Page:The Three Prize Essays on Agriculture and the Corn Law - Morse, Greg, Hope (1842).djvu/18

 a large number of landlords owning the grocers' shops in parliament professing to watch over their interests; and yet the retail grocers are more prosperous as a body than you. Surely this is enough to awaken your suspicions of the delusiveness (to use no harsher term) of all those promises which political landlords make to you at the hustings, or at agricultural dinners. But let me further ask, did you ever know the entire body of grocers, or any other trade, to be up in arms at the same time all over England complaining of distress? You may have known bankruptcies and losses to fall upon particular individuals, but did you ever know the whole body of any particular trade throughout the kingdom calling exclusively to Parliament at the same time to relieve them? No, such a thing never happened, and never can occur. Yet, we have known the farmers of England, in a body, five times complaining of unparalleled distress, since the passing of the famous law for their protection in 1815, and appealing to parliament for the relief of their sufferings, and this generally happened when trade and manufactures were comparatively prosperous! Will not such facts as these induce you to doubt whether the law which interferes with your trade, with no better result than these, had not better be totally and immediately repealed?

Upon this subject of protection, let me remind you that you have always secured to you the natural protection of the cost of bringing the corn from distant countries. Upon an average, I believe the freight and other charges, upon corn imported from the Baltic or America, amount to ten shillings a quarter. Now this, I say, is a natural protection, which nobody can deprive you of. Supposing you grow four quarters of wheat an acre, this protection of ten shillings a quarter is equal to two pounds an acre.

Let me offer an opinion as to the mode of repealing the Corn Law. It is apparent to every observing man that a tax upon bread will not be permanently borne in any shape. Neither fixed duties nor sliding scales will much longer be tolerated. Public opinion has decreed the overthrow of the entire system of miscalled protection, and the question now is one of time only. I have a strong conviction that nothing can be so unfavourable to your interests as the lingering death of the Corn Law. Whatever modifications take place short of total repeal, the burden will be thrown, if possible, under all sorts of pretences, upon the farmers. The experience of the late changes in the Tariff and the Corn Law has shown this pretty plainly. The landowners have laboured to convince you, at your recent agricultural gatherings, that the alterations in the late session have had little effect upon prices. They still try to assure you that the law will afford you ample protection. But, even