Page:The corn law question shortly investigated.djvu/21

19 The Economists recommend an equally destructive course in support of their favourite theory. Well might Frederick the Great say, if he wished to punish a province, he would place it under the rule of a Political Economist.

The history of all nations, ancient and modern, proves that exactly as domestic agriculture, was fostered, so the nation prospered—the celebrated Sully called it one of the breasts from which the state must draw its nourishment." Rome, by the extension of her power over other nations, and the demands of the Roman populace for cheap bread, was obliged to admit a free importation of grain from Sicily, Lybia, and Egypt, the great granaries in ancient time. And what was the result? Exactly what is contended would ensue from the application of a similar principle to the British islands. The Italian cultivation was destroyed as much as the Assyrian or Egyptian was increased, and so far from the price of grain being diminished to the Roman populace, it was fully higher, on an average, than it has been in England for the last ten years, while the small arable farms of Italy, the nursery of the Legions, were absorbed in great sweeps of pasture, the race of independent cultivators was destroyed, the strength of the vitals of the state was consumed; and at length the independence of the central provinces of the empire was destroyed, and the Mistress of the World, as Gibbon has remarked, came to depend for her subsistence upon the floods of the Nile.

But I am now overstepping the limits I proposed to myself on entering this great and important question,—and I think I have satisfactorily demonstrated that the premises of the Corn Repealers, are not proven nor founded on fact,—that to do away with protection to British agriculture, besides being little better than wholesale robbery, would transfer 25 to 30 millions a year to the pockets of foreign