Page:The Three Prize Essays on Agriculture and the Corn Law - Morse, Greg, Hope (1842).djvu/43

 Now, what is the actual state of the case? None can answer this question so well as the farmers themselves. Since 1815 they have had almost every thing in their favour. Their customers, the consumers of agricultural produce, have multiplied with enormous rapidity;—the wealth of these customers, and their consequent power of purchase, have increased with the extension of trade in a still more rapid ratio;—the manufacturing and engineering enterprise of the country has absorbed immense numbers of labourers, who must otherwise have remained a heavy burden on the land;—of late the remodelling of the poor-laws has relieved them from a pressing and severe embarassment;—and taxes which bore exclusively upon the agricultural interest have been repealed to the extent of a million yearly. Yet what has been the result? Is it not notorious, that, during this period, farmers have been in a state of frequent and deplorable depression? During this period, have there not been three several corn-laws passed for their relief and encouragement alone? And, during this period, have there not been five parliamentary committees sitting, to prove the existence, and inquire into the causes, of agricultural distress?

It is clear, then, that the object of our legislators has not been attained;—not, we believe, because it is unattainable, but because the measures pursued have been unfitted to their aim. We are convinced (and, if we were not, the history of our corn-legislation would go far to produce the conviction), that, in public as in private matters, selfishness, if too gross, generally defeats its own purposes; that unjust laws are always unwise ones; that the prosperity of any branch of industry can have no frailer basis, no more precarious tenure, than protective enactments; that the elevation of one class of the community cannot be permanently procured by the depression of the rest; and that an end which can only be obtained by oppression and injustice carries its own condemnation on its face.