Page:The corn law question shortly investigated.djvu/8

6 much the better would it be for the country and its manufacturing interest! Such theories are really too absurd to be listened to seriously, and worthy only of those who can apply sophistry to any side of a question. One would almost be led to believe that the demand for manufactures depended principally, if not entirely, upon the quantity of foreign corn imported and used in this country, and that the countries of northern Europe were their only customers! always taking care to tell us that the manufacturing interest, and the export of our manufactures in particular, are paramount to every other consideration.

Does it never strike these individuals to put a value on the home trade as compared with the foreign? The following table I beg to subjoin from Mr. M'Queen's Statistics of the British Empire, from which it will be observed, that the foreign trade only forms some eighth part of the general amount.

Here then is a comparative value of our home versus our foreign trade—by which it appears that our loudly boasted foreign trade does not amount to one eighth part of the value