Page:Six lectures on the corn-law monopoly and free trade.djvu/29

 MONDAY, 30th JANUARY, 1843.

THE IMMORALITIES OF THE CORN-LAW MONOPOLY.

" has been said"—it was some time ago remarked by the author of the Catechism on the Corn-Laws—"much has been said of the Jacobinism of the poor against the rich, but very little of the Jacobinism of the rich against the poor; though the one is only matter of speculation and alarm, and the other meets every man three times a-day when he sits down to eat." We may demur, I think, to the verbal accuracy of this way of stating the case;—the question not being exactly between the rich and the poor, but between the drones and the workers, whether rich or poor; between privileged and titled idleness, and unprivileged, plebeian industry. The ranks of the Bread Monopoly include some not inconsiderable amount of pauperism and insolvency (if my Lord of Mountcashel tells the truth), and it is the active and producing wealth of the country, and not its poverty, on which monopolists prey. With this qualification, we may thank our friend the Catechiser for a most wholesome Anti-Corn-Law text; and may please ourselves with the thought that the longer this Anti-Corn-Law discussion lasts, the likelier it is that the omission he laments may be rectified, and that the Jacobinical, violent, thievish character of the spoliation which power and privilege perpetrate on honest men's industry will be stripped bare, ripped open, and shown up, so that all men may know it.

It is of this that I have to speak to you this evening; of