pense of the rest of the community, for their particular share of the injury sustained; an indemnity to the richest portion of the community, at the expense of the poorest.

If they say, that duties upon the importation of manufactures are a greater injury to them, than to the rest of the community, it is an unfounded pretext. They allege that by reason of these duties, a portion of capital is withheld from the land which, under perfect freedom of trade, would otherwise go to it. But this is not true. If the importation of manufactured goods were under no sort of restraint, if the quantity of goods imported were increased to any extent, it would not follow, that less capital, to the amount of a single farthing, would be employed in the manufacturing branch of industry; because manufactures must be made, and must be exported, to pay for every article of importation. The quantity of goods which it would be necessary to export, would then, as now, exactly balance the quantity which we should import; and the only difference would be, that with the same quantity of labour expended upon certain goods exported, we should be able to bring from abroad a greater quantity of some other kind of goods, than that labour would have produced in making the goods at home. The same quantity of labour, or in other words, the same quantity of capital, would continue to be employed in manufactures; only that labour and that capital would be more productive; just as they become more productive by a more judicious division and distribution, or by the invention of important machines. Is it understood, that the invention of machines, and the improvement in the productive powers of our manufacturers have had a tendency to throw capital out of the manufacturing branch of industry, or to augment its capital? It is, therefore, in the highest degree, absurd and improper to say, that because the manufacturer is aided by duties on imported goods, therefore the farmer needs to be protected by duties imposed on imported corn. The duties on imported manufactures, are no injury to the farmer in any other way, or in any other degree, than they are to the members of the community at large. Do they affect the demand for his commodity? and is not the demand for the commodity the true measure of its encouragement? But if the duties on imported goods have no peculiar tendency, either to affect the capital employed in agriculture, or the demand for its produce, whence can arise the plea or the belief, that the farmer needs protection, as against them?

Neither is it true, it is any thing rather than true, that' the manufacturing class derive any advantage from the duties imposed on the importation of goods. Is this restraint calculated to raise the profit of mercantile or manufacturing stock? No,

not in the smallest degree, as is well known to every body who has any, even the slightest knowledge, of the subject. The profit of manufacturing stock, is as much independent of the existence or non-existence of duties upon imported manufactures, as the profit of growing stock. The profit upon mercantile and manufacturing stock, is regulated by competition; and even if it departs in the smallest degree from the level of other employments of stock, is always speedily brought back to it.

The duties upon imported manufactures, cause this or that branch of them to be carried on, which would not be carried on at all, or not in an equal degree, if the goods were allowed to be imported from abroad. But what is the consequence of this? Only to prevent the existence of some other manufacture, the produce of which would be exported to pay for the imported goods. The manufacturing labour of the country, would, in this last case, be more productive, but the proportion of manufacturing capital, would be exactly the same. Not a farthing of capital would, on that account, be withdrawn from manufactures. When a population are supplied with a requisite quantity of food, the measure of the consumption is full. But of the consumption of manufactures, the measure never is full; for the more a man has to expend, beyond the supply of food, the more he enlarges his consumption of the articles of taste and luxury, to the supply of which, manufacturing capital is subservient. Less money will not be expended in manufactures, because the same sum of money will command more. People will be only better supplied.

But if duties upon imported manufactures have no tendency, either to raise the profit of manufacturing stock, or to increase the quantity of capital employed in manufactures, how can these duties place the farmer under any relative disadvantage? How perfectly unfounded is the pretext, that he needs protection as against the manufacturer, by duties, the design of which is habitually to prevent importation, and to maintain a high price of the necessaries of life?

Thus we have seen that corn laws, the tendency of which is to narrow the channels of supply, are not only mischievous by their direct operation, but mischievous to the highest degree; that is, they are productive of the most extensive and exquisite misery; misery not the less to be deplored, because it falls upon that class of persons, whose interests the rude state of the human mind has hitherto enabled legislation very imperfectly to protect. Not only have we seen this tendency to mischief, but we have seen that every one of the collateral advantages which, it is pretended, arise from restraint is altogether chimerical;

and that the pretence, if good in any shape, is unfounded, delusive, and false.

' There is one thing too, which we have not yet mentioned, and of which it is impossible that the land-owners should be ignorant; their universal omission of it, therefore, in their speakings and writings on the subject, is a suspicious circumstance. Their commodity is subject to no tax in the consumption, and very little in the production. Almost all sorts of manufactures are subject to very heavy taxes. Does this deserve no consideration in comparing their calculations with those of the manufacturers? To what burthens are the commodities subject which the manufacturer produces, compared with those which the commodity of the land in any way endures? How vexatious and burthensome in the case of many of the manufactures are the fiscal regulations and visitations to which they must submit; and to what obstruction and retardation do these interferences often subject their proceedings! And do the land-owners, without the smallest consideration for these things, come forward in full cry, at the end of a series of years which have more than doubled the value and rent of land, and call for a law to keep up the price of corn at a fixed and unnatural height, because a duty is laid upon manufactures imported? Do they not see, that whatever be the duty imposed upon goods imported, so long as it is not greater than the taxes levied upon the same sort of commodity at home, there is no encouragement to the home manufacture? Are the land-owners prepared to tell us how much, in all the different cases of importation, goes merely as an equivalent for the home duties on home commodities; and how much, if any thing, exceeds and operates as a prohibition? Not they indeed. And why?

