Page:The Three Prize Essays on Agriculture and the Corn Law - Morse, Greg, Hope (1842).djvu/8



I have no intention to enter at any length into the question of Free Trade, except so far as it affects the tenant farmers and farm labourers of the kingdom. Free Trade has indeed been long recommended by those who have made political economy a study; and the last session of parliament, by the amended tariff and slightly modified corn bill, did homage to this principle; not so much by the extent of the alterations actually made, though they all pointed in one direction, as by the enunciation of the reasons and principles with which the head of a Conservative government advocated those changes. Arguments of a peculiar kind were used regarding the corn monopoly. High prices for grain were deprecated as an evil, but still it was urged that anything approaching to a free trade in corn would ruin the farmer, throw the land out of cultivation, starve the agricultural labourer, and finally ruin all classes. Now, what I wish to show, as a farmer, is simply this, that however necessary a corn bill may be to enable landlords to obtain high money rents, it is not at all requisite for the existence and well being of the tenant farmer, and still less for the agricultural labourer, but, on the contrary, that it is a positive evil to both.

I undertake to prove that it signifies but little to tenant farmers and agricultural labourers what the nominal price of their produce is, in comparison to steady markets and good customers; that the best, the only honest and true plan of fostering agriculture has yet to be tried, and that that method is, cherishing the growth and securing the welfare of the largest possible number of consumers. The landlords, who have hitherto governed this country, blinded by their own apparent interest, mistaking immediate profit to themselves as the best means of promoting the general well-being, have never hesitated to prevent the consumers buying their food at the cheapest market. If this odious monopoly of the first necessary of life must still be kept up, let it be distinctly understood by the country at large that it is solely for the benefit of the landlords. "Let," I say, "the saddle be put upon the right horse," for the tenants and labourers neither have, nor can they have any permanent interest in a system which directly lowers profits and wages, a system