Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/62



"much acquaintance with the commonest writings upon it. We will take upon ourselves to affirm that not only some, but almost all the writers against the Corn Laws, have advocated, and do advocate, a perfectly free trade in corn. From Adam Smith to the author of the tract which we have prefixed to this article, they have universally represented any tax on the necessaries of life as among the most impolitic and injurious of all modes of taxation,'"

J. S. Mill thus proceeds:— "We have thus far omitted to notice the little tract at the head of the present article, not because it was not highly deserving of our attention, but because we were desirous, in the first place, to express our sentiments on the subject of immediate interest, the present state of the corn question. The author (who signs himself T. Perronet Thompson ) has