Page:The Moral and Religious Bearings of the Corn Law.djvu/12

12 and anxious to give that labour for that corn. They do not want to live upon private or public alms, and it would not be well, even were it possible, for them to do so; they are far above such dependence; their spirit is too noble and and generous to permit them to be willingly indebted to others for their daily food. They want, not to be supported, but to support themselves; the God of nature has provided them with strong arms and clear minds, and has opened channels in which their healthy and honest industry might flow, and they ask to be left in the full and unfettered enjoyment of their personal powers and God's providence. Is it not melancholy that any should be found willing to preserve laws which doom them to idleness and want?

I feel that I should not be treating my subject aright did I not glance at the state and prospects of agricultural labourers. It is said that however much a change in the law might benefit others it would inflict on them an unspeakable injury. Nothing can be more incorrect. The fact is that, when best off, they are in a far worse condition than other labourers; that they suffer much from the high price of bread, no corresponding rise taking place in their wages; that at the present time they are in a miserable state even in England, and in Ireland, which is to be ruined by the abolition of the Corn Law, they are nearly as badly off as it is possible to be; and that if the Corn Law were repealed there is no just reason to suppose that they would be involved in any greater wretchedness, to say the least. But the case is to be put in a still stronger light. We have to consider not only what would be the state of agricultural labourers if the Corn Law were abolished, but also to consider their state if not abolished. The population is increasing at the rate of more than a thousand souls per day. What is to become of them? The land cannot find occupation for them. They must be employed in manufactures. It is these which have employed the surplus population of agricultural districts which would otherwise have