which elevates our manufactures at the

of her own wretched people.

expense

Whenever England has a bad season, famine stares her in the face; and then she is obliged to drain the country of its gold to purchase foreign grain. I have seen it stated, that in 1839 the enormous sum of eight millions sterling was taken from the Bank of England for foreign corn. This brought the Bank to the verge of ruin, and created immense commercial distress. The rate of interest suddenly rose, and the distress brought upon the manufacturers and operatives was terrible.

Thus the corn laws, by denying the manufacturers the means of commercial exchange with foreign nations, subject the home trade to ruinous fluctuations, and destroy the demand for English products, at the very time the utmost freedom of export is required to supply the wants of the people. Twenty millions sterling more were paid for bread alone in 1839 than in 1835. The stagnation of trade and the utter disorganization of every branch of industry depreciate English wares in foreign markets below the cost of production, and ruin the manufacturers. To make confusion worse

confounded, at such a crisis England is compelled to send her gold away for corn; the scarcity of money and the rise of interest cause extensive failures; the operatives are turned off to starve; and while the warehouses of Manchester are groaning beneath unsaleable products, and millions are suffering from hunger, cargoes of foreign wheat lie rotting in the storehouses of the government, because the merchant is unable to pay the heavy duties; in this damaged state, it has frequently been thrown into the Thames. Oh! the folly, the madness of English statesmen. The commercial panic of 1839 was but one of a series of similar shocks that have recurred periodically, with constantly increasing violence, for the last five-and-twenty years. There is not a single instance in record of commercial panic in connexion with a low price of food. These destructive vitiations of the balance of trade are produced, and produced only, by the impious and absurd policy that restricts the population, to a limited soil, and a single climate, for its food, denying them the full benefit of those advantages which a bountiful Providence has placed at their command, and building up feel

ings of hostility, hatred, and rivalship between

nations who had else,

"Like kindred drops, been mingled into one."

You will have anticipated me in relation to the last part of this question on which I design to speak-the SIN, THE ABOMINABLE INIQUITY OF THE CORN-LAWS. No higher crime can be committed against one of God's creatures than to rob him of bread. It is so regarded by Heaven. God intended the world to be one great brotherhood. He has scattered wide the bountiful gifts of his Providence, and placed no restriction or prohibition on their free circulation and exchange. By giving to each particular nation something which others want, he evidently designed that, like the members of one and the same community, they should be mutually dependant.

He has established inequality and variety in the seasons in different portions of the earth, so that when scarcity prevails in one region, it may be counterbalanced by unusual fertility in another; and that thus, by receiving or

giving as they may want or abound, they may be drawn to know and love each other.

Yes, God purposed that the whole earth. should be but one dwelling, and the whole human race as one family; the world is bright and beautiful; the sun shines high in the azure depths, and lights up a kind, glad, bountiful earth. But there is one creature who joins not in the universal thanksgiving; and why? He is God's child; but in his Father's green world, with luxury all around him, he isstarving. Who can doubt, that to bring about so terrible a result as this, by attaching an artificial value to corn, is an abomination in the sight of God? Or who supposes that England can hope for the favour of Heaven until this reproach is wiped away? The Bible declares, "He that taxeth the bread of the poor, fighteth against God." "He who withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him."

Are there any to whom the terrible words of the Apostle James more forcibly apply than to the upholders of the corn-laws? "Go to, now,

ye

rich men; weep and howl for the miseries

that will come upon you; behold the hire of the labourer who hath reaped your fields, which is by you kept back by fraud, crieth; and the cries of them that have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth." And the great Hebrew Lawgiver says, "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn." "What mean ye, that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor? saith the Lord God of Hosts." There is, indeed, no crime which seems to have so awakened the indignation of Heaven, as oppression of the poor.

But why not repeal the iniquitous CornLaws? Have not English landlords degraded their countrymen already low enough? or must they be trodden still deeper into the earth? A few weeks ago the following appeared in the London Times: "Sir: I was summoned to Bristol a few days ago, and on the Stapleton road I met a long covered truck, drawn by three men and four boys, harnessed together in rope tackle, exactly as you may have seen bullocks at a plough, or dogs in a cart. On inquiry what this could be, I was told that they belonged to the Great Union House, and had been to the