarcity — as if a property tax 
 could increase the number, or improve the quality of our loaves — 
 as if a property tax could change the beans, chalk, and bone- 
 dust, and all the rubbish which, whilst wheat is rising, will be 
 mixed with bread-stuffs, into wholesome and grateful substances! 
 A property tax may gratify your revenge, and set a mark on your 
 political opponents, but it will not satisfy the cravings of a 
 starving population. What if, which Heaven forbid, we had a 
 harvest like that of 1838 — what if the diabolical farce of the 
 halfpenny in 73s. which in September of that year kept the 
 people for an additional week from the enjoyment of wholesome 
 bread, were acted over again, by means of your accursed sliding 
 rule, would a property tax assuage famine, and cm-e starvation 
 and disease ? Pigs and sheep as the people are, they would re- 
 sent the repetition of such an outrage on common sense and hu- 
 manity — and you, your supporters and your sliding rules, 
 would be glad to slip out of sight : no loud laughter would 
 greet a second time orations so replete with ignorance and con- 
 tradiction as that of 1839, which was graced by the brilliant 
 effusion I have quoted to day — 
 
 " Shear the pigs before you fleece the sheep ! " 
 
 DIOGENES. 
 
 LETTER XIII. 
 
 Sir, July 27, 1841. 
 
 I have worn my copy of your Corn Law oration of 
 1839 to very rags and tatters, and it will no longer serve the 
 end to which I have hitherto applied it ; but you have since 
 then delivered several other speeches, mere new editions of the 
 old work, with Imt small variations, and no improvements, and 
 they will serve my purpose equally well.
 
 4P LETTKHS TO 
 
 Yesterday morning, before breakfast. I ran through your 
 Tamworth perfbnnaneo, and, upon my word, it made me posi- 
 tively sick. There seems to be something in the moral 
 constitution which, repeatedly nauseated by the exhibition of 
 fallacy and duplicity, acts on the digestive organs like physic ; 
 and if the mere reading of a speech affects my well-stmng nerves 
 and unpampered stomach in this strange manner, need we won- 
 der at the alarming, the dangerous, one might almost say the 
 unconstitutional repugnance, said to prevail at court to see the 
 man himself, especially under existing delicate circumstances ? 
 
 In your Tamworth speech, you omit all allusion to the " dull 
 succession of enormous manufacturing towns connected by rail- 
 roads," which told so well in the oration of 1839, and of which 
 I have treated more fully in my sixth letter. At Tamworth it 
 would not have been graceful or decorous — at Tamworth it 
 would not have been prudent — at Tamworth you " could not be 
 justified (as you say) if you introduced any topic of an irritat- 
 ing nature" — at Tamworth it was good policy in you to say 
 " that you could not forget that you owed all you possess to the 
 manufacturing industry of the country," and something besides 
 about temporary distress, sympathy, your anxiety to enable 
 them to command the luxuries of life, and all that sort of thing ; 
 but, in the House of Commons, amongst six himdred country 
 squires, " a dull succession of enormous manufactuiing towns 
 connected by railroads intersecting the abandoned tracts, which 
 it would be no longer profitable to cultivate," sounds more ge- 
 nial, suits your occasion better, and is surer to be greeted with 
 " hear, hear, hear," than your Tamworth sympathy, philanthro- 
 py, and gratitude to the unwashed artisans. 
 
 In 1839 you ridiculed Mr. Mark Philips and his prognosti- 
 cations of coming distress, calling on him for statistical tables 
 to prove the fact, before it had been accomplished : at Tamworth 
 you admit the distress, but then you prove that according to 
 your tables it ought not to exist, and that therefore it cannot 
 last. In 1839 yoiu: predictions were belied, most speedily and 
 most awfully, by the event ; at Tamworth your figures are ab-
 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL. 47 
 
 solutely belied by the fact : but you still swear by your figures, 
 and will not see that in political arithmetic two and two do not 
 always make four. 
 
 In 1 839 you say " that unless the Corn Law can be shown 
 to be consistent with the maintenance not only of the agricul- 
 tural, but of the general interests of the country, and especially 
 with the improvement of the condition of the labouring classes, 
 it is practically at an end." Now, after the lapse of three years 
 of one continued havoc of ruin and bankmptcy amongst mer- 
 chants and traders, with famine and beggary overwhelming 
 the labouring class, and despair and death overshadowing the 
 land, you uphold the Corn Law in all its glory, and point 
 contentedly to your figures. This is the genuine insolence of 
 office. Like the pig-headed obstinacy of the well-fed stall ox, 
 who will not turn round though the flames have reached his 
 manger, and the burning roof is coming down on his fat rump, 
 you cannot tiu-n from your sliding rule and your statistical 
 statements, though the seasons should be suspended from nm- 
 ning their accustomed course, and nature herself make a 
 pause. 
 
 Notwithstanding your speech of 1839, your large sums of 
 exports and imports, and your increase of shipping ; notwith- 
 standing the excellent harvest of 1840, and seasons the most 
 favourable for grazing, we are now in the midst of dearth and 
 starvation — with bread, beef, mutton, bacon, cheese, and but- 
 ter, at famine prices. But you will take no counsel ! English 
 wheat is at 80s. and the stock altogether exhausted, whilst 
 the duty on foreign remains at 23s. 8d., and a full month 
 must elapse before it can come down to 20s. Sd. — but you will 
 take no warning ! The people must eat bread made of beans 
 and other rubbish until next October, when the average may, 
 perchance, reach 72s. ll^d. as in September 1838, and the 
 legislative farce of that memorable week will be acted 
 over once more, but you heed it not ! You ought now to open 
 the ports by order in council, tlmt wheat may come freely in, 
 l)eraitm it in leanted ; but you turn a deaf ear to common sense
 
 4S LETTERS TO 
 
 and liumanity, and shut up your sympathy and your gratitude 
 until tlie hist haltponny shall have been extorted, according to 
 the refined and intricate contrivance, enacted that corn may be 
 scarce and dear. 
 
 At Tamworth you talk of manufacturing distress, joint-stock 
 banks, Spanish troubles, and the coast of Lydia ; as if wheat 
 v\rere one of the fabrics of Manchester ; as if joint-stock banks 
 consumed an extra quantity of loaves ; as if the coast of Lydia 
 had devoured our beef and mutton ! — for these are the things 
 that we are really distressed about. You boast of having ex- 
 ported fifty millions' worth of goods ; but has that brought us 
 plenty of jyrovisions ? You glory at our having imported a large 
 amount of merchandize ; but where is the food which we want^ 
 and which we ought to have impoiied ? We want meat, and you 
 give us stones ; we want com, and you give us statistical fi- 
 gures ! Where are the six or eight millions of good and cheap 
 grain which a great, a wealthy, a prudent, and a truly inde- 
 pendent people would always have in store as a safeguard 
 against every emergency ? Alas ! you want no large stores of 
 good and cheap wheat. They are an abomination unto you, 
 A little and dear is your motto : a sliding scale is your economy ; 
 and your prudence says, that it i^ better to pa?/ a large sum of 
 money for a small quantity of wheat, than to get a large quantity 
 of wheat for a small sum of money ! 
 
 At Tamworth you boast of not supporting extreme opinions, 
 but it is your opinion that one halfpenny in 73s. shall settle 
 the question whether a million of quarters shall be withheld 
 from consumption or not, though the people be in the mean 
 time poisoned and starved, as was the case on the 7th of Sep- 
 tember 1838. You are a moderate man, but you let disease 
 and death have their sway, so that the sliding rule do but al- 
 ways keep food scarce and dear ; for this is, after all, the true 
 gist of the argument. All this speechifying, all this legislating, 
 this slipping, this sliding, and thimble-rigging, about a half- 
 penny in 72s. 11 ^d. is but meant to perpetuate high prices by 
 means of scarcity, as by Parliament established, for the good of
 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL. 4.0 
 
 the people — I beg your pardon, I meant the landlords ; and if 
 the problem were submitted to some profound philosopher — 
 given, a certain quantity of land — query, how to secure to it a 
 perpetually growing rental ? he would readily solve it thus : 
 keep the people at starvation point ; increase their number as 
 much as you can, but give them no more to eat than what you 
 grow on the said land ; prevent all supply of food fi'om other 
 land ; or, if the pressure be too great, relax seemingly ; but slip 
 and slide your duties such wise, that a week's adverse winds, 
 or the difference of a halfpenny in the average price, may 
 threaten ruin to every merchant ; adjust your laws so that the 
 com trade may become disreputable, hazardous, and impossible ; 
 enact a sliding scale, such as they have in the land of liberty 
 and civilization — in the land called England ! 
 
 Whatever else there may be of folly and wickedness in your 
 speeches, I must abandon to the researches of abler men ; it is 
 but an offensive business to dredge such pools of falsehood and 
 absurdity. In my progress I have been amazed at the web of 
 shallow sophistry, enonnous ignorance, and shameless misquo- 
 tation. The wretched phenomena of ingenious depra'vity, ho- 
 nesty laughed to scorn, science, truth, and humanity trampled 
 in the dust, may well fill even the most frigid bosom with sor- 
 row. Who can help mourning over a nation whose political 
 character and public morality is henceforth to be fashioned and 
 guided by the standard displayed in these disastrous, these un- 
 fortunate, these moderate, these temperate, these bisexual, these 
 emasculated principles, the marrow and essence of the — I sup- 
 pose I must join the general cry — of the first statesman of the 
 British empire ! 
 
 With what delight, with how much rapture, would I not 
 turn from your unsatisfactory periods, from your mis-stated 
 facts, from your mischievous, your warped, your untenable in- 
 ferences, to the portraiture of a truly enlightened and great 
 mind, a genuine patriot and politician, a wise and virtuous le- 
 gislator, tlie exalted benefactor of his country and age, the sun 
 
 and leading star of the human race ! The genial rays of such 
 
 E
 
 .'50 LKTTKHS TO 
 
 a luminary would warm the coldest bosom, and guide even the 
 dull pencil of a cynic into the bright regions of enthusiasm and 
 ecstacy ! 
 
 With candour in his heart, truth on his lips, and honour in 
 his eye, no opponent could dispute his words, no supporter dis- 
 trust fi/'s designs. The great mission of his calling, the advance- 
 ment of justice, morality, and civilization, would demand none 
 but the most simple as well as the most honourable measures, 
 — ^purity of motives presupposes purity of means. His ambi- 
 tion would be to found an empire of superior intelligence and 
 happiness ; to dispel eiTor would be his particular talent ; and 
 at his approach, cunning, duplicity, ignorance, suspicion, and 
 fear would depart in dismay ; honesty and knowledge would 
 be the attributes by which he would cause his age and his 
 country to shine brightest above former days ; and he would 
 bequeath to future times the difficult task of rivalling excellen- 
 cies which had hitherto been deemed unattainable. 
 
 Such a one might, perhaps, tell us, that legislation was not 
 intended to be appHed to the minutiae of man's daily pursuits, 
 wants, and enjoyrnents ; that legislators rendered themselves 
 liable to suspicion when they meddled with matters evidently 
 most profitable to themselves ; that those governments were 
 most perfect whose interference was but rarely needed in ordi- 
 nary affairs ; and that in humble imitation of the allwise Ruler 
 of the universe, human rulers should aim at simplicity — not at 
 complication ; at liberty — not at restraint ; that too little legis- 
 lation Avas the preferable extreme ; that unnecessary legislation 
 generated disrespect to the makers and administrators of laws, 
 and challenging infringement, became a fertile source of new 
 crimes. 
 
 Of monopolies like the Com Law, he might, perhaps, say 
 that they would generate, if effective, a preponderance of poli- 
 tical interest, frequently unmanageable, and threatening to dis- 
 tm'b the equilibrium which the vast variety of mental and 
 bodily powers, the constant development of fresh intelligence 
 and skill, new wants and new gratifications, seemed best calcu-
 
 SIB ROBERT PEEL. 51 
 
 lated to maintain, as in the universe so in the state. That 
 laws, regulating the supply of food — that the Com Laws might 
 not inaptly be ranged with the melancholy musings of the 
 learned friend of Imlac and Rasselas — that the attempt, just- 
 ly to apportion the supply of food to the wants of a constantly- 
 fluctuating mass of people, would presume the regulation of the 
 weather and the distribution of the seasons, and the insane 
 fancy that the sun would listen to our dictates, and pass from 
 tropic to tropic by our directions — that the clouds, at our 
 call, would pour their waters, and the Nile ovei-flow at our 
 comm.and — and that we could restrain the rage of the dog star, 
 and mitigate the fervour of the Crab Alas ! in mere fond de- 
 lusion might we not find (as has been found in the administra- 
 tion of all such laws) that some of the elemental powers would 
 refuse our authority, and that (how true is the application) 
 multitudes had perished by tempests which we found ourselves 
 unable to prohibit or to restrain. Alas ! do not let us lay the 
 flattering unction to our souls, that we could administer this 
 great office with exact justice, and make to the different na- 
 tions of the earth an impartial dividend of rain and sunshine ! 
 What must be the misery of half the globe, should we limit 
 the clouds to particular regions, and confine the sun to either 
 side of the equator ? What must be the suffering of half the 
 people, should we confine plenty to the other half ? What the 
 pinings and miseries of the sucking babe, the sickly mother, 
 the famishing poor, the aged, tottering and hungry, the feeble 
 in mind and body, when we let the interests of the strong, the 
 bold, the pushing, the vigorous, the powerful, and wealthy, pre- 
 vail, and by the nice adjustment of a halfpenny in the average 
 price of 73s. prevent the enjoyment of wholesome bread for a 
 whole week, as was the case in September 1838? What our 
 repentant pangs, should we finally discover the impossibility of 
 making a disposition by which the world can be advantaged, 
 though we tuni the axis of the earth, and sometimes varied the 
 ecliptic of the sun ! 
 
 E 2
 
 52 LETTKHS TO 
 
 Quitting the mighty lessons of the great moralist, he might 
 tell us — " Look around, and ponder on the incessant change of 
 every thing human, before we persevere in rules and laws af- 
 fecting every grain of wheat that is grown, and every mouth- 
 ful of bread that is eaten. Behold the rapid whirlpool of 
 events, the quick succession of unforeseen circumstances, the 
 daily birth of hidden causes and effects, thought impossible ! 
 Printing, an art once vmknown, now furnishes, in a few hours, 
 and for a few pence, an unmeasured supply of mental food, such 
 as the power of Alexander or Caesar could not have procured — 
 nay, which even the mightiest imagination of ancient days had 
 not extent to conceive ! Law has not protected, nay, it has 
 opposed, with all its delays and oppression, the progress of rail- 
 roads ; yet we roll in a few hours from one end of the kingdom 
 to the other. Tens of thousands glide now in splendid barges daily 
 along our rivers and seas, where formerly a few individuals 
 could scarcely be collected, to maintain a slow, a perilous, and 
 an inconvenient weekly traffic. Far mightier powers than 
 steam are as yet more or less dormant ; carbonic gas is kept as 
 a giant sleeping, chained up in safety, until more manageable ; 
 but galvanic action already telegi'aphs our thoughts and wishes 
 on the wings of the electric fluid, and assists in reducing the 
 perilous and poisonous toil of manufacturing processes, to safe and 
 easy performances. In our streets wood displaces stones ; at sea 
 iron floats as safe as timber. Navigation, mining, engineering, 
 and architecture, have advanced more by means of steam, in a few 
 years, than they did under the fostering patronage of princes 
 and sovereigns during as many centuries. Every minute we 
 live, every breath we draw, every hour that passes by, every 
 season that rolls on, must convince us that we foresee little, 
 know nothing, and legislate in the dark — that the world runs 
 on with railroad speed, and that we follow with the silly so- 
 lemnity of a lord-mayor's coach ; fur such is the true nature of 
 the sliding rule, by which you measure out distress and famine 
 to the people, with the exact nicety of a halfpenny in seventy- 
 three shillings. 
 
 In my next I shall treat you with the Syllabus of an Anti-
 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL. 53 
 
 Corn-Law lecture, such as, I trust, will be delivered in every 
 village and hamlet in the kingdom, during the progress of this 
 great national argument. Enough for to-day. 
 
 DIOGENES. 
 
 LETTER XIV. 
 
 Sir, August 4, 1841. 
 
