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Untitled Article
The people and the legislature of this country have practically recognised the injustice of peculiar disabilities ; special immunities are obviously as unjust . If the Roman Catholics and Dissenters were entitled to relief , the " landed interest " is not entitled to protection . This axiomatic , or prima facie view of the case is too frequently disregarded ; the " landed interest " of this country are but too frequently spoken of as
being invested with the lay privileges of the tribe of Levi , under the Jewish theocracy , as being the " salt of the earth ;" and people , feeling that bread is the staff of life , have inadvertently imagined that landlords are the prop of the community . The landlords of England do not support the people of England , the people of England support them . Landlords " toil not , neither do the } spin . " The relationship existing
between them and the community we have already described ; they are our tenants ; but , mirabile dictu , we pay them rent ! Such was not always the case . Lands were held on tenures distinctly recognising the principles we started with . The holders , in consideration of the privilege of holding , had to
support the nation and fight for it . They now legislate for it , and leave the expense of supporting and fighting for it to others . The various feodal tenures were gradually thrown off , an act , passed in the interregnum , wiped away the last portion that was found to be inconvenient : and now we behold the landed
interest , par excellence , of this country , denuded of those obligatory incumbranees , having nothing to do but to pocket a part of the price of our bread , form agricultural associations to pick our pockets , and legislate to make the theft l ^ egal . How can we deny the swell-mob protection if we protect these gentlemen ? But the interrogatory is impertinent , we are not
called upon to p rotect them ; we are merely implored to submit our eyes to the sand they are ready to throw in them ,, while they protect themselves in parliament ; the privilege o ( paying for the process being our exclusive perquisite . The relationship between the farmer and the community is twofold : the farmer grows corn for us , and this is the view
kindhearted persons take of him when they ask would we muzzle the man that groweth the corn . Certainly not . The man who cultivates the soil is a benefactor to the community ; he Is entitled to his reward . Ungrudgingly would the community give it to him . But the farmer is the seller of corn as well as the grower of it ; and if , when he exhibits
twentyeight shillings' worth of corn for sale , we pull out our purae with forty-two shillings in it , and he snatches the whole , we are ready to cry out * ' stop thief ! " and deny his right to protection . There if a relationship also between the landlord and tk *
Untitled Article
ft 10 Corn haws .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1836, page 210, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2656/page/18/
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