Page:History of the Anti corn law league - Volume 2.pdf/279

 however different from your own may be their political sympathies and antipathies. The topic is paramount to all party demarcation.

"How much further can you go towards the introduction of a consistent free-trade policy without fairly grappling with the food monopoly? Are you not all but brought to a stand-still already? The landowners are alarmed and vigilant. You had a taste of their quality on the sugar question. They will not again help you in the demolition even of the minutest monopoly. You will no more be able to persuade them that they are the safer for the sacrifice of others. It will be impossible for you to open your mouth on import duties, but they will look down at your feet and think they see more than your boot covers. You are crippled for what you know to be the only sound commercial policy. Suspicion will track you through every speech and bill with the scent of a bloodhound. You will rise in the House with the vindictive monopolist in your rear, the whig partisan in your front, and that magnetic telegraph at work between them which ensures co-operation without coalition. What a helpless and pitiable condition! Can you endure it for the sake of office? Or can you long secure office by enduring it?

"On the other hand, imagine the corn-law question disposed of, what ulterior division need you apprehend in your majority? In all remaining applications of your commercial principles they would be a band of ready helpers. None so decided as they to raze every remaining fortress of monopoly, and not leave one stone upon another. There would no longer be any apprehension from your measures. The threatening aspect would change to one of promise. In each new move they would foresee increasing profit instead of impending peril. The spell of 'protection' in his own case once broken, not a landowner but would cheer you on in your progress towards its utter demolition. The country would breathe freely, in the grateful perception of each successive benefit. Controversy would give place to congratulation. The din of the old warfare of agriculture and manufactures would die away into the remoteness of historic distance. A career of useful statesmanship would open before you, limited only by the capacity of your own intellect, wherein classes might be harmonised, misery abated, the labouring many raised, and the truest glory, that of peaceful aggrandizement, be achieved for our country.

"But the intermediate step—'there's the rub.' True, you peril office by attempting it, and might very likely be for a while unseated. What then? Are you satisfied never to apply your free-trade principles to corn? Or do you anticipate a better time by delay?

"Never! Why, then, as I have already shown, you submit to be obstructed in all your commercial legislation. You consent to live the manacled and maimed slave of a suspicion. You forego the noblest