On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
would be a mad prank of the fioothian Parliament ; nor is it much better here . " You will say , this is an extreme case ; and so it is . But will anybody show me , how the same effects shall not arise in due proportion , in a situation where the circumstances shall be less extreme ? Do the
landlords about Hull , for instance , really think that it is for their interest that Hull should be cut off from all the trade and commerce that would arise out of a free trade in corn ? Suppose they grew less corn ;—would not gardening do for them as well ; and does not this change always take place in the neighbourhood of large and flourishing towns , and
nobody complain ? Sift this ; try to work it out . Some of your farmers told me at the last election , that their state was really so bad , that they had a mind to try whether the removal of the corn-laws might not make it better . Invite them to consider , whether the Boothian farmers would not come to exactly the same conclusion . "—P . 35 .
Abolish the corn-laws , that is , reduce the price of food , and all manufactures become cheaper , and the comforts of life proportionately increased to the community . Granting that a whole nation was benefitted at the expense , or partial ruin , of a fraction of its capitalists , would it not be justice as well as wisdom , to let that exception take its course ? MoreoveF , let
us ask if the agriculturists are so very nice and delicate about ruining , partially or wholly , any section of the commercial interests , when they can put the cause of such ruin into their own coffers ? Witness the cool way in which the Self-Representatives proposed on the 18 th of last March to increase the duty on Foreign Tallow from 31 . 10 s . per ton to 10 / . — " and by
this they were to put 300 , 000 / . into the pockets of the agriculturists , or , as was farther explained , a sheep was to be increased in ralue by 2 s . 8 d ., and an ox by 19 s . ; " thus deliberately stranding a large portion of the shipping interest , and p itching overboard a corresponding quantity of British Merchandise , to be got up and sold by auction with the wrecks , for the benefit of the coast whereon the disaster occurred .
But no such thing as ruin would accrue . Good land would still be good for other produce , ( and very fine land still good for corn on the reduced scale , ) and would gradually come to be worked with more honest , if not equal advantage to the owners ; since the land-holders , according to M'Culloch , only get , after all , less than one fifth of the nineteen ] or twenty millions lost to the nation each year by the present system of corn-laws . In brief , as the matter stands now , and as it has stood these last
two-and-twenty years , the case between the agriculturists and the manufacturers may be concisely stated in the following request of the former to the latter— " Give us sixty shillingsworth of manufactures for our corn per quarter ( instead of thirty or forty , which would be the price if the tax on foreign
Untitled Article
6 Our Representatives .
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1837, page 6, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1827/page/6/
-