Because they have trusted more to the strength of their votes, than of their arguments, in the decision of this most important question.

There is another set of circumstances which places the rapacity and injustice displayed on this occasion by the landowners in a striking and odious light. Since the commencement of the war, the price of corn, and along with it, the rent and the value of land, have more nearly tripled, than doubled themselves. During that time, the manufacturers have been subject to distressing fluctuations, almost unexampled. And during that time, according to tables accurately made, and of which no one will dare dispute the results, the wages of tradesmen's labour in London, have sunk in the power of purchasing bread, in the ratio of 36 to 23, and the wages of agricultural labour, in the ratio of 15 to 9. Not contented with having enjoyed these advantages, while these other classes have been subject to disadvantages, which form so remarkable a contrast, the

land-owners, with a modesty and equity all their own, come forward, and say,-No! You shall not permit things to return to their old and natural level, a level from which they have been removed by circumstances which have operated so greatly to our advantage, and to your disadvantage. For these advantages we have contracted a taste; and we are resolved, if possible, to make them perpetual; and as things will no longer do this of their own accord, we must tax you, all of you, to make them do so. The poorest among you shall be deprived of a portion of his bread, that we may not be deprived of these our extraordinary, and, in their own nature, only temporary and accidental, advantages.

Observe, too, the guise in which we are addressed by these same disinterested legislators. They come to us mumping, that is, like sturdy beggars, half threatening, half imploring, not in their own names; that would be more honest, but far less delusive; no, they come to us with all the airs of tender and melting humanity, in the name of the farmers. Oh,' they cry, 'the poor farmers! You would not wish to see the farmers ruined, would you? No, certainly. We are so far from wishing to see any body ruined, that whatever is best for preventing any body's ruin, we shall always be earnest to see performed. Now we are most decidedly of opinion, that the very worst of all ways for preventing that inconvenience, at present denominated ruin, to which low prices expose the farming body, is the proposed plan of keeping prices high, by prohibitory duties on importation. What is it that has brought the farming body into that situation in which the prices of former times will be hurtful to them? Not the acts of the people; but the acts of the landlords; the augmentation of their rents; rents which the landlords have put into their pockets; put blamelessly, we most readily allow; but why should the landlords come forward with a call upon the people, to redeem the unfavourable consequences of their acts, acts by which they alone have profited, while, so far from taking any share in the burthen of the redemption, they desire that the people shall be taxed, retrenched of their food, not merely to protect the farmer, but to enrich the landlords, by upholding the extraordinary rents? The evil would not be very great, if the owners of land were placed in the same situation in which they stood in 1790; considering how much since that time the manufacturing and labouring bodies have sunk. But the land-owners would stand considerably above that situation, if every existing lease were declared at an end, and the most perfect freedom of importation were allowed; because the land, during the intervening space, has been improved, the benefit of which improvements they would retain. There is also another expedient for the protec

tion of the farmer, who can only be injured to the extent to which he is bound by a lease to pay a higher rent than the prices of former times would allow. But the fact is, that the practice among landlords has become so general, as to be almost universal, of not giving leases at all, or only giving them for two or three years, for the sake of being able to squeeze more rent out of the farmers as fast as prices rise, or to squeeze servility out of them along with rent. It would not be a very great sum, therefore, which would be required to redeem all the existing rents in the kingdom. A single year's subsidy, to one foreign emperor, or king, who ought to have done his own business upon his own means, would much more than suffice. The farmers would then stand exempt from inconvenience. And all that would ensue, would be simply this; that a part of those extraordinary advantages which the land-owners have been enjoying during the war, during which the principal classes of the people have severely suffered, would cease. And so will the advantages of the officers of the army and the navy cease; so will the advantages of army contractors, navy contractors, and loan contractors cease. So will the extraordinary advantages of ship owners, and ship builders, of army agents, navy agents, and navy proctors, cease; together with the advantages of all those classes of manufacturers, a very numerous body, whose principal employment has arisen from the demand of the army and navy. Why should the nation be taxed in its bread, to render perennial the extraordinary and casual advantages of the land-owners alone?

To these, a great number of other considerations of great weight might be added, to prove the impolicy and injustice of a law to prevent or obstruct the importation of corn. But it is impossible for us to carry the argument to a greater length. Of the publications, placed at the head of this article, we recommend the first, the work of Dawson, with the greatest warmth. The author places the question of the corn laws in several new and very important lights. He does not, on every point, reason with perfect accuracy from the established principles of political economy; but he has put together a variety of very just, and frequently, very profound observations. Those who wish to see all that can be said in favour of the prohibitory duties, forcibly and very confidently stated, may peruse Lord Lauderdale's pamphlet. George Rose, as usual, sees infinite advantages in the existing state of things, and infinite danger in any alteration. Mr. Malthus professes to state the argument on both sides, and to leave the decision to the reader; but of several of the determining circumstances, he seems to us, during the writing of his pamphlet, to have had no recollection; and with him the balance remains unturned; or inclines with difficulty,