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
combined with the knowledge , acute insight , and close practical reasoning manifested throughout these letters , we are almost at a loss to discover the cause of the volume not having yet passed into a second edition . Should this . never occur , the disgrace will rest upon the apathy of reformers . The liberal press has done its part ; the work is known to be of immediate value to the public . We cannot conclude our notice of this work of one of the few real ' Representatives' the reformers possess , without another
quotation . Let our readers work out the problem of the woodcutters with elaborate care . It comprises the whole mystery of the free-trade question . The ramifications are innumerable , but the solution of the principle is easy enough . Alluding to the agriculturists , and their sheep ' s-eye views respecting " tallow , " he says to his constituents : —
" How far this may be just;—what right the agriculturists were born with , to take your honest trade out of your mouths and put it into their own by Act of Parliament;—is what I leave to yourselves to settle . But I do not see why it should not be equally just , that you _ should put a tax on English tallow , for the sake of increasing the quantity which would be bought with the manufactures of Manchester , Wigan , and Blackburn , and transported out and home in your ships . I say I cannot see why one should be a bit more unjust than the other ; and therefore I advise vou to applv to Parliament to have it at least turn and turn about .
" But this is not all—nor half of it . This accounts only for the old price !; but it is no part of the intention of the agriculturists that tallow should continue at the old price . Their avowed object is to raise the price of tallow , say from 21 . to 3 / . for a given quantity . We . have accounted for the 21 . ; it is to be taken out of the pockets of the people of Manchester , Wigan , Blackburn , and Hull , and put into the pockets of the agriculturists instead . And this perhaps you will say , —according to the Negro proverb I learned on the decks of a Hull ship , —is ' onlv
changee for chailgee ! But where is the additional H ., which is to be the increase of price , to come from ? I will tell you . It is to be taken once from the people who burn tallow candles , and once over again from the sjiop-keepers or others , with whom the tallow-burners would have spent the money if they had been let alone . So that 1 / . is to go into the pockets of the agriculturists , and the value of 21 . is to be taken out of the pockets of other people to get it for them ; the difference , or second 1 / ., being utterly wasted and thrown into the fire , in the same way as if a man should allow himself to be persuaded to have his
fire-wood cut with a blunt axe instead of a sharp one , on the pretence of the benefit it was to be to wood-cutters . Indulge me with going through this simple case ; for it is the simplest of all , and exactly analogous to the other . You are advised to hire two wood-cutters , at a shilling a-day each , tvith blunt axesy to do the work that would be done for you by one woodcutter with a sharp axe for a shilling . , And you are told that if you lose a shilling by the process , the woodcutters gain one . " But I ask you , whether this is all ? Suppose you had
Untitled Article
g . Our Representatives *
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1837, page 8, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1827/page/8/
-