Page:The corn law question shortly investigated.djvu/11

9 cent;—for the next period of three years, the fluctuation was 100 per cent, the average being 69s. 9d.; from 1807 to 1811 the variation was 74 per cent, the average being 88s.; and from 1817 to 1824 the variation was 143 per cent; and this brings you down to the period of the existing law; the variation in price of the present law, up to 1834, a period of ten years, has never exceeded 49 per cent.

The argument is equally fallacious, viz. that the labouring part of our population will be benefited thereby. Wages, from the increased competition of that portion of the agricultural classes thrown out of employment by the abandonment of poor lands, and necessarily thrown on the manufacturing class for support, must consequently reduce wages to the lowest possible level—the sole gainer will be the capitalist or millowner; and this state of things will continue for a time, until some ruinous storm, or commercial panic, from over-trading, takes place in some distant and uncontrollable market, and then bankruptcies, with their attendant horrors, will overwhelm the land; the labourers will discover the fallacy of being dependant on precarious employment for their cheap foreign bread, and the value of that security which British agriculture has always afforded them, viz. constant, equally paid, and unvarying employment. How often have we seen within our recollection, under a temporary depression of trade, the manufacturing population thrown back on the agriculturists for support? On whom are they henceforth to fall, when that support is withdrawn? It will then be discovered, when perhaps it is too late, that one of the paramount advantages which raises the agricultural interest, now so undervalued, above other interests is, that the interest of the producer never can be at variance with that of the consumer; for this obvious reason, that the prosperity of the producer creates, to a great extent, the demand for which