Page:History of the Anti corn law league - Volume 2.pdf/97

 he affirmed to be merely a quit-rent substituted for the ancient feudal services. Sir C. Burrell opposed the motion. He insisted on the vast numerical superiority of the agricultural labourers, and the large proportion of poor-rate borne by the land, as reasons for continuing protection to agriculture; and he enumerated a list of manufactures which also enjoyed protections of their own. Mr. Poulett Scrope explained his views upon the general principles of taxation. If a man laid out £100 in producing a quantity of corn, half of which he sent abroad, taking foreign goods in exchange; and laid out another £100 in manufacturing a quantity of goods, half of which he sent abroad, taking foreign corn in exchange: the foreign corn so taken by him was just as much the produce of English industry as the corn which he had grown at home, and why should one be more protected than the other? Colonel Wood (Brecon) observed that if free trade was to be the order of the day, we ought also to have free cultivation; and would you allow the English farmer to grow his own tobacco, and make his own sugar from his own beet-root, and his own malt from his own barley? The agriculturists did not desire to buy at the cheapest rate; for that was to give low wages to the agricultural labourer. Nor did they desire to sell at the dearest rate. The farmers sought to live and let live, and the landlords felt the truth of the proposition, that property has its duties as well as its rights. Mr. Thornley said he had visited America last autumn, and had found the Americans with whom he had conversed, merchants, statesmen, and the President himself, all answering, when he urged the relaxations of last year's tariff, that these availed nothing while the duty was maintained against American corn. He did not believe that any quantity of American corn considerable enough to be worth mentioning, would be let in by the proposed regulations respecting Canada. Mr. Strutt said that tithes were not amongst land burdens; for if, upon the question