 It does not surjirise me, that you should have repeated 
 on the hustings at Tam worth, the claim which you put in, in 
 1839, "for patience and attention, which you incur the risk of 
 forfeiting, by preferring arguments and figures, dull and unin- 
 teresting in themselves, to more popular and exciting appeals," 
 for there remains so much of human nature in the most per- 
 verse of men, that the conscious defence of error will hardly be 
 made con amove, or with that glow of delight, with which the 
 conviction of truth warms both the speaker and his hearers ; 
 and however heavy and stupid, and therefore easily mystified 
 by sophistry, and overawed by the confident utterance of long 
 rows of figures, 
 
 " Full of sound and fury, signifj-ing nothing," 
 
 a moiety of your audience might be, yet the other half would 
 most likely be sufficiently aware of the true state of the ques- 
 tion, not to listen with pleasure to what, from motives of interest, 
 they might be willing to hold up their hands for, or be con- 
 strained by sheer necessity to yawn assent to. 
 
 Fortunately, the noVjle army of anti-corn-law lecturers, who, 
 in humble but zealous imitation of the apostles of former days, 
 perambulate the land, to spread the doctrines of freedom and 
 common sense amongst the people, need not share your fear of 
 forfeiting the patience and attention of their audiences whilst 
 delivering their instructive and benevolent discourses, for tlie 
 consciousness of truth and integrity stands them in stead of the 
 loud siiouting voice of a giant. An ardour till now unknown — 
 enthusiasm bordering on martyrdom — agitation promoted with
 
 .VI LETTKRS TO 
 
 undying perseverance — these, as I said in my first letter, are in 
 motion ; with these elements they find it easy to fan the dull em- 
 bers of misery and starvation into a cheering blaze of wholesome 
 indignation, and discontent full of promises — ^honourable and man- 
 ly feelings of \\Tong too long endured, and submission protracted 
 beyond all reasonable bounds. Nor have the landowners any 
 reasonable ground to complain of the odium which the labours 
 of this body of intelligent and benevolent gentlemen find it 
 their duty to bring upon them, for they have the entire benefit 
 of the stupid and infamous system of legislation against which 
 we contend ; and whilst their swelling purses are bursting with 
 a three and four-fold gi'owth of rent from natural causes, assisted 
 by a further increase from monopoly, they may well allow men's 
 agonized feelings to burst out in a few hard words. 
 
 The landlords may be truly and properly described as the 
 cormorants of the commonwealth, to whom nothing comes amiss 
 which will raise rents. Now, every advance of the community 
 tends naturally to an increase of rent, and is therefore sure food 
 for their wide and ponderous jaws. No spade turns a clod of 
 earth, no plough cuts the sod asunder, no pickaxe pierces into 
 quarries above or mines under ground, but a bit of rent is gain- 
 ed ; and the success of the gardener, the farmer, and the miner 
 is sure to be followed by an advance of rent. Roads and canals 
 are opened, and they add immediately to the rent ; and if in- 
 creased intelligence and activity fill our stage-coaches with 
 travellers, horses and oats are wanted, and that gives rent. If 
 steam-boats crowd our rivers, or carry shoals of citizens to the 
 Gravesends and Margates of the neighbourhood, property im- 
 proves, and up gets rent. If railroads traverse the inland coun- 
 ties, or cocknies fly down to Buxton or Bath, why, rent flies up 
 on both sides and at each terminus of their iron course. If 
 temperance and teetotalism economize the earnings of the arti- 
 san and the shopkeeper, they will indulge in better food and 
 habitations, and that again adds to rent. If fi-esh ingenuity and 
 additional mechanical contrivances cheapen articles of dress or 
 furniture, the middling classes save, and must have their bit of
 
 SIR HOBEKT PEEL. 55 
 
 garden and land, and that also augments rent. If enterprising 
 men return from the west full of bile, but with a planter's for- 
 tune, or from the east minus their liver, but with a nabob's 
 wealth — lo ! they will have their country-seat and park, and 
 that increases rent. If vaccination saves myriads of infants 
 from the ravages of the small-pox ; if parents succeed in rearing 
 large families vsdth sound constitutions and hearty appetites — 
 if the advance of medical science preserves thousands, who 
 would otherwise have perished before they reached the meridian 
 of existence — if cleanliness and moderation improve the value 
 of life, and virtue and wisdom prolong its existence to the 
 duration of fom'score years and more, all this multiplies the 
 demand for room and food, and therefore improves rent. Nay, 
 grim death himself is a sure and constant customer, bargaining 
 daily for a thousand little leaseholds of six feet by three, 
 and the lifeless carcasses are the most greedy and profitable com- 
 petitors for land, yielding more than double rent; and could the 
 dumb tenants of the grave be but driven to the hustings under 
 some Chandos clause, what a prospect would be opened to the 
 owners of the soil for an additional and most welcome improve- 
 ment of rent ! And yet will these greedy Jack Alls, the land- 
 owners, have their Corn Law to make assurance doubly sure, 
 and grunt and swear because the sliding rule lets slip in now 
 and then a bit of foreign wheat, to interrupt this infinitely 
 rismg series — the true algebraical formula for their " theory of 
 rent !" 
 
 The syllabus of an anti-com-law lecture, with which I treat 
 you to-day according to promise, may be of some use to the lectur- 
 ers, as a ready means to gather their thoughts and arrange their 
 arguments, when better materials should perchance happen not 
 to be at hand. For illustrations of the various points set forth 
 by me, they will be at no loss, because intelligence, vast reading, 
 extensive knowledge, a ready memory, and fluency of speech, are 
 the passports with which I find them always amply provided, and 
 which have gained them ready access amongst all sorts of peo- 
 ple, friends as well as opponents. With them knowledge is
 
 5t) LKTTKKS TO 
 
 indeed />oicer. Wore I to indulge in comments, volumes would 
 not exhaust my zeal, and the colossal sheet of a double Chroni- 
 cle would not contain one-half of what I could easily furnish. 
 It may be said that truth requires but little embellishment ; 
 but it is not only the establishment of truth, but the conquest 
 of error, which we have taken in liand ; and error is a many- 
 headed hydra, wliicli a whole armoury of truth, and an arsenal 
 full of the breastplates of righteousness, would barely suffice to 
 overcome. 
 
 He who would conquer you must indeed be well armed, for, 
 however great your ingenuity and talent may be, your prowess 
 is greater — ^nay, it is undaunted ! What other man would have 
 ventured, in the middle of the nineteenth century, in the reign 
 of her Majesty Queen Victoria, in the face of the most civilized 
 nation of the earth, in Parliament, on the 15th of March, 1839, 
 to propose the re-establishment of every old-fashioned law and 
 regulation, which our silly forefathers enacted to rule and regu- 
 late commerce, trade, and every, even the most insignificant, 
 pursuits ? But so it is ; and you, who still adhere to the Corn 
 Law, though every shallow argument in its favour has been 
 demolished over and over again — you, who, from the hustings 
 at Tamworth, loudly and distinctly pledged yourself a fimi and 
 imshaken advocate of the absurd and infamous sliding rule, 
 which has been proved to be pregnant with fraud as well as 
 mischief, you told us plainly in 1839, that what was good for 
 corn was good for buttons ; and I find in the Statutes at Large 
 a clear and satisfactory solution of this dictum, for the law on 
 buttons, still in existence, unrepealed to this day, and liable to 
 be put in force by the first informer, runs thus : — 
 
 " No person shall make, sell, or set upon any clothes, or 
 wearing garments whatsoever, any buttons made of cloth, serge, 
 drugget, freeze, camlet, or any other stuff, of which clothes or 
 wearing garments are made, or any buttons made of wood only, 
 and turned in imitation of buttons, on pain of forfeiting 40s. 
 per dozen for all such buttons. 
 
 " No tailor shall set on any buttons, or buttonholes, of serge,
 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL. 57 
 
 drugget, freeze, camlet, &c. under penalty of 40s. for every 
 dozen of buttons or buttonholes so made or set on. 
 
 " No person shall use or wear on any clothes or apparel, 
 except velvet (mark that, my Lord Radnor, and ye Corn-law 
 lecturers, velvety like lobsters and turbot, is excepted), any 
 buttons or buttonholes made of or bound with cloth, serge, 
 drugget, freeze, camlet, or other stuffs, whereof clothes or wool- 
 len garments are usually made, on penalty of forfeiting 40s. 
 per dozen." 
 
 This is a clue to your exclamation about buttons, and would 
 be a fair specimen of the system of legislation you mean to put 
 into practice, had we not the distinct declaration at Tamworth 
 that you cannot consent to substitute a fixed duty for the as- 
 cending and descending scale. " I prefer," you clearly said, 
 " the principle of an ascending and descending scale !" 
 
 Now I have taken the trouble to look into this sliding act 
 itself, and I find in it some few clauses which are quite as 
 amusing as those about buttons just given. There is the fol- 
 lowing clause : — 
 
 " Sec. 33. What shall be deemed British com ? All com or 
 grain the produce of the United Kingdom shall be deemed and 
 taken to be British corn for the purposes of this act." Exactly 
 so ; who could doubt it ? Or was it, perhaps, a question whe- 
 ther only com grown on land belonging to peers or members of 
 parliament should be deemed and taken to be British corn for 
 the purpose of this act ? Really, they were very liberal ; but 
 why wheat, bought in Hamburg with British stockings, should 
 not be quite as much British wheat, I cannot, for the world of 
 me, understand. Gold bought with stockings is called English 
 gold, and nobody calls silver shillings foreign shillings. But 1 
 proceed. 
 
 "Sec. 46. Punishments for making false returns. If any 
 person shall make any false and fraudulent statements, or shall 
 falsely and wilfully include or procure, or cause to be included 
 in any such returns, any British corn which was not truly and 
 bona fide sold or bought by, or on behalf of, the persdii or per-
 
 58 LETTERS TO 
 
 sons in any such rotiirn nientiontHl in that return, in the quan- 
 tity, and for thi- prices therein stated and set forth, every such 
 offender shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor." 
 
 It is notorious that this misdemeanor is regularly committed 
 twnce a year by the great corn-jobbers, first for the sake of get- 
 ting the duty do^vn to a shilling, just at the moment their ships 
 come in — and then, having paid this shilling duty, they go on 
 the other tack, for they are fond of working double tides, and 
 your sliding rule suiting them to the nicety of a halfpenny, 
 they get the duty up again. This, of course, you are well 
 aware of, and alluded to it, I suppose, when you stated in 1839, 
 " Is it not the fact, that Mnthout any interference on the part of 
 the Legislature or the Government, by the silent unaided (?) 
 operation of the Com Laws, the ports were opened for foreign 
 grain, free of duty, and that two millions of quarters of wheat 
 have been available for our consumption ?" (vide page 31 of 
 your speech). You were, no doubt, fully aware of these mis- 
 demeanors, and approved of them ; or, if otherwise, I will ven- 
 ture to say there is somebody in Mark-lane who can teach you. 
 One thing is clear : as my Lord Eldon said there was no act of 
 parliament through which he would not drive wath a coach and 
 four, so can they diive through the Com Law whenever it suits 
 them — I would say with an Omnibus, but that the act itself is 
 an Omnibus of cmelty and stupidity unparalleled, nugatory for 
 all GOOD PURPOSES, but a glorious and useful instrument for those 
 of the bold and long-headed operators and dealers in grain. 
 Should the weather not presently take up, we must have the 
 ports forthwith opened (in a week or ten days) by an order in 
 council : in that case your omnibus will prove but a silly buss — 
 and that reminds me of my Syllabus*. 
 
 Enough for to-day. DIOGENES. 
 
 See Appendix A.
 
 SIB ROBERT PEEL. 5.9 
 
 LETTER XV. 
 
 Sir, July 11, 1841. 
 
 You are not so very particularly distinguished for a 
 clear utterance of your real notions and intentions, that it should 
 have become necessary to claim, in your medical essay at Tam- 
 worth, a double allowance of the fairly-earned repute for skill 
 in the rhetorical figure, vulgarly yclept " mystification." The 
 opposite system does not sit comfortably on you. When you 
 seem most busy with preparations for firing some great gun, 
 your friends feel least alarm, well knowing, that however 
 much powder you may ram in, there will be but little shot, and 
 that small. Were you to cry out that you would gallop 
 straight down St. James's, I for one would think myself safe in 
 the middle of the street, and feel more alarmed for those who 
 took refuge on the pavement ; and 1 verily believe the story, 
 that we entirely miss in yoiu last speech your favourite word 
 " candour" because some damned good-natured friend told you, 
 that whenever you use it, every lip in the kingdom cm-Is with 
 a sneer. 
 
 Yoiu- greatest admirers now assure us, that you are by no 
 means so violently attached to the Com Laws as you were be- 
 fore the elections, and that you would slip out of the sliding 
 scale should you have good reasons for it. I am glad to hear 
 it ; but, xmfortimately, you have pronounced yourself, on various 
 occasions, somewhat too positively on this matter ; as, for in- 
 stance, on the hustings at Tamworth : — " I cannot consent," 
 (hear ye that, ye iree-bom Britons ! he cannot consent ! ) " to 
 substitute a fixed duty of 8s. for the present ascending and de- 
 scending scale. I prefer the principle of the ascending and de- 
 scending scale. I do not consider that 8s. is a sufficient pro- 
 tection for the landholders of this country ;" and then you add 
 — " A duty of 8s. is proposed as a fixed invariable duty ; now 
 I foresee that, if you apply that duty, this will be the conse- 
 quence : you will have abundance of foreign corn introduced
 
 «0 LETTERS TO 
 
 J/tst ichen >/oii (hn't tcant it — when your own produce has been 
 most ahundant ; but iclien the time of famine shall arrive, then 
 it will be impossible for you to raise the duty of <Ss. on foreign 
 corn. Gentlemen, what provision is to be made for that ? If 
 com should rise to the price of 70s. or 80s. a quarter, would it, 
 I ask, be possible to maintain a fixed duty ?" . And in your 
 speech on the 15th March 1839, you said — " If you had coiled 
 on us to abandon this p'otection icith the exhibition of superior 
 sa^acifi/, and triumphant reasoning^ tee should have been deaf to 
 yorir appeal !" 
 
 It must be acknowledged, that when a gentleman, usually so 
 wary and full of caution, drops the habitual circumspection of 
 his temperament — oversteps, as it were, the modesty of his na- 
 ture — boldly sets at defiance superior sagacity, and the exhibi- 
 tion of triumphant reason, and though a whole nation will, 
 can't consent^ 
 
 " As who would say, I am Sir Oracle, 
 
 And when I ope my mouth, let no dog bark !" 
 
 the expectation that he would be moved to change his course, 
 and advocate a line of legislation in direct contrariety to his last 
 budget of principles, seems somewhat Quixotical ; but it is cer- 
 tainly not altogether impossible, and, I may perhaps smooth 
 the way for you. 
 
 The singular ingenuity with which machine-makers consti-uct 
 tools to perform in factories and workshops the offices of the hu- 
 man hand — I might almost say the human head — is most re- 
 markably displayed in a newly-invented piece of mechanism, 
 excelling every thing of the kind I ever beheld. They call it 
 technically, a " Jim Crow" its motions resembling the " wheel 
 about and turn about" of the celebrated Mr. Rice, who first 
 suggested the idea of this clever and useful contrivance. He 
 thus became a national benefactor ; but should you go and see 
 the thing, and take a wholesome lesson from it, his claims on 
 the people's gratitude would be greatly enhanced, and a suitable 
 monument, perhaps a windmill, of the gigantic proportions of 
 St. Paul's, placed on the top of Shooter' s-hill, might be an
 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL. 61 
 
 appropriate commemoration of his double services to the state, 
 mechanical as well as political. 
 
 The factory where you may inspect this " Jim Crow," is far 
 east, and on your way thither you might as well inquire in the 
 city about the present state of the corn trade, and the working 
 of the sliding scale, before you get on the Blackwall railroad. 
 Suppose you called, in the plain garb of a man of business, on 
 some of the great merchants, the Barings, the Larpents, the 
 Hubbards, and proposed to them to join you in an importation 
 of wheat from abroad. You might tell them that you had 
 plenty of money, knew the country well, were aware of the 
 state of the crops, were sure that wheat was wanted, and that it 
 was, therefore, the proper time to bring it ; but I will wager my 
 existence that you would meet a refusal in such words as these : 
 Thank you for your confidence, but must decline the business 
 — don't enter on such neck-breaking affairs — the com trade is 
 naturally full of hazard, but with the present system it is ha- 
 zardous five times over — sure to burn our fingers — the moment 
 there is the least chance of want, up jump prices abroad, higher 
 than here, in anticipation of a low duty ; and when they have 
 got the duty down in September^ they will knock the prices down, 
 and punish those who are too late with their cargoes — they al- 
 ways have some low stuff in store for that. We shall be caught 
 in a double trap — high prices abroad, and a high duty here ; we 
 are not clever enough for such business ; if there was a fixed 
 duty^ there would he a chance^ hut now there is none. Thank ye 
 for your confidence, but must decline it. 
 
