Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/65

 in 1825, find print it in a pamphlet as a companion to the "Catechism on the Corn Laws."

The writers adds:—

"'The exertions of Mr. Whitmore and of Lord Milton deserve no less praise; and their merit is enhanced by the disgraceful reception—disgraceful even in the eyes of indifferent spectators—which they have experienced from the House. But their country will weigh them and their opponents by a different standard, and will esteem and venerate them as deeply for having set at defiance the fury of the band of enraged monopolists by whom they have been insulted, as it would have despised them if they had stooped, with the vulgar herd of public men, to court the applause of those monopolists by the sacrifice of the best interests of their country.'"

The opinion of General Thompson appears to have been that the cause of rent was the limited quantity of land, and that the difference in the qualities of land was not the cause of rent, but only the measure of the difference in its amount; or, in short, the measure of its amount. If Malthus and Ricardo had been clear writers, a good deal of controversy on the subject might have been avoided. It is just that Colonel Thompson's own words should be quoted on this point. Colonel Thompson, in his paper on "Saint-Simonianism," in The Wesfminster Review for April, 1832, says:—