Page:History of the Anti corn law league - Volume 2.pdf/187

 error of supposing that you can rain your customers, and yet, at the same time, prosper in your pursuits. (Cheers.) I remember hearing Lord Kinnaird, whose property is near Dundee, state that, in 1835 and 1836, the dealers from that town used to come and bespeak his cattle three months in advance; but in 1812, when the linen trade shared the prostration of all the manufactures, he bad to engage steam boats three months in advance to bring his cattle to the London market. Hon. members who live in Sussex and the southern counties, and who are in the habit of sneering at Manchester, should recollect that they are as much dependent upon the prosperity of Lancashire as those who live in their immediate neighbourhood. (Hear, hear.) If graziers, on looking at the Price Current, find they can get a better price for their cattle in London than in Manchester and Stockport, will they not send their cattle up to London, to compete with the southern graziers?"

He then adverted to the subject of rent as a large item in the outlay of the tenant, regretting that there were no tenant farmers in the House, men of good practical knowledge, to set them right on that highly important part of the question:—

"The landowners, I mean the political landowners—those who dress their labourers and their cattle in blue ribbons, and who treat this question entirely as a political one—they go to the tenant farmers, and they tell them that it would be quite impossible for them to compete with foreigners, for, if they had their land rent-free, they could not sell their produce at the same price as they did. To bear out their statement they give a calculation of the cost per acre of growing wheat, which they pat down at £6. Now, the fallacy of that has been explained to me by an agriculturist in the Midland Counties, where I should exceedingly like to see giving his evidence before the committee for which I am moving. He writes me in a letter which I have received to-day, "You will be met by an assertion that no alteration in rent can make up the difference to the tenant and labourer of diminished prices. They will quote the expenses on a single crop of wheat, and say how small a proportion the rent bears to the whole expense, but that is not the fair way of putting it. Wheat is the farmer's remunerating crop, but he cannot grow wheat more than one year in three. The expense, then, of the management of the whole farm should be compared with the rent, to estimate what portion of the price of corn is received by the landlord. I have, for this purpose, analysed the expenses of a farm of 400 acres.—230 arable, 170 pasture.