 Leaving these cautious, solid, and wealthy merchants, I 
 would have you go to the Bank, and get there five one thousand 
 pound notes, and then proceed to Mark -lane, ruminating the 
 while a little on the loiti duties in September., and the strange 
 circumstance, that they won't import wheat, though they agree* 
 with you that it is wanted. When you get to the Corn-Ex- 
 change, walk boldly up to the stand of some corn-factors, say 
 Messrs. Kaye and Emm — mighty shrewd people they, up to 
 every thing. Pull out your five liank notes ; you are sure tlien
 
 (>2 l.KTTF.US TO 
 
 to III' taken for a rospoctable man, and they wont ask your name. 
 As I\Ir. ]{aunior says that you look very much like iin honest 
 German, you might pass yourself off for one, and \\'^iispcr in 
 their ears — '■'■ / rant to make a little infestmeiit." — " You can't 
 come at a better time," says Kaye ; " it's all up with the crops, 
 and no mistake." — " Veil, vat do yon recommend ?" — " Why, 
 heans, to be sure, man. We have just a parcel on board the 
 Sliding Scale, Captain Slip, from Egypt, off Atkins's wharf, at 
 22s." — " Veil, but vy beans ?" — " Why, they must have them 
 to mix, and we are working the duty." — " Veil, but my mind 
 vas made vpofveat — vat haf you cot ?" — " There's a cargo of 
 Odessa, at 53s. including fi'eight, a capital sample, not yet 
 passed Gibraltar, and may just be in for the shilling duty ; and 
 if you give us two shillings more, the seller wan-ants a six-and- 
 eightpenny duty by the 23d September !" — " Put von't the 
 dooty be down sooner — there's shust note suck a great vont of 
 veat ?" — " Pooh, nonsense !" says Kaye, " the averages can't 
 be worked round sooner ; besides, it don't suit them to have 
 the shilling duty before the shipments from the Mediterranean 
 are on the coast." — " Put, von't de noo ministers alter dem 
 doolies, ven de see dat no veat is entered for consumption ?" — 
 " Stuff !" says Kaye, " they are a pack of asses — and you 
 know Sir Robert Peel has distinctly declared that he prefers the 
 present sliding scale." Hearing your name pronounced, you 
 coloui' up, and thinking that they smell a rat, you, in the agony of 
 yovu- soul, cunningly pop out, " Vat aa ass Sir Roppert Beel 
 must pee" — decline the bargain, button up your notes, and with 
 a hasty bow, slide amongst the crowd, but not fast enough to 
 save your auriculars from the pleasing titration of " to be sure 
 he is !" 
 
 If these two experiments should not satisfy you, that under 
 *the sliding scale, wheat does not always come in when people 
 want it, you might direct your steps to some deep calculator 
 about the Royal Exchange — some man after your own heart, 
 who does not mind principles, but delights in figures and state- 
 ments — some gi'eat commercial or political arithmetician, who
 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL. 03 
 
 would govern the world by statistics and the rule of three — 
 who treats men as he would halfpence, and, provided he 
 can handle his nine numerals with their naughty sister, 
 and can show the averages to have been good averages for 
 ten or a hundred years, does not care one straw whether 
 death has reduced the number of consumers to the extent 
 of the supplies, or commerce has accommodated the supplies 
 to the wants of the consumers. These men of figures in the City 
 are a strange set, and have the ability to demonstrate almost any- 
 thing with their statements. When they want to prove that an 
 article must fall, they show you a long accoimt of stocks and 
 overwhelming supplies from the east and the west, from 
 Russia and from Buenos Ayres ; but when they are for the rise, 
 their figures are all like a capital ; zero is the only cipher 
 they can write : blight in the fields, rot amongst the sheep, 
 epidemics killing the calves, unlimited demand, and a total ces- 
 sation of production are at their disposal ; their paper is patient, 
 their imagination only fertile in barrenness, and their ingenuity 
 wandering amongst desolation. You must, therefore, be a lit- 
 tle on your guard, and take nothing for granted but what can 
 be proved l^y parliamentary returns ; but go over with them the 
 history of the corn trade since the end of 1837. 
 
 Of 1838 your new friend will give you the account contain- 
 ed in my letter. No. 3. In that year wheat advanced in price 
 from the very first day ; the winter was dreadfully severe ; the 
 spring unfavourable ; the summer late, cold, and wet ; and 
 prices had reached 70s. to 80s. in the beginning of August. 
 There was nearly a million of quarters of wheat in the bonded 
 warehouses, but none was entered for consumption, even on the 
 7th September, because the average was one halfpenny under 
 73s. — say 72s. ll|d. Nor was this all, for by the 26th Oc- 
 tober of this — the first of a succession of years of famine — the 
 duty was again as high as 22s. 8d. Of this horrible, this infa- 
 mous state of things, you, the great statesman of the age, aspir- 
 ing to guide our youthful and humane Sovereign, and to control 
 her subjects with your paternal sway, said most complacently 
 on the I'^th March, 1839, "But when the pressure came, was
 
 G4 LKTTKHS TO 
 
 there any srrioit.'^ diffieulty in procuring a supply?" Ye Gods! 
 was tliere anything hut difficulties — the difficulties of the sli- 
 ding scale ? There had been a pressure for six months — an 
 extreme dearth for three, and a famine for six weeks. It was 
 as notorious as the sun in heaven ! And you talk in the 
 House of Commons only of the average of nine years ! What 
 are six weeks of famine in the average of nine years, ending 
 in September 1838, as you coolly say, nothing — absolutely no- 
 thing ! To him, whose every single morsel, which he pokes 
 with his golden fork between his teeth, costs more than a hard- 
 working man's pay for a day, six weeks of famine are of 
 course nothing : they go in the average, and that, for the nine 
 years, ending in September 1838, was not more than 54s. and 
 odd pence per quarter of wheat, as you observed ; but to the 
 humble and overworked hind in Dorsetshire, with 6s. 6d. a- 
 week, and a sleeping berth in his hay-loft, to the poor semp- 
 stress whose thousand stitches earn her at the utmost one pen- 
 ny in the hour (as I live, this is the truth), to the widow 
 laundress, who, up at three every morning, labours through 
 weeks, months, and years, and takes in washing at a penny 
 the piece, to preserve to herself and her poor orphans a shadow 
 of the honest independence, which in the life time of their sire 
 was just sufficient to keep them from the parish and the work- 
 house — to market, fish, and charwomen, to weavers, and fac- 
 tory girls, to all the thousands, nay, millions, who keep their 
 accounts in pence and farthings, to whom a shilling's expendi- 
 ture would be ruin, and to whom a pound is an inconceivable 
 and unattainable possession, to these one week's dear and bad 
 bread acts as a disastrous catastrophe, and six weeks of famine 
 are an eternity of pain, anguish, torture, disease, and often 
 death. The six weeks starvation is the iron that enters into 
 their soul, and the bahn of your nine years average of fifty-four 
 shillings will by no means heal the wound, restore health and 
 strength once lost, replace the rags pledged or sold, and cure 
 the ills of muids and bodies, smitten by the infamous system 
 which I have feebly described in my seventh letter, saying —
 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL. fi^* 
 
 " That it gambled with the people's wretchedness — played ha- 
 zard with your halfpenny averages — and had found, in the life 
 and death of millions, a legitimate and fertile mine for diabo- 
 lical speculation and infamous profit !" 
 
 Sir, your new acquaintance, the man of figures, in raptures 
 with a visitor of a congenial mind, -will tell you with high glee, 
 that on the 1st of January 1839, the average price was 78s. 2d. 
 therefore far beyond a famine price. It remained so till the 
 22d of March, when only 572,900 quarters of wheat, or ten 
 days' consumption, had been entered. Now, after this, did we, 
 or did we not, want further supplies of foreign grain ? The 
 averages fell, and by the 2d of August, when the harvest be- 
 gan, the price had receded to 2s. under famine rates, namely, 
 to 68s. 2d. and the duty was only 16s. 8d. with an addition 
 of 800,000 quarters, entered at duties averaging above 10s. 8d. 
 But by the 20th of September the duty was again do-wn to 
 6s. 8d. and the prices up to 71s. lOd. ; therefore, in these 
 seven weeks, there must have been an enormous want of 
 wheat ; but the entries were only 26,000 quarters^ so that, 
 whilst famine during the harvest drove up prices, next to no 
 wheat was supplied hy the aid of your sliding rule. But be- 
 tween the 20th of September and 23d of November, prices fell 
 to 66s. ; the wants, therefore, I suppose, were not so pressing : 
 the duty again rose to 20s. 8d. but the supplies were increased 
 by 600,000 quarters, at an average duty of 10s. ! This is the 
 history of the year 1839, when, in consequence of the mode- 
 rate crops of 1837, and the decidedly bad ones of 1838, the 
 people of this country endured unheard-of sufferings and im- 
 mense pressures ; the prices constantly ranged at what we both 
 agree (and it is the only thing in which we agree) to call fa- 
 mine prices. The duties were maintained at an average rate 
 of above 1 Os ; the com trade ruined every one engaged in it ; 
 the supplies were chiefly poured into the markets when the 
 duties were high, and were small when they were low ; the 
 Bank was obliged to borrow money in Paris to avoid stopping ; 
 
 F
 
 (!() l.KTTEKS TO 
 
 aiiil yoii ridiculod the solemn warnings and predictions of 
 Mr. Mark Pliilips, because not sustained l)y official documents ! 
 Our mini of figures will give you all these details with a glow 
 ofdeligiit; for what does he care for distress or prosperity? 
 To him men are as figures, and figures idols to be worshipped ; 
 his accounts are correct, his statements accurate, his averages 
 good averages ; and he is charmed to find that the returns from 
 hospitals, poor-houses, and bills of mortality, confinm, by a pro- 
 portionate increase of wretchedness, the sum of his calculations 
 to a minute fraction. 
 
 In 1840 we begin with an average price of 66s. lOd. re- 
 ceding by the 14th February to 64s. lid. but being on the 
 24th April up to 6i)s. Gd. ; good wheat constantly above 70s. 
 or what you call famine prices, but only 37,800 quarters of 
 foreign wheat entered for consumption. Our wants now be- 
 came probably urgent, for an additional 320,000 quarters, or 
 one week's consumption, were entered up to the 31st of July, 
 at a duty of 16s. 8d. The pressure now grew insufferable, 
 and by the 4th of September, as usual, the prices were up to 
 71s. the duty dovm to 2s. 8d. but all the while only 42,000 
 quarters were supplied to satisfi/ these wants. From this day, 
 however, the wants apparently diminished, prices fell, and du- 
 ties rose; on the 11th of September, that is to say, within one 
 short week, we had the enormous quantity of 965,000 quar- 
 ters entered at a duty of 6s. 8d. ; on the 2d of October it had 
 grown to 1,280,000 quarters, with the duty at 16s. 8d. ; on 
 the 20th of October, with only 20,000 quarters more, the duty 
 was 22s. 8d. ; and by the end of the year, good wheat being 
 still at 70s. or a famine price, the duty was (I blush to write 
 it) twenty-six and eight pence. Read that, you statesman, you 
 lover of your country, you leading-star of the human race, you, 
 who in your speech of the 15th of March 1839, sneer at the 
 " cold-blooded economist regarding money as the only element of 
 natural happiness :" you advocate for slipping and sliding rules, 
 which wheel and jump about more than ever Jim Crow did, 
 but which, instead of convulsing us with innocent sport, threaten
 
 Sm ROBERT PEEL. 67 
 
 to convulse the political stability of the empire, to externiinate 
 every notion of common sense and humanity, and have already 
 spread more destruction, misery, and mischief, than a hundred 
 battles ! Surely a fixed duty of one, or five, or eight, or ten 
 shillings, would not have teazed and worried farmers, mer- 
 chants, dealers, millers, bakers, and consumers, as this silly, 
 childish, cruel game of slipping and sliding evidently did, and 
 inevitably must do ! 
 
 Of the melancholy tragedy of the present year, we have as 
 yet but witnessed the opening acts. A crisis is apparently ma- 
 turing, but the issue rests in the hands of Providence, and can- 
 not be known to mortal man. What we do know is this, that 
 our wants have kept wheat at famine prices ; but duty has 
 only been paid on a small quantity, chiefly at the enormous 
 rate of 24s. 8d. A large stock is now accumulating, which, 
 with a fixed duty, would be gradually sold to consumers, but 
 under the present imbecile and infamous system, remains 
 quietly in the bonded warehouses, to wait the success or failure 
 of the operations on the average price, to be then suddenly 
 thrown on the market. So horrible is the state to which you 
 have brought us, that many good, honourable, conscientious, 
 benevolent, and wise men, pray to Heaven for a bad harvest, 
 as the only, though dreadful, means by which the delusion may 
 be dispelled, the Legislature shamed into a sense of justice, and 
 a great nation be freed from the tyranny of prejudice, self-in- 
 terest, and monopoly, which, if not upset at this pressing and 
 momentous crisis, will perpetuate itself, enslave both the So- 
 vereign and the people to a domineering oligarchy, and prepare 
 for Great Britain the unhappy fate by which Poland has been 
 erased from amongst the kingdoms of the earth. 
 
 Sir, I leave you now to go and see the mechanical contri- 
 vance which I have recommended to your inspection. My 
 heart bleeds for afflicted mankind : I cannot go with you. 
 
 DIOGENES. 
 
 F 2
 
 (!S LKTTKKS TO 
 
 LETTER XVI. 
 
 Sir, J nil/ 13, 1841. 
 
 At your advent to office, discretion will, perhaps, be 
 the better part of valour. Those who cannot afford to contend 
 with the Solicitor-General that is to be, had better hold their 
 tongues. Gagging bills, state prosecutions, and incarcerations, 
 will be the order of the day ; and as your Olivers would have 
 no difficulty to spy me out in my tuh^ T had better leave off 
 writing, unless I should prefer (which I do not) the total ab- 
 sence of sunshine. The present gi'eat fall of waters allows us 
 little enough of the genial rays, and I suppose the sliding rule 
 has been lately introduced at the weather office, operating ex- 
 actly as your ascending and descending scale, which, contrary to 
 your sapient declaration at Tamworth, gives us no com now 
 that we want it, but may perhaps give us plenty when we 
 don't want it. 
 
 I should find fault with this aiTangement of the weather, but 
 that I look to the slipping and sliding of winds and clouds, and 
 the ups and downs of barometers and hygrometers as so many 
 arguments, ad hominem, which, tickling and teazing your upper 
 story, may spare another extremity of your body the castigation 
 which the Lancashire or London unwashed would be perfectly 
 justified, and are able and willing, to apply to it. What a glo- 
 rious sight, to see you, like the Roman schoolmaster, with yom- — 
 but I forbear ! 
 
 To-day I submit to your perusal my circular letter to the 
 members of Anti-Corn- Law societies, dated 19th September, 
 1838, or six months before you made your memorable speech of 
 the 15th March 1839. I say to you most solemnly, look on 
 this picture and on that ! Lay your hand on your heart, and 
 ask whether you would not now have given your life to have 
 been the author of mine rather than of your work ? What will 
 be the judgment of all the most enlightened men of the age ?
 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL. 6*9 
 
 what that of posterity, should the performances of two such insiy- 
 nificant bemgs — should your speeches and my writmgs reach pos- 
 terity ? I say insignificant^ for, rely on it, that though you have 
 made some little stir in the land, and may bustle a few moments 
 longer in Parliament or office, to posterity you will be but as a 
 soap-bubble tossed up in sport by a pigmy race, to toy away 
 the nursery hours of the human family. There must be a giant 
 form and a substance of adamant in the greatness that shall roll 
 through the ocean of time, without being ground down to the 
 insignificance of a pebble before it reaches posterity's shores ! 
 
