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Untitled Article
all the way to , the North Pole . -But what axe the people to live on ? Manifestly , foreign corn . The country might produce * small salad' in August ; or new potatoes and green peas might be got under glass , and gooseberries be made about as plentiful as pine-apples are here . But the great staple of food must be brought from other countries ; as certainly as the cotton which they span . Suppose then , that after some progress had been made , Sir Felix Booth , if he be the happy land-owner should be persuaded to say he would have a corn-law ;—that he would confine the people of the country to such corn or other vegetables as could be
grown in chinks and crannies with a South aspect , or in other ways be created at a greater expense than importing from abroad ;— with the idea that he should get more rent from the miserable in-dwellers . And first , what would the Parliament of Boothia say to such a plan ? Would there be any persuading them that the great gains to the lord of Boothia were to be shed abroad upon them in fertilising showers , and the last state of their country was to be better than the first ? Or , if the process of restriction had begun , would they allow Sir Felix to produce himself as the great suffering interest , and recommend himself in a . King ' s
speech for relief by tightening the laws , or diminishing his contributions to the public purse ? And next , is there any probability that the lord of Boothia himself should not perceive that to execute such a law would be to cut down hi& rents to what they are at present—nothing ? He would never be gulled by the notion that all the foreign corn brought into the country was so much taken away from what he would grow himself ; because he would know with a perfect knowledge that , make corn-laws as he
pleased , he would never grow it at all . He would know that he should not grow , not only the corn , but the rein-deer mutton that would have been eaten along with it . He would be fully aware , like a sensible owner of icebergs as he is , that though in the new state of things he might receive higher rents for some nooks and corners which ^ under famine prices might be made to produce what men could eat , he would lose enormously upon the whole , by the absence of what he used to make of his lands in various ways arising out of the country ' s being covered with a flourishing commercial and manufacturing population . In short , he would beg and pray that the country might not be carried back to what it is at present . He would be the very last man , —unless , what nobody believes , he is demented and incapable of taking care of his own affairs , —that either now or at any conceivable period would go to the trouble of hatching a corn-law . "— -Pp . 33 , 34 .
The writer shows that the above argument applies , more or less , to every land-owner . The farmers would not Jknow what employment to choose for their sons , if manufactures and foreign trade were thus handcuffed and blockaded by a la ^ y against sufficient corn . If his elder son succeed to his land , what is to become of the other sons , unless , they enter into a ruinous competition with the elder , as we do at home- To limit , balance , and legally cut down the home trade and manufactures , to the home produce of corn , though ; -the country niight be naturally rich in the former and poor in the latter ,
Untitled Article
Our Representatives 5
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1837, page 5, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1827/page/5/
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