Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/199



"America, 'who possesses a monopoly by which he thinks he gains is not open to argument. It was so in this country forty years ago, and it is so with you now. It is strange that a people who put down slavery at an immense sacrifice are not able to suppress monopoly, which is but a milder form of the same evil. Under slavery the man was seized and his labour stolen from him, and the profit of it enjoyed by his master and owner. Under Protection the man is apparently free, but is denied the right to exchange the produce of his labour except with his countrymen, who offer him much less for it than the foreigner would give. Some portion of his labour is thus confiscated. In our protective days, our weavers and artisans could not exchange with American flour. They exchanged with an English farmer, who gave them sometimes only half the quantity the American would have given them. Now your farmer is forbidden to trade with the Englishman, and must give to an American double the quantity of grain and lour for many articles he is constantly requiring that he would give if your laws did not forbid his trade with England. A country may have democratic institutions, its government may be Republican, and based on a wide suffrage, and yet there may be no freedom to men for that which is the source of life and comfort. If a man's labour is not free, the man is not free. And whether the law which enacts this restriction be the offspring of republican or autocratic government and power, it is equally evil to be condemned and withstood by all who love freedom and understand what it is. Nations learn slowly—but they do learn; and therefore I do not doubt that the time will come when trade will be as free as the winds, and when freedom of industry will do"