 Circula/r Letter to the Members of Anti-Corn-Law Associations, 
 
 " London, /September 19, 1838. 
 " Gentlemen and Friends — Let me earnestly entreat 
 you to use the present favourable moment for furthering your 
 great object : redouble your activity, and set every power and 
 all your energies to work in the cause of humanity, justice, 
 policy, and common sense. Agitate the country from one end 
 to the other ; show forth in the plainest language the absurdity 
 and madness of the Com Law, holding up to scorn the tomfool- 
 ery of this piece of aristocratic tyranny, as well as the besotted 
 ignorance of the people who submit to it ! Will it be credited 
 hereafter, that a people who boast of civilization can be so gul- 
 led ? and who, glorying in their freedom, can be so enslaved ? 
 Ought twenty-four millions to endure a state of society in which 
 famine may be produced by a day's rain, and in which a passing 
 cloud spreads fear and alarm amongst all classes but one ? What 
 is our boasted liberty, if oppression like this cannot be shaken 
 off? wherein differs it from the bondage of the Jews? In what 
 are we better off than the slaves were, whom we have set free ? 
 They were compelled by the whip and the chain to work for as 
 much as their owners chose to give them. Truly, this is our 
 case ; and we are compelled (that freemen should be compelled !) 
 by this infernal law to labour for as much corn as the owners of 
 the land allow us to consume, not for as nuich as we could ob-
 
 TO LETTERS TO 
 
 tain and enjoy, were we not under this curse and this bondage ! 
 I say this is bondage and slavery in the truest sense of the 
 words, and it must be got rid of! 
 
 " Set, then, every penny and every twopenny publication at 
 work. Fill every newspaper and every periodical with your 
 lamentations and your demmciations. Sound forth a blast that 
 may jje heard in every comer of the empire ; sow the alarm 
 amongst all interests and all parties, be they receivers or payers 
 of rents and tithes, gi'owers of wheat, or bakers of bread, grind- 
 ers of com, or of the poor ; let henceforth no morsel enter our 
 mouths without the word Com Law reverberating in our minds. 
 Proclaim to all whom it may concern, the errors and fallacies on 
 which this starvation law was based — the enormity of ruin and 
 wretchedness which it has engendered, and the accelerated pro- 
 gression of evils which it must overwhelm us with, if endured 
 for the future. 
 
 " Tell to ALL and every one, that vnealth means abundance, 
 and abundance cheapness ; that scarcity is poverty ; and that 
 that country only can be called rich, in which the necessaries of 
 life are abundant and cheap, and within the easy reach of every 
 honest and industrious man ; tell them, that scarcity means 
 poverty ; and that to make food scarce and dear, is to condemn 
 all those to poverty with whom food is a main object, and by 
 whom such scarcity is mainly felt. Now, this is the case with 
 the bulk of the people — I mean the labouring classes — with 
 whom food amounts to three-fifths of their entire expenditure. 
 In what are the labourers better than slaves, if the quantity of 
 food is limited by law, and if, with the most vigorous exertions 
 they cannot obtain more of it than the law allows them ? Slaves ! 
 wretches ! no wonder that despair drives them to vice, and ab- 
 ject poverty to the gin-shop — the high road to the poorhouse or 
 the treadmill. 
 
 " Tell the labouring classes that scarcity and deamess of the 
 necessaries of life must beget low wages, and that wages, or the 
 reward for labour, can only be high when the necessaries of life 
 are abundant ; and that it is nonsense and falsehood to make
 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL. 71 
 
 them believe, that as prices rise so also will wages rise ; which 
 never has been, nor can it be so in the nature of things ; and 
 if they will but consult their past experience, they will find 
 that scarcity and low wages have always gone hand in hand. 
 
 " Tell the clergy (who benefit by the high rates of tithes), 
 and all the professors of humanity and Christian charity, that 
 during the last three months, all the old, rotten, musty, stale, 
 and sour flour has been mixed up and baked into bread, and has 
 been doled out to the poor at 40 per cent, above the average of 
 wholesome bread in ordinary times ; tell them that the poor 
 have not only been robbed, by the effects of this accm-sed law, 
 of their hard earnings, to the extent of threepence out of every 
 shilling, but that they have been poisoned into the bargain, and 
 that the bad bread is the real cause of the bowel complaints and 
 fevers of late, and in all seasons of scarcity, so prevalent among 
 the poor ; tell them, that now an additional quantity of at least 
 300,000 quarters of com*, once fresh and wholesome, but 
 mouldering in our bonded warehouses, till it has grown stale, 
 musty, and unwholesome, will be added to the perilous stuff" 
 which we consume as bread, and pay for as if it were good — 
 tell them this, and set their thoughts on it, whether they go 
 to their festive boards, or step into their houses of prayer ; and 
 tell them that we want more frequent sermons on the text, 
 ' Accursed is he who oppresses the poor.' 
 
 " Tell the farmers that they have no real or permanent in- 
 terest in high prices, which increase their expenditure and raise 
 their rents ; and that experience, as well as their constant com- 
 plaints, in and out of Parliament, of agricultural distress, have 
 proved that the Com Law is no protection to them, and that 
 they have not flourished under it ; tell them that their in- 
 terest is diametrically opposed to that of the landowner ; tell 
 them that in the absence of foreign competition they have be- 
 come the serfs and slaves of the landowner ; tell tliem tliat 
 when sucli competition will be before the landowner's eyes, he 
 
 * A large quantity of wheat and Hour had been kept in bond ever since tlie 
 year 1 83-, and tlio process of time injures grain very mmh.
 
 72 LETTERS TO 
 
 will Imvo cogent reasons to treat his tenants with consideration, 
 kindness, and respect ; for then there will be two persons to 
 the bargain, which now he can settle his own way. Tell them 
 that it does not follow that less wheat will be gro\\'Ti, Imt that 
 it is sure more bread will be eaten. Tell them that they have 
 nothing to fear from competition ; tell them that the iron-mas- 
 ters, the silk-weavers, the cotton and cloth manufacturers, the 
 wool-growers,_ the ship-owners, the East India and China mo- 
 nopolists, and others of the same tribe, were all equally alanned 
 when they were threatened to be exposed to foreign competition, 
 but that their fears have proved fallacious, and their alarms have 
 vanished, their pursuits having, under a system of free trade 
 and competition, grown into a vigour and extent perfectly un- 
 precedented and still progressing, whilst, on the other hand, 
 the sugar-refiners, who have been niu-sed and protected by du- 
 ties and bounties to the very last, have gone to wreck and ruin. 
 " Tell the lando-vvners, that their rents have been trebled in 
 the last fifty years, whilst all commodities not the produce of 
 agriculture have fallen to one-third of the previous prices ! 
 Tell them, who made and who uphold this starvation-law, that 
 if they would come with clean hands to this ' great argument,' 
 they ought first to surrender such increase of rent in reduction 
 of the general taxation, and thus divest themselves of the sus- 
 picion of the most barefaced and hardhearted selfishness ; and 
 that, whilst retaining such excess to their own uses, every one 
 not quite a noodle will consider every plea of patriotism or 
 policy as a farce, and mere pretence and humbug. Tell them, 
 that imless they relax this accursed law, when people's eyes 
 become opened, they mil see their castles and their mansions 
 pulled down over their heads, and that the day of revenge and 
 retribution, the longer it is deferred, the more terrible it will be. 
 Shall famine throughout the land depend on twenty-four hours 
 of rain or simshine ? Is one penny in seventy-three shil- 
 lings to keep us out of wholesome bread for a whole week ? I 
 say, this is a farce and mockery of legislation ! What tyranny, 
 crime, cruelty, and infamy, thus to trifle with the lives, wants,
 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL. 73 
 
 health, and comforts, of a whole nation ! One penny in seventy- 
 three shillings ! Will it be believed hereafter, that they were 
 such tyrants, and we such fools ? Tell them that they are as 
 stupid as they are wicked ; and that, in cramping the energies 
 of the people, and preventing the free and full development of 
 the nation's wealth — in decreeing that we are not to exchange 
 our laboxir for as much food as we can get for it — in starving us, 
 by their accursed and stupid Corn Laws, tliey rob themselves ! 
 Tell them, that in a better state of social policy, the value of 
 their land would be as much enhanced, and probably more, than 
 it can be by their miserable and selfish system of legislation. 
 Tell them that their acres, of which they have the monopoly, 
 would be more sought after for the production of superfluities 
 and the gratification of luxuries, than they ever can be for the 
 supply of the niggardly pittance of necessaries which are ex- 
 torted from the soil, to feed, or rather to starve, our wretched 
 population ! Tell them, that as they have got rid, by the new 
 poor-law, of four millions of rates, they ought to relieve us of 
 four millions of taxes, and pay them out of their rents ! Tell 
 them these and many other truths, and frighten them, if you 
 cannot reason or shame them, into honesty, decency, and hu- 
 manity ! 
 
 " Show to all the fallacy of the twaddle about reciprocity ; 
 show how no one will give us corn for nothing, and that if they 
 did, it would be all the better ; show how, if foreign govern- 
 ments are such fools as to lay restraints upon imports, their 
 subjects must sell their produce on teiTus worse for themselves ; 
 they, not we, are the losers, if they will not reciprocate with 
 us ; and if we imitate them, we are as great fools as they ! 
 
 " Tell his Grace the iJukc of Wellington, who says he is 
 afraid (!) of foreign dependence, that he knows nothing of such 
 matters, and that the seller is more dependent on the buyer 
 than the buyer on the seller ; tell him that, when the Emperor 
 Paul stopped the trade with England, his subjects strangled him 
 without much ceremony ; and that Napoleon would not liave 
 been beaten by liis Grace but for tlie decrees of Berlin and Milan.
 
 74 LETTERS TO 
 
 " Enlighten those who, ignorant of the working of taxation 
 or of the nature of taxes abroad, claim protection on that score. 
 Tell them, that but for this curtailment of the people's food, 
 England would be the least-taxed country in Europe. Show 
 them how taxes are raised abroad ; show them in what way 
 military ser^'ice weighs upon the energies, intelligence, and in- 
 dustry of the continental people ; prove to them that scarcity 
 and high prices are the result of bad management or bad crops, 
 and that with fuel and iron, cheaper in England than anywhere 
 else — ^vithgood roads, abimdance of manure, ready customers, and 
 many other advantages, whatever can be naturally produced 
 here, could, and ought to be produced better and cheaper than any 
 where else ; but that as regards com, free competition^ one of 
 the great items in cheap production, is wanting. Show them 
 also, that the pressure of taxation can surely not be diminished, 
 but, on the contrary, must be augmented, by submission to a 
 perpetual scarcity and frequent partial famine. 
 
 " Tell my Lord Melbourne how he convicts himself of non- 
 sense when he says that change is an evil, and then advocates 
 the Com Law, which is a perpetual change of the natural state 
 and current of things — namely, a regular, constant, and abund- 
 ant influx of foreign wheat. 
 
 " Gentlemen, such, and many more truths, it is your busi- 
 ness to put before the public, in every possible shape and lan- 
 guage. Now is the time, if ever ! Sound the alarum ! rouse 
 your friends to action ! put your opponents on their defence ! 
 Agitate all ! you have every thing to gain, and you cannot lose 
 any more than what you are now losing — that is all ! And 
 use no sparing language or mincing phrases. Call things and 
 persons by their right names. Robbery and murder are no less 
 so because acts of parliament sanction them. The slave-trade 
 was infamous, although countenanced by kings and coimcils ; 
 and though great judges pronounced the sentence, yet were the 
 poor wretches murdered who perished as witches. If we are 
 gulled, robbed, and starved, they who do so, though they be 
 great lords, landowners, and legislators, are cheats, thieves, and
 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL. 75 
 
 criminals ; and let these be their by-names in the mouths of 
 children and Imbes ! Let proverbs hand down to distant gene- 
 rations the truths, the axioms, the nicknames, which a close ex- 
 amination of the Com Law suggests. The time for patient 
 submission is passed. Agitation, in the name of truth, justice, 
 humanity, policy, and common sense ! — agitation ! this is my 
 urgent request and advice. 
 
 " A Fellow Labourer." 
 
 The duty on wheat had been in this year as follows : 
 
 January 14, 1838 . . . 34s. 8d. 
 
 July 20 20s. 8d. 
 
 August 17 16s. 8d. 
 
 September 14 Is. 
 
 October 26 22s. 8d. and no mistake 
 
 December 14 Is. ditto 
 
 Six months after I published my circular letter, you said in the 
 House of Commons, and printed at Mr. Murray's — deliberately 
 printed — '■'■ It ought not to be forgotten, that the weekly averages 
 show that the fall from the highest point to the lowest, and the 
 ascent again from the lowest, leas as gradual as it is possible to 
 be under any system of Corn Laws." These are your words ! 
 
 DIOGENES. 
 
 LETTER XVIL 
 
 Sir, August 19, 1841. 
 
 In the autumn of 1 833, I succeeded in uniting a few 
 friends into the first Anti-Corn-Law Society. Of our proceedings 
 the Times newspaper of the 30th of November of that year gave 
 the following report : — 
 
 " Repeal of the Corn Laws. 
 
 " A meeting was held yesterday at tlie South American 
 CofTee-house, for the purpose of effecting the repeal of the Corn
 
 7n I.KTTKUS TO 
 
 Laws by the formation of Anti-Com-Law societies throughout 
 the kingdom. The chair was taken by Mr. Hawes, M.P. for 
 Lambeth. 
 
 " Tlie Chairman briefly stated the object of the meeting. It 
 was intended to institute an Anti-Com-Law Society, whose 
 views would be to obtain and spread every possible information 
 on the nature and effect of the present Com Laws, in the hope 
 that such knowledge would lead to their abolition in the easiest 
 and most satisfactory method. It would be necessary that the 
 society should not be too large, as numerous assemblies were 
 found inconvenient ; but it was hoped that similar societies 
 would be fonned in imitation of the ' Anti-Cobn-Law Society, 
 No. 1,' both in London and in every part of the kingdom. One 
 of the principal methods of diffusing infomiation on the subject 
 it was intended to adopt, would be the dissemination of small 
 tracts and pamphlets, and he trusted the time was not far dis- 
 tant, when their efforts to disabuse the people would be crowned 
 with success. 
 
 " Mr. Burgass observed, that discussion on the propriety of 
 abolishing the Corn Law was not necessary, as the attendance of 
 every gentleman wa?, prima facie evidence of his supporting the 
 repeal, and they did not want opponents [hear and a laugh]. 
 
 " Resolutions were then passed, restricting the number of 
 members of the London Anti-Corn Law Society^ No. 1, to 30, 
 and appointing Mr. Hawes chairaian, p-o tem. of the society ; 
 Mr. Burgass deputy chaimian, pro tem. and Mr. Wilson 
 honorary secretary, jrro tem. ; and it was resolved, that those 
 three gentlemen, with two others, should form the preliminary 
 committee, who were to conduct the proceedings of the three 
 first meetings of the society. Subsequent resolutions declared 
 that fresh rules and regulations, based on what other similar 
 societies might have determined upon, or what might be deemed 
 expedient and necessary, should be submitted at the fourth meet- 
 ing, to be then discussed and voted upon by ballot, when fi-esh 
 officers might be elected ; that every member should have his 
 name enrolled on the books, and pay one guinea entrance, and
 
 SIB ROBERT PEEL. 77 
 
 that the resolutions then passed, should he printed, and copies 
 given to every member of other Anti-Corn-Law societies. 
 
 " A letter was read, dated Nottingham, in which the writer 
 announced that the formation of an Anti-Com-Law society in 
 that towTi was in progress ; and it was stated that a similar 
 society was in the course of formation at Dundee. 
 
 " Thanks were voted to the chairman, and the meeting separated. 
 
 " A very clever summary of the arguments in favour of the 
 Com Laws, with the title of ' Form of a petition to the Upper 
 House against any alteration in the Corn Law,' was laid on the 
 table. The irony and terse humour which pervades the com- 
 position, must cut like a two-edged sword through the ranks of 
 the advocates of the present system." 
 
 This summary contained the substance of the Syllabus ap- 
 pended to my fourteenth letter, in a form which I then hoped 
 would attract readers ; but it proved a failure, as every such 
 attempt well might do, when the publisher of my performance, 
 as well as of " the Quartern Loaf," a weekly paper issued by 
 our Anti-Com-Law Society, No. 1, assured us that one half of 
 the people would not, and the other half could not read. 
 
 The time chosen to establish this society might not be pro- 
 pitious to an immediate victory over prejudice and ignorance, 
 but it was most suitable for dispassionate inquiry, convenient legis- 
 lation, and dangerless changes. The country had emerged from 
 the severe pressure of a succession of bad seasons, with their at- 
 tendant evils 0? scarcity, hiyh prices, general .vjfferirig, and poli- 
 tical agitation, aggravated by the predial disturbances of String. 
 We were fast entering on a brighter period, blessed with good 
 crops, yielding an al)undance of food, excellent in quality, and 
 cheap in price — a rapid progress to prosperity and contentment 
 became perceptible, and the low range of agricultural produce 
 was particularly calculated to lessen the ill-founded fears of a 
 ruinous foreign competition. 
 
