Page:Speech of Sir Hussey Vivian, Bart. M.P. on the Corn Laws, Thursday March 14, 1839.djvu/27

23 thus brought them to indigence and distress? To throw these parties thus suffering on the poor rates will, I apprehend, not benefit the prospects of the agriculturists, or contribute to promote the cultivation of poor lands.

The last objection with which I shall venture to trouble the House, and it is, in my mind, a very strong one against the existing Corn Laws, is, that they are, in fact, in their working highly prejudicial to the agriculturists themselves; the effect of them is to prevent the farmer receiving a fair remuneration for the produce of his industry, at the very moment he most wants it; in fact, they fix a maximum on the produce of human industry. Under these laws, foreign corn is bought at low prices in years of plenty, bonded in our warehouses, and thrown into our markets at a moment when a bad harvest occasions a rise in the price of grain, necessary to the remuneration of our farmers, thus, in fact, in a very great degree, placing them at the mercy of the speculators, who, by various means, influence the prices to suit their own purposes; to such a system the admission of foreign corn, on a fixed duty, would be far preferable. That I am not singular in the objection I have now stated to the present laws, I will take the liberty of showing the