Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/157

 showed the abilities of an advocate of a very high order. I cannot undertake to say that he never made the conflicting statements which have been mentioned; but I have at this distance of time a distinct recollection of being met with the objections above mentioned when I was on that inquiry into the condition of the farm labourers in Wilts, Dorset, and. Somerset, in December, 1844, and January, 1845.

My impression is in agreement with that of others who have laboured in the cause of Free Trade and, nevertheless, were not traders. At the same time, it is to be noted, with reference to Sir W. Napier's expression, "the cold, calculating baseness of commercial avarice," that avarice is avarice, whether it be commercial or non-commercial, civil or military; whether it animates the breasts of merchants and manufacturers, or of squires, lords, kings and queens. The persons probably most free from its tyranny are such persons as laboured for Free Trade without being actuated by any very strong passion to increase their real or personal property: the objects that employed their thoughts, and might be termed the objects of their ambition, being looked upon as visionary and fantastic by the men who considered either money