 So precious a period ought to have been used for a large ad- 
 vancement of civilization and good government. It was one of 
 thoR(! fortunate epochs which the g(^nuinc statesman knows so
 
 / 8 LETTERS TO 
 
 well how to seize upon ; for he who would govern on principle, 
 not on compulsion — he who would legislate from choice, not 
 from necessity — he who would have his policy a smooth course 
 of justice and wisdom, not a jumbling helter-skelter of party 
 spirit and momentary shifts — he who would himself be ruling, 
 not be the tool of a ruling faction — he who would be master 
 of his measures, and controller of events, must know how to 
 use 
 
 " The chances nature sends, 
 And shape them to his purpose !" 
 
 But, whilst the Anti-Corn-Law societies were thus spring- 
 ing into existence, what did you see in these auspicious aspects 
 of the times ? As you tell us at Tamworth, you only saw the 
 necessity of laying the foundation of a great party ! — (A curse 
 upon your parties !) You established the most noble and 
 puissant order of ?ioodleSj of which you proclaimed yourself 
 grand-master. You slily squatted down on a nest of some 
 three or four hundred Conservative eggs, out of which, after 
 half-a-dozen years of silent and painful incubation, you hatch- 
 ed your pretty brood, half vultures, half goslings ; and when 
 the time of pressure returned, when every difficulty, when all 
 the suffering re-appeared, which we had before experienced, and 
 which the wise, the humane, the select, amongst mankind, the 
 aristocracy of mind, had proclaimed, over and over again, as the 
 unavoidable issue of the Com Law, you dished up (which my 
 Lord Stanley says you know so well how to do) to the house 
 and the country, that addled compound of your incubatory me- 
 ditations, the speech of the 15th March 1839. 
 
 Doctor Channing, the great American divine, whom you can 
 quote, as a certain personage can quote Scripture — Dr. Chan- 
 ning says — " A great mind is formed by a few great ideas, 
 not by an infinity of loose details !" Had he your speech in 
 view, that infinity of loose details, not one of which, as I have 
 sufficiently shoAvn, can stand the test of fair criticism ? Did 
 he, perchance, think of the loose details which you dish up 
 about the Savings' banks of Manchester or Glasgow ? Do we
 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL. 79 
 
 not all know that deposits in them are by no means made by 
 the labouring classes generally, but chiefly by thiifty domes- 
 tics, and by the children of wealthy parents, who use those 
 institutions to teach the young idea how to — saA'^e ? Do we 
 not further know, that the deposits may have their origin 
 in the ruinous state of retail business, and the impossibility 
 of finding a better and safer employment for small sums of 
 money ? Finally, have not the accounts, published since 
 you made your speech, proved the existence, in those very 
 towns, of an incredible amount of wretchedness, penury, 
 starvation, and disease, showing that the inferences you 
 would draw from your loose details had no foimdation in 
 fact ? And though you may fancy that there is greatness 
 of mind in the subtle use you make of your opponent's de- 
 clarations, which, I must grant, you are abundantly skilful 
 to press into your service, yet, if your inferences are false, 
 what avails the plea that others furnished you with arguments ? 
 The Eternal Source of justice cannot be so tricked, neither can 
 you escape exposure by sheltering yourself behind Mr. This's 
 statements of prosperity, and my Lord That's account of the in- 
 crease of trade, when, but for your resisting the committee of 
 inquiry, abundant evidence was at hand to display the giant 
 strides with which distress was stalking through the land. 
 Listen to what Dr. Channing says on such subtleties : — " Force 
 of thought may be put forth for other purposes — to amass 
 wealth, to blind others, to weave a web of sophistry, to cast a 
 deceitful lustre on vice, to make the worse appear the better 
 cause. But the intellect, in becoming a pander to vice, a tool 
 of the passions, an advocate of lies, becomes not only degraded 
 but diseased ; it loses the capacity of distinguishing truth from 
 falsehood, good from evil, right from wrong ; it becomes as 
 worthless as an eye which cannot distinguish between colours 
 or forms. Woe to that mind which wants the love of truth !" 
 You profess not to comprehend " the lucubrations of the 
 brightest luminaries of that noble science," for which you pretend 
 to entertain '■'■the highest respect ;" and in your triumph you fall
 
 so I.KTTKHS TO 
 
 foul of *' ///(' /iarx//y the cold-hloodcd economist regard imf money 
 (as if you did not regard money !) as the only clement of natu- 
 ral happiness." But I apprehend it is not difficult to guess who 
 might have sat for the " likeness, the faithful resemblance," 
 when Dr. Channing, in the " humbler department of portraits," 
 (I use your words) " sketches the politician" in these remark- 
 able phrases. " He is not elevated by figuring in public affairs, 
 or even by getting into office. He needs previous elevation to 
 save him from disgrace in his public relations. Office is not 
 dignity. The loicest men., because most faithless to princij)les., 
 most servile to opinions., are found in office. I am sorry to 
 state, that at the present moment political action in this coun- 
 try does little to lift up any who are concerned in it ; it stands 
 in opposition to a high morality. Politics, considered as 
 an invention of temporary shifts, as the playing of a subtle 
 game, as the tactics of party for gaining power and the spoils 
 of office, is a paltry and debasing concern." 
 
 In your speeches, which, to do penance for my sins, I have 
 inflicted on myself the dismal task of dissecting, there remains 
 abundance of matter for further animadversion. The sickening 
 ingenuity with which you turn to vile uses the statements of 
 an eminent political writer, may escape the chastisement it 
 deserves, but, remaining in print, the stain which such partial 
 employment of valuable materials casts on you, can never be 
 wiped offi Your conclusions might be easily refuted, but that 
 their name is legion ; but, to give an instance, you avail your- 
 self of Mr. M'CuUoch's statement, that with a fall from 
 86s. 3d. to 57's. since the year 1820, " the most extraordinary 
 improvements have taken place in agriculture," to prove the 
 necessity of keeping up pi-ices ! If the statement goes for 
 anything, it would, however, show that further improvement is 
 not incompatible with a further fall in p'ices ; but when you 
 add to this statement, the words " not only without an increase, 
 but with a very considerable diminution of importation," you 
 simply state what is not founded in fact, the importation, tak- 
 ing decennial periods, having doubled since then ; but, taking
 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL. 81 
 
 triennial periods, you must well know the increase to have 
 been fourfold. What, again, is plainer than that, if tithes 
 Avere a tax, requiring a protecting duty, that duty would act as 
 a bounty on the produce of tithe-free land, and a tax to the 
 same amount ought to be collected from the latter ? But it is 
 time to quit these loose details, which perhaps some more 
 patient investigator will take up where I must leave them now. 
 
 I shall conclude with a brief retrospect of your coxirse during 
 the growth of the Anti-Corn-Law leagues, of which the repoH 
 furnished to-day fixes the somewhat disputed origin, and may 
 therefore be looked upon as an historical document of some im- 
 portance. 
 
 Wheat is now at ninety shillings, and you ought, in your 
 capacity of one of the Privy Council, to step in, and prevail 
 upon government to open the ports ; but you continue your 
 twaddle about sliding rules and protections — make us believe 
 that it would be as difficult to get butter out of a dog's mouth, 
 as to obtain your " consent to a fixed duty," and instead of en- 
 titUng yourself, by one generous act, to the suspicion of some- 
 thing like feelings of pity and mercy, you glory in entitling 
 yourself to the cognomen of Sir Rhubarb Pill — that comprehen- 
 sive nickname, which embraces in three words the full contents 
 of one of your most studied orations. 
 
 You foresaw the necessity of forming a great party ; but you 
 did not see the necessity of sparing a greater party — the vnretch- 
 ed party of the people, whom, by your resistance of the com- 
 mittee of 1839, by your declaration that " even with the exhi- 
 bition of superior sagacity and triumphant reasoning, you would 
 have been deaf to the appeal to abandon this protection," you 
 delivered over to the dire fate, which Mr. Mark Philips so 
 clearly, so distinctly, unfortunately, so correctly predicted, wliich 
 events have but too awfidly verified, but the apprehensions of 
 which you treated with scorn, and turned away from with a 
 sneer, " because not supported by statistical statements," and 
 because the averages for ten years had been " only .54s. and odd 
 
 pence." 
 
 G
 
 S'2 LKTTF.HS TO 
 
 You wanted to smito your great foe, Lord John Russell, but 
 you smote the people ! Where were your bowels of compassion ? 
 The Psalmist said, " Even I it is that have sinned and done 
 evil indeed ; but as for these sheep, what have they done ?" 
 But you, three years of famine did you choose, instead of say- 
 ing " Be on me and my father's house, but not on the people, 
 that they should be plagued !" 
 
 You sanctioned the Chandos clause, which, as all short and 
 precarious tenures must deteriorate agriculture and diminish the 
 produce of the land, though it may pander to pride by gene- 
 rating a del>asing dependence on the caprice or political interest 
 of the landowner, yet, though it should advance you to the 
 helm of the state, it will only place you there in the same de- 
 basing capacity of tenant at will, liable — the prime minister of 
 the greatest empire in the world — to be turned out as one of the 
 £50 occupants under my Lord of Buckingham. 
 
 And if it were otherwise — for there are those who assert that 
 all this was but a mask worn to secure your darling object, and 
 meant to be cast off as soon as you have reached the top of your 
 ambition — if you would in earnest come to your country's res- 
 cue — rid yourself of the noodles, on whose backs you have been 
 borne into power — set up a new, a purer idol, and dare to wor- 
 ship the policy of simplicity and truth — if it w^ere so, the 
 calamity would be none the less ! 'Tis impossible that you 
 can do it — 'tis a dream — you have supped too full with horror — 
 you have gone too far to return ; but grant it were otherwise, 
 and it would be a fearful calamity, more fearful than your 
 previous course — your resistance of every good and useful mea- 
 sure, your tact in confounding your opponents, yoiu- unsolid 
 arguments, your tasteless embellishments, your mouse-traps 
 and your clap-traps, your shearing of pigs, and your fleecing of 
 sheep ! 
 
 The thousands whom your countenance of the Com Laws 
 has prematurely despatched to their great account, may at least 
 point to you, when arraigned for their ill-prepared appearance 
 before the final judgment seat — the hundreds of thousands.
 
 SIK ROBERT PEEL. 83 
 
 whom starvation and misery have thrown into the arms of vice 
 and the grasp of disease, have the solace, that he, who declared 
 he would " be deaf to the appeals of superior sagacity and tri- 
 umphant reason," is a partner, if not in their physical distress, 
 yet in their moral bankruptcy. And though some may wink 
 at, others profit by, and a few admire your present course, yet 
 now many abhor your motives, more despise your means, and 
 mostly all are anxious that the example, be it profitable or 
 profitless, shall not pollute the immediate precincts of their 
 ■thresholds. 
 
 But should you, on your accession to power, cut the paltry 
 and debasing concern — the party which you profess to have fos- 
 tered with so much foresight and care, what will it be but a 
 colossal triimniph of successful iniquity ? Power will shield 
 you, fashion can even palliate, relieved misery may hail your 
 desertion ; but when you turn over this new leaf — when you 
 proclaim yom'self no longer deaf to the appeals of superior 
 sagacity and triumphant reasoning — when you not only declare 
 your admiration and respect for the Smiths, the Says, and the 
 Ricardos, but learn to comprehend the science of these Imiiina- 
 ries, and to put their doctrines into practice — when you acknow- 
 ledge that duties fluctuating in a few months from 34s. to Is. 
 and again to 22s. 8d. and back to Is. are not " as gradual as 
 they might be under any system of Com Laws," when you see 
 clearly, that averages of ten years, however low, can be of no 
 earthly consolation to the wretched man who has now to keep 
 his wife and children on 7s. per week — when you discover, that 
 though wheat may be imported when it is wanted, yet it will 
 not be entered and sold for consumption until the averages have 
 been sufficiently worked by a gambling race of speculators, tlio 
 spawn and offspring of your slipping and sliding scale — when 
 you concede your hundred fallacies which I have exposed, and 
 your thousands which remain unexposed — when you, who have 
 spent the best part of your life to make the worse appear the 
 better cause, shall tell us, that during the little remnant of your 
 
 existence you mean to try the other way, alas ! then also will 
 
 G 2
 
 84 LETTEKS TO SIH UOBERT TF.EL. 
 
 one general inoculation of duplicity palliate every moral and 
 political delinquency, and, as Dr. Channing has it, "genius 
 become a scourge to the world, its breath a poisonous exhala- 
 tion, its brightness a seducer into the paths of pestilence and 
 death !" Your speeches will become the handbook of every 
 aspirant to fame, honour, and station ; the history of your poli- 
 tical career the study of rising generations ; your peculiar genius 
 the model of the future national character ; the great qualities 
 of consistency, faith, firmness, and simplicity, a byword in the 
 mouths of babes. It is clear, and you must see it ; the greater 
 the change, the greater your reform ; the more pernicious the 
 example, the more permanent the contamination, for — 
 
 " That's the very curse of evil deeds, 
 That they engender a long line of evU." 
 
 DIOGENES.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 (A.) 
 
 Notes to serve as a Syllabus for the Use of Anti-Corn-Law 
 Lecturers. 
 
 1. The Com Law has been enacted to prevent the free im- 
 portation of foreign com. 
 
 2. It is essentially the landowners' law, and the offspring of 
 fraud and ignorance. 
 
 3. Fraud is committed whenever the real motives for any act 
 are withheld, and false ones substituted. 
 
 4. The fraud at the enactment of the Corn Law consisted in 
 withholding the real motive, viz. high rents^ and in gulling the 
 people with false notions of the general interests of the country, 
 dangers of large importations, fiscal regulations, and want of 
 reciprocity abroad, protection of farmers' profits and labourers' 
 wages, general and particular taxation, and many other falla- 
 cies suggested by selfishness, and conceded by ignorance. 
 
 5. This fraudulent law was intended, and has had the effect, 
 to limit the supply of food, not to what is really wanted by the 
 people (and of which no one ever formed a proper judgment), 
 but to what can be produced in this country, or what can be 
 obtained from abroad, when extreme pressure has raised prices 
 to an enomious height, and when, in fact, a partial famine has 
 opened the ports. 
 
 6. The Com Law was meant, and has succeeded, to render 
 the trade in corn difficult, intricate, very hazardous, and almost 
 impossible.
 
 SG AITKNOIX. 
 
 7. It limits the supply of food, without any regard either to 
 the present number of the people, or their possible or probable 
 inerease. 
 
 8. The growth of food is very uncertain, and requires at all 
 times a considerable part of a twelvemonth ; and it is the height 
 of folly and cruelty to rely on the home produce only, exposing 
 the whole community to sudden suffering in case of failure, or, 
 which is the same thing, to a perpetual chance of famine. 
 
 9. With the present Com Law a passing cloud alarms the 
 city, a shower of rain lowers the price of the public funds, and 
 affects every species of industry and property, and a week of 
 cold and wet weather fills the nation with dismay, and threat- 
 ens distress, famine, and national bankruptcy, which must, 
 sooner or later, lead to revolution and civil war. 
 
 10. The want of a single meal is to most men a serious 
 hardship. 
 
 1 1 . Many meals must be foregone, for the space of three or 
 four months, on the occasion of a short supply of food, or a bad 
 harvest, by the bulk of the people, until a scanty relief, slowly 
 afforded by importers of foreign grain, who have been gradually 
 turned into mere gamblers on averages, duties, and the people's 
 AVi-etchedness, can be obtained. 
 
 12. In the mean time, those who do not go without meals, 
 and who do not die fi'om absolute starvation, are, in great num- 
 bers, obliged to sustain life with old and spoilt provisions, sour 
 or stale flour, rotten cheese, rancid bacon, beans, bone-dust, and 
 other ^'ile substances not fit for swine to be fed upon. 
 
 13. The strong, the pushing, the vigorous in mind and body, 
 and the wealthy, may continue in various degrees to guard 
 against extreme distress ; but those who are lowest in the social 
 scale — the poor, the ignorant, the weak, the gentle, the meek 
 — fall the sure, the chief, and the earliest victims to this infer- 
 nal and unchristian law. 
 
