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Untitled Article
Was then this Quarterly Reviewer so dull ^ as not to discern the bitterness of that satire , which he , honest man , objects to as A puerile illustration ? When our country-gentlemen-politicians played at paper currency , was not that paper money the i five mouse skins ? ' arid were not they , Our country-gentlemen-politicians , grave and reverend seignidrs though they be , the very * babes
and sucklings' who stood in need of the simplest illustrations ' tb bring political economy within their comprehension V If they object to be tossed on the more ignoble horn of that popular dilemma which assumes this world to be divided into rogues and
foolsj we must recur for another simple illustration to one of the celebrated doings of reynard the fox , videlicet , when he tempted the goat to descend with him into the well , and where , having first quenched his own thirst , he left his cashmere friend , banked in on every side to escape as he could . Is this an illustration fitted to bring political economy within the comprehension of babes and
sucklings ? The profit which a paper currency gave the landholder , namely in calling his moors into cultivation and his ten an tie ss houses into rentage , and the ruin it entailed on the capitalist and borrower , viz . when that day of account , the return to cash payments , arrived , reminds us of another simple illustration : 'Nous nattaquons , noils riassassinons personne ; ( says the excellent Don Raphael ;) nous ne cherchons settlement qu ' a vivre aux depens d ' autrui . Even that great politician never invented a means of such quick transfer as a paper currency so largely and so easily effected from the
coffer of the capitalist to the farm of the land-owner . * We are presented / says the Quarterly Reviewer , namely , in the tale entitled For Each and for All , ' ' with a titled lady , the wife of a cabinet minister , who , while spending the autumn vacation at a country
seat , enters into discussions on the laws which regulate wages and profits with " Nanny White who keeps the little huckster ' shop in the village , " and " old Joel the sexton . " These two worthies enlighten the minds of the great Whig lord and his countess , on the causes of the distress of the country , and dogmatically lecture them on the l ' operation of the natural laws of distribution , ' * throughout several chapters of dialogue , which our readers will not thank us for extractingbut the burden of which is . that * whenever a farmer takes into
cultivation some inferior land , the profits and wages of his neighbours instantly fall in consequence , on which account the said neighbours are
naturally very angry with him !'—( Quarterly Review , p . 150 . ) The neighbours were wrong in being angry with him , the farmer , as they ought in common justice rather to have directed their anger about their * burdens * against the country-gentlemenpoliticians who , having contrived to force poor land into cultivation by protecting corn laws , ( defend us from such protection !
we in London call it by a different name , ) instantly raised their rents in consequence ; thereby plainly proving whom the said corn laws were intended to protect . Just no some country-
Untitled Article
Mis * Martineau and the Quarterly Review . 819
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1833, page 319, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2614/page/31/
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