Page:Six lectures on the corn-law monopoly and free trade.djvu/30

 the "Immoralities of the Corn-Law Monopoly." The mis- chiefs with which that monopoly is fraught to all.our econo- mical and social interests as a nation^ the way in which it is eating like a canker into the heart of England^s wealth and strength — I shall have other opportunities of examining with you. I deal with it now, not as a blunder, but as a fraud; not as a mistake in economics, but as a crime in morals ; not as erroneous political economy, but as false and wicked political morality. And I confess I am more desirous that you should see and feel this, than I am to multiply statistical facts «and figures, showing how it bears on your individual or class interests. The facts and figures illustrative of the mischievousness of monopoly constitute an important ele- ment of the controversy, but it seems to me beginning at the wrong end to start with them. Of course the Bread Monopoly is mischievous : all iniquity is mischievous ; and thank God that it is — or its reign would be long in the world. Of course it is mischievous ; and let the mischief be shown, again and again, in all its kinds and degrees and ramifi- cations, till no human creature can mistake it. But then how is it that we ever came to endure the mischief, but that we were blind, from the beginning, to the immorality which is its root ? All the wide- wasting woes and miseries of the last five years ; the pauperism, the bankruptcy, the starvation, the civil commotion and the military bloodshedding ; the decay of national strength, the loss of national capital, the decline of national resource and revenue — ^these are not the disease ; they are but the symptoms and eflFects of the disease. The root of the evil is moral. It lies in a legislative iniquity and fraud which a sound and true public morality would have frowned out of countenance from the very first, without waiting very curiously to see what harm would come of it. I believe what we mainly want now, to root out the landlord monopoly, is not so much elaborate statistical demonstrations of its workings, as a clear moral perception, and strong moral feeling of its radically base and guilty character. We must tell them they are robbing us : we must ring it into their ears that their monopoly is dishonest : and while we cry aloud