 14. Low fevers, and various diseases attendant on penury, 
 sorrow, want and hunger, bad food, or absolute starvation, are
 
 APPENDIX. 87 
 
 constantly raging amongst the humbler classes, to their great 
 suffering, and physical as well as moral deterioration. 
 
 15. Habitual physical suffering leads to \'ice and crime ; and 
 destruction of bodies and souls in vast numbers are the result of 
 the Com Law as by Parliament enacted, which, therefore, may 
 be called " An Act for legalizmg murder and encouraging 
 crime." 
 
 16. When the Com Law was enacted, gross ignorance of the 
 effects of commercial and fiscal legislation was generally pre- 
 valent. 
 
 17. A notion had obtained cun-ency and imiversal assent, 
 and was sanctioned and acted upon by government, as an uicon- 
 testible axiom, that the importation from abroad of commodities 
 was an evil, and that the specific advantage of foreign trade 
 consisted in the exportation of goods from this coimtry. 
 
 18. It was the ambition of finance ministers to be able to 
 boast that we had exported much, and imported little. 
 
 19. Many prohibitory measures were assented to upon this 
 delusive principle, with a view to diminish the quantity of im- 
 ports ; and bounties and other inducements were employed to 
 increase exports. 
 
 20. Such a system reduces itself to the simple principle, 
 that it is profitable to get rid of many things, and to receive 
 few in return. 
 
 21. The object of getting rid of commodities might be more 
 easily obtained by burning, than by exporting them. 
 
 22. The national object and benefit of foreign trade con- 
 sists entirely in the importing and supplying the people with 
 such foreign commodities as are in demand and wanted. 
 
 23. Exports are payments for imports, and constitute the 
 disadvantage inseparable from foreign commerce, just as in 
 individual dealings the payment is a disadvantage to which 
 we submit, because we cannot obtain the things we want with- 
 out it. 
 
 24. If all the commodities of the world could be imported 
 without exporting a single thing in return, that would be the
 
 88 APPENDIX. 
 
 most profitiiblo state of foroign commerce ; but, unluckily, fo- 
 reigners will not trade on such terms. 
 
 25. False notions used also to prevail of injury arising from 
 the exportation of money and the precious metals ; but these 
 are only commodities, with which, as with other merchandize, 
 neither individuals nor nations would part, vmless they could 
 get something, in return, which suited them better, and was 
 worth more to them, and of that they are better judges than 
 governments and acts of Parliament. 
 
 26. If foreigners W'ill give their wheat, or other goods, for 
 nothing, we ought by all means to take the same ; but if they 
 really stand in need of gold for the goods we want of them, 
 and we will not give it, we force them to fetch it them- 
 selves from the Brazils and Mexico, which they will most 
 assuredly do, leaving us to supply our wants on worse terms. 
 
 27. The commodities which are most saleable are most 
 wanted by the bulk of the people, and are more useful to them 
 than money, or other things, which they are willmg to give 
 for the same. 
 
 28. The prohibition of the importation of foreign wheat 
 proves the apprehension that there is a ready sale for it, which 
 means that it is wanted. 
 
 29. If there was not a great want of foreign wheat, it 
 would not be readily saleable, and would, therefore, not be im- 
 ported, even had we no Com Law ; the very existence of a 
 Com Law is a proof of its absurdity ; for what is not wanted 
 will not come, and need not be prohibited. 
 
 30. Much nonsense has been talked and written about re- 
 ciprocity, and the absence of it in other nations, meaning that 
 they will not take anything from us in return for the wheat 
 which we import. 
 
 31. That should, however, be no cause of uneasiness, since, 
 provided we get only the wheat and things we stand in 
 need of, we may leave it safely to them to see how they get 
 paid. 
 
 32. It would be absurd not to take that which we want
 
 APPENDIX. 83 
 
 from foreigners, because their governments will not allow them 
 to receive in return goods which they would prefer to money or 
 other things, which they in fact want, and would have, but for 
 their owti absurd restrictions. 
 
 33. Our government should not inflict hardships on us be- 
 cause other governments oppress their people. We should not 
 be fools because other nations are such. 
 
 34. The people who live on wages of labour, amounting to 
 at least three-fourths of the nation, must necessarily exchange 
 by far the greatest portion of such wages for food for themselves 
 and their families. 
 
 35. They must necessarily feel the deficiency in the supply, 
 and consequent rise of prices, to a much greater degree than 
 those with whom the purchase of food is but a secondary consi- 
 deration, and of whose general expenditure it fomis but a small 
 item. 
 
 36. A government which prevents the labourers from obtain- 
 ing as much food for their wages as they might do, deprives 
 them of their natural rights, and robs them of a j)art of tlie only 
 property which they possess ; the Com Law is therefore pub- 
 lic robbery enacted by Parliament. 
 
 37. Abundance means wealth, and scarcity poverty, and in 
 a happy, wealthy, and well-governed country, every thing 
 would be abundant and cheap. 
 
 38. In England wages have always been high when food 
 was abundant and cheap, and low when it was scarce and 
 dear. 
 
 39. The labourer pays for his food with his labour, and must 
 work harder when food is scarce. 
 
 40. In times of scarcity, no man's money goes so far in the 
 purchase of food, and less can be spared for other things, and 
 therefore the labourer will not be required to make so many 
 things ; in other words, whilst the labourer stands in need of 
 greater pay, wants higher wages, and is willing to work harder, 
 his labour is in less demand, and he will lie obliged to sell it 
 for less money.
 
 .90 AFM'KNPIX. 
 
 41. In times of abundance, and when food becomes plenti- 
 ful and cheap, less labour will purchase a larger quantity. 
 
 42. Such abundance, requiring a smaller outlay for food, al- 
 lows a greater outlay, and creates a greater demand for other 
 things, and therefore for labour, and the labourer will be at 
 such periods in greater request, better paid, and better off in 
 the world. 
 
 43. Abundance of food is therefore doubly advantageous to 
 the labouring classes, who often, with greater inducement, have 
 less necessity to work, inasmuch as they are enabled to pur- 
 chase more food for less money, while more- money will be 
 given for less labour. 
 
 44. In fact, scarcity, high prices, and great suffering amongst 
 the bulk of the community, are one and the same thing ; and 
 abundance, cheapness, and general well-being, go together, and 
 are the opposite state of things. 
 
 45. The so-called agricultural interest consists chiefly of 
 three classes, the labourers, the farmers, and landowners. 
 They are necessary to each other ; but their interests are as 
 different as those of the sick man, his doctor, and the under- 
 taker. The sick man wants to get well, the doctor wants not 
 to kill, but only to drug him, but the undertaker would bury 
 him. 
 
 46. It is neither the labourer's nor the farmer's interest to 
 support the Com Law, which threatens to reduce them to the 
 slavery and the servitude of feudal times, and was only enact- 
 ed for the interest of the landlord, who wants to get high rents, 
 and therefore high prices, for that is the same thing. 
 
 47. Farmers have the same interest in high rents and dear 
 land, that the shoemaker has in dear leather. 
 
 48. Famiing cannot, in the long run, yield greater profits 
 than other pursuits ; and whatever is temporarily got by rising 
 prices, slides insensibly into higher rents, which landlords are 
 sure to extort. 
 
 49. High prices and high rents require larger capital, and 
 make fanning more difficult and hazardous^ and the losses occa-
 
 APPENDIX. 91 
 
 sionally attending this, as other pursuits, out of proportion more 
 disastrous in their effects than they would be with low prices 
 and low rents. 
 
 50. If any extra burdens were found to rest upon the pro- 
 duction of food, a wise government would remove them, or lay 
 an equivalent duty on foreign grain, and thus take away 
 every pretext for filling the landlords' pockets with high rents. 
 
 51. It has been repeatedly and incontestibly proved, that 
 such supposed extra burdens, if they exist at all, cannot amount 
 to as much as the freight and insurance upon importation from 
 the nearest foreign port. 
 
 52. If the landowners had the fear of foreign competition 
 before their eyes, they would be obliged to humour and accom- 
 modate the farmer, and not diive such hard bargains with him. 
 
 53. Foreign competition would enable the farmer to treat on 
 independent terms with the landlord ; and the wretched system 
 of short leases and tenants at will, with all the attending evils 
 of political degradation and bad farming, would give way to in- 
 dependence of character, and superior culture of the land. 
 
 54. Farmers would be obliged to bestir themselves to meet 
 the competition of foreigners, and would employ more labourers, 
 treat and pay them better, and feel a pride in being assisted by 
 intelligent and industrious men, who, with a fair stage and no 
 favour, might defy all the world, and prove that competition 
 is a great element of success, and that Englishmen delight and 
 thrive in it. 
 
 55. The plea that the high taxation, and what is called the 
 artificial state, of this country require high prices and prohibi- 
 tory measures, is stupid and false. 
 
 !j)Q. The savage state is not favourable to abundant and 
 cheap production, nor to the development of human energies. 
 It is man's business and destiny to depart from the savage state, 
 and to progress to civilization, which increases his powers. The 
 most natural state for man is that where mind and body have 
 the greatest scope for useful exertion, and in this respect, but 
 for the accursed Corn Laws, and silly and unnecessary restric-
 
 92 AITKNIUX. 
 
 tions on commerce, Enifhotd is fur a-head, and therefore in a 
 more natural state tliaii uiti/ other nation on earth. 
 
 57- Taxation is a test of good or bad government, and if 
 England is tcorse taxed than otlier countries, it must be worse 
 governed. 
 
 58. With the exception of the Corn Laws, and other stupid 
 restrictions, England is less taxed than any country in 
 Europe. 
 
 59. But if it were otherwise, it would be absurd to fancy 
 that the difficulty of high taxation can be rendered easier, by 
 creating the additional difficulties of commercial restrictions and 
 scarcity of food, 
 
 60. This would amount to the silly assertion, that people 
 with empty bellies and in strait waistcoats, can work better, 
 and produce more, than those who are well fed, and have the 
 use of all their limbs. 
 
 61. The taxation of England does not prevent our producing 
 cheaply and abundantly iron, coal, tools, implements, manufac- 
 tures, steam-engines, newspapers, and many other things, which 
 are all made by people that pay the same taxes as labourers, 
 farmers, and landlords do ; and there is always (as ought to be 
 the case in a wealthy country with every thing, but espe- 
 cially WITH food) a superabundance of such things. 
 
 62. On account of the great risk attending the trade in com, 
 because of the violent fluctuations of prices, and the imcertainty 
 of duties and of the sliding scale (which was invented to teaze, 
 puzzle, distress, and disgust merchants, and prevent them from 
 regularly importing foreign grain), much more money is now 
 paid for wheat when wanted from abroad, than need be paid 
 were the business carried on in a regular manner. 
 
 63. We might, in fact, have a large quantity of wheat for a 
 small sum of money ; whereas we now pay a large sum of 
 money for a small quantity of wheat, which seems to be bad 
 management on the part of government for the people at large, 
 although it no doubt puts high rents into the pockets of the 
 landlords.
 
 APPENDIX. 93 
 
 64. The constant under-supply of food has a most pernicious 
 influence on the habits of the poorer classes ; it accustoms them 
 to look upon a full meal as an almost unattainable good, pre- 
 vents every indulgence of hospitality and kindness, hinders them 
 from preparing and using wholesome and agreeable varieties of 
 diet, and habituates them, like the beasts of the field, to feed 
 always on the same stuff, and to devote all their energies to the 
 one object of filling the belly ; it therefore blunts their feelings, 
 stupifies their understandings, extinguishes their humanity, and 
 gradually reduces them to the state and nature of the lower 
 animals. 
 
 65. Lord Grey publicly declared in 1827, that the Com Law 
 was enacted to make rents high ; and notwithstanding all and 
 every pretence of its being beneficial to the people at large, it is 
 notoriously looked upon by every sensible man as a public fraud 
 and a great political lie j and the example thus set by the legis- 
 lature, proverbially palliates and justifies amongst all classes 
 every species of fraud and deception, on the plea that justice, 
 honesty, and candour are mere sentences, useful to gull stupid 
 people ; but that, as the landowner, so also should every one else 
 look to mmiher one, whatever they may say to the contrary. 
 
 66. The awful responsibility of such a state of society, 
 threatening destruction to every moral and religious principle, 
 rests with the makers and abettors of the Com Law, and 
 though they may escape the consequences for the present, yet 
 they will have to answer for them hereafter. 
 
 67. The want of food is sooner and more acutely felt than 
 that of any other commodity, and to make a nation dependent 
 for its supplies on the single source of home growth in a country 
 of small extent, not very fertile, and crowded with inhabitants, 
 shows a great want of foresight and political wisdom, and is an 
 extraordinary instance of selfish and cruel legislation. 
 
 68. Agriculture is a pursuit liable to the chances of weather, 
 blight, vermin, and many uncontrollable circumstances, and to 
 encourage it by artificial means, and the stimulus of specific le- 
 gislative protection, is more likely to lead to <lisappointment
 
 94 APPENDIX. 
 
 than pursuits which are chiefly dependent on mere industry, 
 and tlu' iVeo will and control of man. 
 
 (>;). It is the will of God, as revealed by the Christian dis- 
 pensation, that all men should he brethren, and this spirit is 
 ettectually furthered by the commercial intercourse between the 
 various nations of the earth, called into action by mutual v^rants 
 and various abilities to satisfy the same. 
 
 70. The dependence, founded on mutual wants and interests, 
 is a very wholesome dependence, and well calculated to check 
 national animosities, and to prevent governments from entering 
 upon wasteful and bloody wars ; and peace, goodwill, and plenty 
 of food, secured by free trade and honourable competition, would 
 be infinitely better than the starving independence decreed by a 
 few landlords at home, and which is no independence at all. 
 
 71. The Com Law is not only an injury and calamity to 
 this empire, but also to foreign countries ; for the frequently 
 unexpected demand caused by the sliding rule (which is an in- 
 famous enactment to destroy the legitimate, regular, and neces- 
 sary trade in human food) raises prices abroad, and deprives 
 other nations of their grain when they can ill spare it, and are 
 not prepared to meet our wants. At such times, British com- 
 merce, instead of diffusing general well-being, simply but most 
 cruelly transfers famine from this to other countries, and in- 
 stead of blessings, calls down curses, deep and loud, upon the 
 merchants, the legislature, and the people of England. 
 
 72. The fear of overwhelming supplies from abroad is quite 
 absurd ; a great increase of raw produce, but more especially of 
 food, requfres not only much good land, but new capital, imple- 
 ments, cattle, roads, labourers, and steady and industrious 
 habits, conditions which can only be the result of time, and 
 will not spring up in a day, a month, or a year ; and wherever 
 both capital and labour are in abundance, there the food pro- 
 duced is wanted at home, and can no longer be spared for 
 exportation, as we see in England and in France. 
 
 73. Free and full competition will produce greater abundance 
 and somewhat lower prices, but an immense additional
 
 APPENDIX. 95 
 
 consumption, and consequently a steady, ready, and rapid 
 sale of the additional supplies of food, which will compen- 
 sate every reduction of price ; experience has shown this to be 
 the case with every commodity or convenience that has been 
 offered to the public, in greater plenty, and on lower terms. 
 
 74. It has been held, by the general consent of mankind, at 
 all times and in all places (parliament excepted) that abun- 
 dance of food is a good thing, and that scarcity is a bad thing, 
 and this seems to be dictated by common sense ; an immense 
 quantity of selfishness, cruelty, prejudice, and stupidity, must 
 have been combined, to prevail upon an entire nation to assent 
 to a course of legislation in the most direct opposition to truths 
 so manifest and incontrovertible. 
 
 75. With an abundance of food, there is a constant scramble 
 amongst butchers, bakers, and provision merchants, to get cus- 
 tomers, and they will use every endeavour to serve them cheap 
 and well; but with a limited supply, the scramble will be 
 amongst the customers, and they will have to put up with 
 every sort of rubbish, the means to purchase which they have 
 to earn by an excess of labour : the Com Law is the true cause, 
 not only of the cunning, vice, and crime of our population, but 
 also of the necessity of men, women, and children, having to 
 work from twelve to sixteen hours a day. 
 
 76. The complaint of want of employment is an absurd 
 complaint, it being the want of food and the commodities which 
 labourers wish to use, but which do not exist, and which, 
 though they worked ever so hard, would not be forthcoming, 
 of which we ought to complain. 
 
