Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/13

 motion will some time or other, by authority of Parliament, one way or other, take effect and be established." The amount of the rent-charge which was to be substituted for the feudal payments was equal to nearly one-half of the whole revenue at that time (Sinclair, "Hist. Revenue," vol. i., pp. 233, 244); and as the value of the land would increase with the wealth and revenue of the kingdom, the proportion would remain the same.

The confidence with which this anonymous writer expressed himself on the subject of the Land-Tax, induces me to mention one of the numerous applications for a copy of my argument on the Land-Tax, because it shows, notwithstanding the judgment of this anonymous critic, that the soundness of the reasoning as well as of the legal learning of my argument has been stamped with the approbation of some of the highest legal authorities.

In Michaelmas Term, 1852, an eminent counsel—a Member of Parliament—who was engaged in a heavy land-tax case with the then Attorney-General, Sir Alexander Cockburn, afterwards Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, having applied to all the law booksellers, without effect, for a copy of the