Page:History of the Anti corn law league - Volume 2.pdf/223

 building, steam-engine, and on everything which is considered by law to appertain to the; freehold but he does not pay the rate on his machinery, on his raw material or manufactured article, nor on his floating capital. How is the farmer served? Is he more hardly used? He pays on his farm and farm buildings so much in the pound on the amount of his rent, but he does not pay on his ploughs and harrows, on his stacks or growing crops, or on the money he may have in the bank to pay his rent. (Hear, hear.) Where, then, is the difference in the two cases? Is there any distinction which gives the farmer a claim upon the public to pay his poor's rate from an extra charge upon his wheat? Has not the manufacturer just as good a right to come to this House for a law to enable him to pay his poor's rate as the farmer has? (Cheers.) But how does the right honourable gentleman make it out that the poor's rate is a burden on the farmer? If the poor's rate were off altogether the simple result would be that the rent would be so much the higher. If the right honourable baronet will cross the Tweed, and ask the first farmer he meets why he can afford to pay so much higher rent than the farmer south of the river, he will be told that, as the Scotch farmer pays almost no poor's rate and no tithes, an amount equal to those imposts is added to the rent. (Cheers.) Some forty years ago the late Lord Eldon said that remission of taxes was of no use to the farmers; for, whilst great competition existed for farms, the amount remitted must of necessity be swallowed up in rent. (Cheers.) The right hon. baronet had also spoken of the capital invested in the soil; if he mean the value that is on the land, I cannot understand how the fact of a man's possessing property in land can give him any claim to an extra price for the produce of the land at the expense of the community. (Hear, hear.) If it is meant that the farmers have invested great capital in the soil, why, is it not the constant complaint that agriculture suffers more than all from a want of capital? and is it not evident that, under this protection of the Corn Law, capital may be said positively to shun the soil? (Hear.) The right honourable baronet has spoken of the predictions of my honourable friend, the member for Stockport. That honourable gentleman is precisely the man of all others who has avoided hazarding predictions. He said, and every one who thoroughly understands the Corn Law said, that this country never could rise from the depression which so lately existed, except through the repeal of the Corn Law, or that, through the bounty of Providence, we were again to be favoured with good harvests. The right honourable baronet owes his safety, as does the country, to the change in the seasons What was the condition of the right honourable baronet some two years ago? How did he bear the weight of the responsibility of his office then? Was not his mind almost pressed down by the difficulties