 77. Laws restraining the hours of labour cannot increase the 
 quantity of food which the labourers scramble to obtain ; higher 
 wages would not increase our stock of beef, mutton, and bread, 
 which are now at famine prices ; and if all the taxes were taken 
 off from every article beginning with every letter in the alpha- 
 bet, that would not increase the quantity of wheat or potatoes 
 grown in England. The remedy for the deficient supply must 
 be sought in a more profitaV>le and quick exchange of the
 
 !•<; MM'KNMIX. 
 
 peuplo's labour tor iood, wherever it can hv got, by means of" an 
 immediate removal of restrictions on individual exertions and 
 national industry, whether of the labourer, farmer, manufac- 
 turer, trader, or merchant ; in other words, by free and un- 
 bounded competition. 
 
 78. All Corn Laws, with or without sliding rules, which 
 are intended to prevent the importation of a single grain of 
 wheat, ought therefore forthwith to be repealed. 
 
 79. The landowners will be nowise injured by such a repeal^ 
 for the general increase of wealth, content, and national happi- 
 ness, will be a better protection than the Corn Law, which is 
 an irrational, dishonest, and disgraceful prerogative, and a con- 
 stant, inevitable, and indisputably just cause of discontent ; 
 they wnll, to their oicn surprise, find themselves in possession 
 of a more profitable and secure monopoly, that of a constantly 
 increasing value of land, arising from the growing riches of the 
 community, and cheerfully conceded, because based on natural 
 causes, on justice, humanity, and sound policy. 
 
 80. By the total repeal of the Com Law, Great Britain 
 would make proclamation to all mankind, in a noble and ex- 
 alted manner, of the repentance and reform of a great people, 
 which, amongst many disinterested acts and deeds of humani- 
 ty, have unfortunately set the example of national error, by a 
 foolish, puerile, and meddling system of commercial legislation, 
 aped every where else, and causing universal delusion, much 
 suffering, -wi'etchedness, and contention, with sorrow, vice, 
 crime, war, bloodshed, and death, to millions of our fellow 
 men. 
 
 81. Such a great public acknowledgment, confession and re- 
 form of national and political error and sin, will give mankind 
 an impressive, magnanimous, and practical lesson of the high- 
 est human wisdom, and set a glorious precedent of true state 
 policy, sure of general imitation, and certain to advance Eng- 
 land more, infinitely more, in the esteem and wondrous admi- 
 ration of the nations of the earth, than all the battles her ar- 
 mies have gained, the victories yielded to her on the seas, the
 
 APPENDIX. t>T 
 
 wealth accumulated by her nuTchants. the miracles performed 
 by her manufacturers and her artisans ! The cunning of such 
 wisdom will disann all envy, jealousy, and suspicion ; it will 
 render all negociations and treaties unnecessary ; it will counter- 
 act all prohibitions, custom-house unions, and exclusions ; it 
 will irresistibly open to the British trader every frontier, port, 
 and warehouse of foreign parts, and render every nation, that 
 has to spare commodities, useful, agreeable, or necessary to 
 Englishmen, tributary to the comfort, wealth, and happiness, 
 of this gi-eat empire, by means of the uncontrollable force of cir- 
 cumstances, and the innate principles of human nature ! Hap- 
 py the statesmen who have minds to comprehend, and will and 
 power to practise such wisdom ! — Happy the sovereign, in 
 whose councils such men have a seat ! — Thrice happy the 
 people who are ruled by their measures ! 
 
 82. The Lilliputian knowingness of the right honourable 
 pretender to statesmanship, who, more wise in his own conceit 
 than the Almighty ruler of the universe, will measure out, to 
 the nicety of a halfpenny in seventy-three shillings^ the supply 
 of food to the greatest nation on earth, is not sufficient, by his 
 own confession, to comprehend the science that teaches such wis- 
 dom. What he comprehends, or intends, he states not at his 
 late dinner, in his late speech in favour of the silent system ; 
 he only shakes his head, and there is nothing in that. But 
 from the hustings he lias explicitly declared, that he is still an 
 unaltered adherent to the sliding scale, which includes the ap- 
 plication of it, not only to the humble manufacturer of buttons, 
 and Snip, the tailor, but to every other human pursuit, for 
 there is, according to his own words, no difference in the ap- 
 plication of a principle. To him, then, unless in the strange 
 vicissitude of human affairs he should find it expedient, with 
 the versatility of character which distinguishes great minds and 
 vast intellects, to react the drama of the Catholic emancipa- 
 tion, and emancipate our bellies, either from the pressure with- 
 out or within — to him we must not look for a repeal of the 
 H
 
 98 APPENDIX. 
 
 Com Law, or other restrictions. He is for the sliding scale — 
 he prefers intricacy to simplicity — and cannot comprehend that 
 the mysteries of politics and the difficulties of governing might 
 be unravelled and diminished by the easy process of abstaining 
 from the meddling, tricking, piddling, troublesome system of 
 old-fashioned legislation, of which the Com Law and sliding 
 scale are the almost last ridiculous but cruel remnant — a rem- 
 nant which he has hitherto publicly defended, but which he 
 seems now inclined to exchange for something probably worse, 
 because requiring the veil of secrecy, the safeguard of dark- 
 ness, and the gloomy protection of mysterious silence — fit at- 
 tributes of conspiracy and treasonable proceeding, but ill suited 
 for the govemment of a great, a powerful, a bold, and an ho- 
 nourable nation. 
 
 83. When clouds are seen, wise men put on their cloaks. 
 It behoves then all thinking persons, patriotic men, lovers of 
 their country, and friends of mankind, to be up and doing, and 
 to exhibit to the world, in every possible point of view, the 
 absurdity, injustice, and cruelty, of the Corn Law, and every 
 other restriction on honest industry, and the development of 
 our powers and faculties. Mankind caimot stand still ; if we 
 do not advance, we shall recede. We have been forewarned, 
 for in the words of him of Bosworth has he of Tamworth spo- 
 ken, saying — 
 
 " Plans have I laid, inductions dangerous ; 
 Dive thoughts down to my soul 1" 
 
 God save the Queen !
 
 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 Sir, 
 
 Seventeen letters without a single postscript would be 
 unprecedented in the annals of correspondence ; besides which, 
 I have many reasons for adding a few parting words, with 
 which I must now trouble you. 
 
 The fine weather has come to your rescue, and, allaying pub- 
 lic alarm, may possibly confirm you in your Tamworth decla- 
 ration, " / can't consent to a fixed duty /" If so, it will, as a 
 matter of course, prevent your opening the ports, which ought 
 to have been done weeks ago by order in council, to let in 
 wheat now that we do want it, instead of waiting imtil the duty 
 has been got down by hook and by crook to admit it, when 
 there may be no want for it. This has been the effect of your 
 sliding scale for the last three seasons, as you may see from the 
 following table : 
 
 AUGUST. SKPTBMBER. 
 
 Wheat Wheat entered Wheat Wheat entered 
 
 in Bond, for Consumption. in Bond, for Consumption. 
 
 1838 ....Qrs. 919,885.... 12,082 48,570 1,400,960 
 
 1839 .... „ 384,984.... 4,646 27,155.... 765,384 
 
 1840 „ 688,144 17,469 691 1,362,450 
 
 Total duty paid in August . . 34,797 Do. in September . . 3,528,794 
 
 from which it would appear, that our wants in September are 
 a hundredfold greater than in August, which is manifestly ab- 
 surd, the truth being, that with enormous stocks in our ware- 
 houses, and wheat at what you call famine prices, none is en- 
 tered in August ; but when the harvesting of our own crops 
 secures us at all events against immediate want, immense addi- 
 tional supplies are suddenly poured in by the Com Law jobbers. 
 
 H 2
 
 100 Al'l'KNDIX. 
 
 Now, I Imte repetitions, unless tliey be the wisdom of Solo- 
 mon, or the wit of Shakespear ; but I can really not abstain from 
 ringing once moro into your ears tlie old peel, the wise words which 
 you pronounced in the House of Connnons on the 15th March 
 1839, viz. — " But when the pressure came, was there any se- 
 rious difficulty ? The fall, and again the ascent, was as gradual 
 as it is possible to be under any system of Corn Laws !" Well 
 may you call out with honest Dogberry — " I am a wise fellow, 
 and which is more, as pretty a piece of flesh as any in Tam- 
 worth, and one that knows the law !" Did you know the law ? 
 Marry, it must strike every one, that its most ardent admirer 
 
 has writ himself down what you can see, if you read honest 
 
 master constable's speech to its finale. 
 
 If, as you have stated, a fixed duty won't do, and if, as we 
 all see, your sliding rule won't do, I think we must come to the 
 conclusion, that " no system of Corn Laws' would be preferable, 
 and help us most speedily out of the dilemma. 
 
 Whether the present crop will be an abundant one or not, it 
 is impossible to know ; but the quality must be inferior, and 
 the lowest duty may not be attained ; the operations may fail. 
 Many of the speculators may be ruined, and their powers to 
 afford relief in future times of want will be crippled. Your law 
 however has taught them the trick, and sanctions their prac- 
 tices. In the mean time the public is swindled out of the en- 
 joyment of an abundance of wholesome bread, and the country 
 is kept in a state of desperate agitation, laying the foundation 
 to wide-spreading i-uin. 
 
 Perchance you consider misery and suffering as a state of 
 wholesome discipline. Perchance you agree with one honest 
 " Joshua Dee," merchant and politico-economical writer in the 
 reign of good George II . who gives his reasons for scarcity and 
 deamess, as you may read in his twenty-third chapter, contain- 
 ing propositions for better regulating and employing the poor, 
 at page 73, thus : — " It has been remarked by our clothiers and 
 other manufacturers, that when com be cheap, they have great 
 difficulty to get their spinning and other work done ; for the
 
 APPENDIX. 101 
 
 poor could buy provisions enough with two or three days' wages, 
 and would spend the rest in idleness, drinking, &c. (what he 
 means by &c. he does not tell us ; perhaps reading, gardening, 
 fishing, wholesome instruction, or innocent recreation ?) : but 
 when com has been dear, they have been found to stick all the 
 week to it, and the clothiers have had more work done, with all 
 the ease that could be desired." Good Mr. Gee ! Ease on the 
 part of the clothiers seems to him a most excellent thing ! They 
 are not idle ; they don't di-ink ; they don't &c. ! But ease to 
 
 the labourer that alters the case ! — ^there be idling, drinking, 
 
 and that confounded &c. ! Good Mr. Gee ! 
 
 By way of appendix, I have added a transcript of the circular 
 letter, of a mercantile firm of eminence in the city, con- 
 veying to continental correspondents its \ievfs of the present as- 
 pect of the times and the wants under which the country labours. 
 There is, in my opinion, much to be leamt out of this letter, 
 and I wish that you would devote a few minutes to its perusal. 
 When merchants turn philosophers, statesmen, I think, should 
 try to become rational men. 
 
 DIOGENES.
 
 102 
 
 (B.) 
 
 Transcript from a Mercantile Circular, dated the 11 th August 1841. 
 
 The present position of this country might be viewed with less apprehen- 
 sion, if a change iu the Administration, with all the excitement of pt-irty-spirit 
 necessarily attending it, were not at hand. The straggle between mo- 
 nopoly and free trade once commenced, it requires no great penetration to see, 
 that whatever obstacles and delays may occur, the conflict must end in strong 
 and efficient measures, calculated to furnish new and greater outlets to manu- 
 facturing industry, and a further extension of the general commerce of the 
 kingdom. 
 
 There are two objects of main importance, on which the new ministry 
 (whatever its political tendencies may be, or of whatever individuals it may 
 be formed), must immediately decide, viz. 
 
 1. The means for supplying the deficiency in the revenue, amounting to 
 about seven millions ; and 
 
 2. Those by which the pressing wants of the lower classes may be relieved, 
 and their situation rendered less wretched and threatening. 
 
 The Whigs, during the ten years of their administration, had gradually 
 taken off taxes to the amount of £8,730,000 ^ annum, including £1,000,000 
 of the Post-Office Revenue, saved to the public by the establishment of the 
 penny postage. Many of these reductions will ultimately be aaade up by the 
 greater productiveness of the lower rates ; but, in the mean time, they cause tem- 
 porarj- difficulties, less dangerous on account of the amount of the deficiency, 
 than on account of the conflicting opinions about the remedies to be applied. 
 It can be now of little use to raise the question, whether the reduction of 
 taxes has been carried too far — if even determined in the aifirmative, that could 
 not alter the present state of affairs, nor would it perhaps prove to have been 
 the only mistaken measure of the Whigs ; there can, however, be no doubt 
 that it was their intention to benefit the nation, and meet the exigencies 
 of the age. Unfortunately, the expenditure has, during the last years, 
 exceeded every thing that could be contemplated. Rebellion in Canada, war 
 with China, the Eastern Question, and preparations to meet the threatening 
 attitude of France under Thiers' administration, have cost large sums ; and had 
 it even been otherwise possible to raise these without increased taxation, yet 
 the higher prices of every description of food since 1837, have diminished the 
 consumption of taxed commodities amongst the middle and lower classes, and 
 diminished the productiveness of the general revenue. The following facts 
 will exhibit the causes of these reductions somewhat more in detail : — 
 
 From 1828 to 1831, the prices of corn ruled high. The lowest of these 
 four years shows an average of 60s. od. ^ quarter of wheat ; the highest, 
 6Gs. 5d. It will be recollected, that the consumption and industry of the
 
 APPENDIX. 103 
 
 country suffered much, and that the Tory administration was forced to relin- 
 quish office. 
 
 The subsequent seasons, with better crops and low prices, afforded great 
 relief to the community. Taking the annual consumption of wheat at 
 16,000,000 of quarters, which is a common and very moderate estimate, the 
 total amount of the consumption, at the annual average prices, would appear — 
 
 In ] 834 at 46s. 2d. ^ quarter £36,900,000 
 
 1835 39s. 4d. ,; £31,400,000 
 
 1836 48s. 6d. „ £38,800,000 
 
 For the three years £107,200,000 
 
 and in the succeeding three years, in consequence of the diminished crops 
 and enhanced prices — 
 
 In 1837 at 5,5s. lOd. # quarter. . .£44,700,000 
 
 1838 C4s. 7d. „ ...£51,700,000 
 
 1839 70s. Od. „ ...£56,500,000 
 
 For the three years £152,800,000 
 
 These calculations cannot be refuted, being based on the official returns 
 which regulate the admission of foreign grain, and they show, that the excess 
 of cost of wheat alone, leaving the greatly enhanced prices of every other de- 
 scription of com unnoticed, amounted, during this period, to £46,000,000, that 
 is to say, annually to £15,000,000 more than in the preceding years. Since 
 then, the value of British wheat has remained much the same, and it follows, 
 that in the five years, from 1 837 to 1 841 , considerably more than £1 00,000,000 
 sterling has been disbursed for grain of all descriptions, beyond what would have 
 been the case had prices ranged, not as low as in 1835, but at the average of 
 the triennial period from 1834 to 1836, viz. 45s. It is not requisite to prove 
 by details, that the greater part of this enormous amount must fall upon the 
 middle and labouring classes, who form every where the bulk of the nation, 
 and who have increased here very largely since the war ; nor is it necessary 
 to show, in a very detailed manner, how the consumption of all articles of 
 common necessity or comfort, has decreased of late years. Families belonging 
 to the agricultural as well as the manufacturing classes, earning only from 10s. 
 to 158. must relinquish every enjoyment and comfort when bread rises 
 fifty per cent, in price •, and there are many hundred thousands of such fami- 
 lies, hardly able to earn that amount by the labour of their hands, and must 
 therefore find it difficult to obtain even a regular supply of bread ; nor are 
 those who earn from 15s. to 30s. per week, much more able to indulge 
 in any thing beyond absolute necessaries. Such is the miserable situa- 
 tion of the labouring classes in the richest country in the world. Can it 
 be denied that a faulty and corrupt course of legislation has caused so mon- 
 strous an anomaly, reflecting any thing but credit on the nation or its 
 rulers. The .idvocatcs of monopoly often pretend that low prices of food 
 reduce wages ; the reverse of this is sufficiently clear : a greater demand for
 
 104 APPExnix. 
 
 Dianiifactured and oilier cmnmoJities creates a greater demand for labour. The 
 value of labour is not enhanced by the price of the necessaries of life, but ra- 
 ther by the power or disposition to employ it, and these are greater when jJl 
 classes prosper. In the United States, where the ordinarj- wants of the 
 labouring classes may be satisfied in abundance, and at much lower rates than 
 here, wages are much higher. It lias been, in fact, repeatedly proved, and 
 is now geneially admitted, that in dear seasons, wages have always been 
 lowest — perhaps, generally, from twenty-five to forty per cent, lower ; be- 
 sides which, labourers have to work beyond their strength to gain their scanty 
 livelihood, the market being glutted with labour, as it would under parallel 
 circumstances with other commodities. 
 
 When the population of this country was less dense (in 1821 — 21,000,000, 
 in 1831 — 24,000,000), a deficiency in the crops, howeyer important and dis- 
 astrous, was not quite so full of pernicious consequences and danger ; and the 
 restrictions on the admission of foreign com, though even then bearing hard 
 upon the labouring classes, were not in an equal degree detrimental to general 
 prosperity. In these latter times the population has gone on increasing at 
 the rate of 1 .^ per cent, per annum ; the result of the present census is not yet 
 known, but there is reason to conclude that the united kingdom contains at 
 present 28,000,000 of inhabitants. In many parts, the ratio of increase is 
 even greater, but less in Ireland, in consequence of constant emigration 
 from thence to the United States, as well as to England. However wretched 
 the situation of the English labourer may be, that of the Irish is still worse, 
 and the latter considers it a blessing to share the fate of the former. Ireland 
 however has progressed in improvement, chiefly through the means of a Catho- 
 lic clergyman, who has gained over to the cause of temperance between four 
 and five million of the most drunken and wretched of his countrymen ; but 
 this has caused a direct loss to the revenue of about £1,000,000, in the 
 falling off of the excise and malt tax. 
 
 We can only slightly touch upon the present excitement in the corn- 
 trade of this country ; the details are in fact only interesting to corn- 
 speculators. There is no doubt that the bad weather prevailing during the 
 last two months has been unfavourable to the ripening and the harvesting of 
 the crops ; but as long as the present, or a similar. Com Law exists, we must 
 expect (be the han-ests favourable or not) every year nearly the same result. 
 It will be hardly ever possible to obtain a stock sufficient for the consumption 
 of the year, much less a surplus. The increase of the population cannot be 
 limited, nor the growth of com, under present circumstances, be much extend- 
 ed. It is said that the science of agriculture has reached a high degree of per- 
 fection ; this however is not the case. The agriculturist here has never fairly 
 encountered competition ; the stimulus, caused «by dependance on the general 
 market of the world, has lead to the real superiority of our manufecturing in- 
 dustry, and would carry the farmer to the same pre-eminence : the 
 protective law deprives the hitter of the inducement to produce greater quanti- 
 ties, or a better quality, at less cost, by talent and increased exertion. There 
 is no doubt much coidd be done in this respect. The land of countries that
 
 APPENDIX. 1 05 
 
 may be compared to England as regards soil, and other advantages in agricul- 
 tural pursuits, is more hea\-ily taxed. Our landowTiers have for years exerted 
 themselves to remove the burdens on land, and have succeeded in getting rid 
 of many and in materially reducing the remaining taxes upon agriculture. 
 Their object was not however to make com cheaper, but to make rents higher, 
 and these are in fact much higher than in the beginning of the present century. 
 There may be exceptions, but not many, and in those cases the lando\vners 
 have had the advantage of seeing their estates much improved ; but in many 
 instances the occupier of land being only a yearly tenant at the highest pos- 
 sible rent, he is without the means or inducement to increase production by 
 the outlay of capital, or by exertions, which only a long period of occupation 
 would encourage or justify. 
 
 Our corn dealers are possessed of great wealth, and command immense 
 capital ; they are therefore quite able, except in years of unusual abimdance, 
 to control the value of the supply which appears in the markets. When 
 it is theirs and the speculators' interest to keep the prices of wheat during a 
 great part of the j-ear at 60s. to 66's. at which the duty ranges between 
 26s. 8d. and 20s. 8d. (and is consequently prohibitory) they know how to do 
 it. Then some millions of quarters of wlieat may be bought on the Conti- 
 nent at low prices, the foreign markets being depressed ; but when this has 
 been accomplished, their interest changes, and reqiures that their purchases 
 should be admitted, not at 20s. but at Is. duty, and they contrive to screw 
 up the price from 60s. to 73s.; for this process opportunities generally occur 
 once or twice every year ; they arise, of course, when an apprehension of 
 want raises the value, and if that is not sufficient, returns of fictitious sales 
 lend an artificial aid ; but as these manoeuvres often take six months time, 
 the lower classes must in the interim pay twice or three times as much for 
 bread as what it can be had for elsewhere. A reduction in the sliding scale 
 will not remove the evil ; yet the statesman who is now likely to rule the 
 councils of the country clings to it, and i)refers it to a fixed duty of 8s. per 
 quarter, and will not satisfy the nation, and do justice to the labouring classes. 
 In fact, the question of the Corn Laws has not been, nor will it be decided on 
 principles of justice, but by the control and influence of Sir Robert Peel over 
 his party, which will not be sufficient, were he so disposed, to satisfy the 
 nation by effective relief. 
 
 Since the beginning of last month, wheat has risen in value 15s. to 20s. per 
 quarter, or about 2.5 per cent. The duty is now 208. 8d. and will continue 
 to decline ; already hopes are entertained, that by the end of September 
 it may be down to Is. From many parts of the country the advices respect- 
 ing the wheat crops are not so unfavourable as they have been generally re- 
 ported ; oats and barley, it appears, will be plentiful, and their value has not 
 as yet been much enhanced. The weather continues unfavourable, and little pro- 
 gress has been made in the harvest ; we have had rain, with little intermis- 
 sion, since the beginning of June. 
 
 In our circulars we have so frequently alluded to the corn qucbtion, tliat
 
 106 APPENDIX. 
 
 we are afraid of tiring our friends ; but it bears most materially on the two 
 important points to which we have adverted. This is the fifth year in which 
 com crops have been affected in quantity and quality by the weather ; but it 
 would be impossible, even with the most favourable seasons, and at high prices, 
 ever to grow sufficient com for our consumption, since every year 400,000 
 new consumers are bom. It appears reallj' impossible that the landowners 
 should be able to maintain, for any length of time, their monstruous monopoly 
 of the present Com Law ; and it can be satisfactorily proved, that with a 
 free trade in com, they would not lose even in their rents, which amount, 
 for Great Britain and Ireland, to £,58,000,000 per annum. England imports 
 from the Continent of Europe alone, yearly, goods to the amount of 
 £20,000,000, viz. — silk, tallow, flax, wool, seeds, wood, wine, hemp, &c. ; 
 and according to the official returns of the police prefect, there are permanently 
 residing in France about 54,000 Englishmen, and there are probably an equal 
 number in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, &c. These absentees draw almost their 
 entire annual expenditure, which cannot amount to less than £5,000,000 
 from England. All this is effected, without any financial difficulties arising 
 from it, and yet are we required to believe that a financial crisis would and 
 must arise, and ruin the country, if a few millions more were wanted for 
 which an equivalent in com would be obtained. It is no doubt possible, that 
 a sudden call for such an amount may prove injurious, but if there was a regular 
 and permanent trade in com, it would not be felt. 
 
 The general extension of trade and commerce seems to involve less compli- 
 cated interests than those affecting the Com Law. High duties and protec- 
 tions have in many branches of trade, secured a monopoly to a few parties now 
 naturally opposed to a more liberal system. In every instance, however, where 
 during the last twenty years relief from high duties has been obtained, a 
 large increase of consumption has been the result. The consumption of Coffee, 
 formerly subject to a duty of Is. per lb. has increased since the duty was 
 reduced to 6d. from eight millions to thirty millions of pounds, yielding now 
 instead of £420,000 in 1824, a revenue of £1,000,000 steriing. Even in 
 this article a partial monopoly still prevails, the duty being 9d. on Coffee im- 
 ported from the Cape or Sincapore, and 1 s. 3d. if direct from foreign colonies. 
 The latter is a prohibitorj- duty, and so would 9d. be, but that the favoured 
 British colonies do not produce enough for the wants of the empire. The 
 Sugar monopoly is more important ; the consumption of Coffee amounting 
 only to £1,000,000 sterling, whilst that of Sugar amounts to £7,000,000, 
 entirely supplied from British colonies, both exclusive of duty ; the duty is 
 248. and 5 per cent, but on foreign Sugar it is prohibitorj', being 63s. and 
 5 per cent. ! Commerce might be increased, foreign governments conciliated, 
 reciprocity of intercourse augmented, and yet might British colonists, who 
 have already been paid £20,000,000 for the emancipation of their negroes, be 
 favoured, though not protected by exclusive monopoly. Half measures have 
 hitherto been applied in almost every instance. The duty on manufactured 
 silks remains at 25 to 40 per cent, serving only to protect smugglers, whose 
 transactions annually amount to fidly £1,000,000 sterling ; for we find from
 
 APPENDIX. 107 
 
 the returns of the French custom-houses, that goods to that extent are entered 
 out for England beyond what are legally imported here. 
 
 There can be no doubt but that is the best policy to purchase in the cheap- 
 est markets, especially for a nation that possesses such unparalleled power, 
 both of production and consumption. We have on former occasions alluded to 
 this principle, as well as to the absolute necessity of an entire revision of the 
 British TariflF ; that necessity has become more urgent, as likewise the deter- 
 mination of the people to obtain it, and their opposition to submit to fresh 
 taxes, or to the certainty of ruin to the finances necessarily consequent upon 
 fresh loans. 
 
 Our allusions to the immense extension of British manufactures have been 
 frequent. The elements for the progress of this species of industry, such as 
 perfection of machinery, and a peculiar genius for the advancement of 
 mechanical contrivances, abound here more than any where else, as well as 
 immense money capital (either belonging to the manufacturers, or fiunished 
 by many wealthy banking establishments), and large domestic and foreign 
 outlets, more especially increasing to all transatlantic countries. The home- 
 consumption, owing to the high price of provisions, has, however, decreased, 
 and manufacturers have produced more than they could sell. Official docu- 
 ments prove, that though more duty was paid on raw materials in 1 838 than 
 in 1839, yet the export of manufactured goods exceeded in the latter year 
 that of the former by £2,000,000. This was not owing to a really increased 
 foreign demand, but to decreased consumption. Manufacturers cannot afford 
 to stand stUl ; that would bring a certain loss, and they prefer to export the 
 excess of goods, which in the two last years was large. The transatlantic 
 markets have been over-done, and the losses thereby sustained, have been in- 
 creased by those on the returns, which were generally made in colonial pro- 
 duce. An immense niunber of failures in the manufacturing districts, amount- { 
 ing to at least £10,00i),0()(i, have hence ensued, and the entire losses incur- 
 red since the autumn of 1840, have been estimated at fully £15,000,000, by 
 one of the most eminent authorities in the city. 1 
 
 If only wealthy people entered into business, it could never have ar- 
 rived at its present enormous extent ; but manufacturers all over the world 
 obtain loans of money at something above the ordinary or market rate of 
 interest, the security being frequently merely personiil, namely, the honour 
 and skill of the borrower. This rational and beneficial system may perhaps 
 sometimes be carried too far, especially by bankers ; but unless the losses are 
 so large as to produce failures, difficulties are generally met by increased 
 energy and confidence, and rather encourage than check increase of produc- 
 tion. 
 
 Immense as the items may appear that we have enumerated, thoj' are, after 
 all, the least important fact of the matter now forced upon the attention of the 
 government and the people. Similar periods of distress have frequently occur- 
 red, and have as frequently disappeared. The resources of this country exceed 
 every thing foreigners can conceive ; coal, iron, and other metals, miinufac- 
 tures, ships, colonies in all parts of the globe, empires in Asia and Australia
 
 108 APPENOIX. 
 
 must give it, happen what may, an innncnse preponderance. The amount of 
 the circulation, including bills of exchange, has been estimated even !is late 
 as last January at .£101,000,000; and the banking transactions in the city 
 of London in a twelvemonth at near £1,000,000,000. 
 
 How singular is it that with such elements of prosperity, the people and 
 the legislators iire constjintly at war about the most simple axioms of legisla- 
 tion, the application of which the wants of the nation seem indispensably to 
 dictate, m. — 
 
 1. Cheapness of food. 
 
 2. Extension of trade, by reduced duties on consumption, and increased 
 
 intercourse vnth. other nations. 
 
 It must be acknowledged, that it is not easy to reform antiquated systems, 
 and to meet the spirit that has developed itself during the last twenty-five 
 years. Though Great Britain has grown great through commerce, yet she 
 has caught the spirit of monopoly from former trading nations, who were all 
 essentially monopolists. But now, when other nations follow fc-ist upon Eng-^ 
 land, in the development of manufacturing industry, and when new empires 
 have sprung up in other parts of the globe, the attempt to prosper xmder the 
 restrictive system, seems really absurd. 
 
 Volumes might be written without exhausting the subject, and without 
 exhibiting all the difficulties and interests now at work — and which shoidd be 
 amalgamated for the general good. The matter has been handled by many 
 eminent men, and to their statements we must refer. Extreme opinions of 
 free trade, on the one hand, and restrictions and monopolies on the other, are 
 espoused by the two great parties. Tories, in favour of the latter, adhere to 
 old forms and principles ; the Whigs often hold the extreme opposite notions. 
 The present crisis is, however, neither unusual nor dangerous in a country 
 where for centuries past public discussion on the main interests of the state 
 have been common, and where the government looks, in a great measure, to 
 public opinion as a guide for legislation. It always has been so in this country, 
 and will always be so. 
 
 The Reform Bill, of 1832, has disappointed many. Bribery continues to be 
 practised, and will continue till the ballot is introduced — perfect purity will, 
 however, even then, not be attained. It is thought, that at least £2,000,000 
 sterling have been spent at the last election, which has secured to the Tories their 
 present majority. As of late, however, a system of compromise has decided 
 the most important legislative questions, it may be expected to settle the 
 present differences, especially if the voice of the nation should pronounce itself 
 more loudly. 
 
 Parliament will be opened on the 19th instant ; the excitement is even 
 more than unusually great. Before the middle of September, the new minis- 
 try cannot be expected to have assumed office, and no important laws will be 
 brought in until some weeks later.
 
 POSTSCRIPT THE SECOND 
 
 I HAVE read the Speech ! not your Speech of the 15th March 
 1839, but the Speech, the great, the glorious Speech, the 
 dawn of reason, the great landmark 'twixt ignorance and know- 
 ledge, folly and wisdom, falsehood and truth, darkness and 
 light ! And you — you are opposing ! You want to quench 
 the blazing flame ? — stem the mighty torrent ? — clench the 
 lightning's flash ? — rebel against the Queen of truth ? Try it ! 
 Time's grim jnllory^ with the mocks, derisions, and scorn of 
 ages present and to come, will be your post of honour ! Your 
 momentary triumph will gain but the foolscap and bells for 
 trophies wherewith the world will deck your statues. Harle- 
 quin's lathen wand will be your sceptre, and " / can't consent" 
 the superscription, that shall perpetuate your immortality ! 
 Immortality ? Pshaw ! 
 
 When Great Britain shall amaze mankind by power, wealth, 
 and happiness, as yet unrecorded in history, and unconceived in 
 romance — when her own native element, the sea (nature's 
 great highway, which paltry monopoly would fain stop up, to 
 add a few shillings to its acres) shall be moved to and fro by 
 the bustle of uncountable fleets, and commerce shall have 
 turned the ocean into the Royal Bourse of the world — when 
 every good and wise man shall yearn to behold, at least once in 
 his days, Albion's high cliffs, the sanctuary of liberty and com- 
 mon sense — when a Briton shall be hailed in every clime as the 
 abstract of all that is manly, virtuous, and wise — when man- 
 kind shall turn their astonished looks with awe, veneration, and 
 love, to this great temple of honour and truth — when princes
 
 110 rOSTSCRIPT. 
 
 and nobles shall envy the poorest man for being an Englishman 
 — when kings shall have our laws engraven on tablets, and 
 place them next to the holy gospel — when our legislators shall 
 be the teachers of nations, and our sovereign shall subject the 
 world by the irresistible sway of justice and faith — " when peace 
 on earth, goodwill amongst men," shall be the watchword and 
 the bond all over the globe — then you shall be as the poor idiot, 
 slipping for awhile out of his dark cell, — sliding slyly into high 
 places and the judgment seat — you shall be like the poor 
 player, 
 
 " Th.'it struts and frets his hour upon the stage, 
 
 And then is heard no more." 
 
 DIOGENES. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Dnrling & Son, Printers, 31, Leadenhall Street.
 
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