stitution of bad goods for good ones, the reduced profits, the long credit, and the bad debts.

Your laws for binding the great majority to loss and suffering have thus indirectly injured severely the minority. This is above question. Farther, they have directly injured it severely by the destruction of capital they have caused in the suppression of small notes. Even its rich members have not escaped: If their capital have not been rendered insufficient, they have suffered from the bad prices, the difficulty of getting in accounts, and the failure of their customers.

You have given to foreign nations the power by law to supply your colonies, to a considerable extent, with produce and manufactures; and this has injured the trade of your home population. Then you have permitted such nations to supply your market at home, to a large extent, with various of the articles which your colonies produce, to the great injury of your colonial population.

You have thus throughout, with little exception, acted on the principle of compelling the individual to employ his capital without profit, or at a loss, or to labour for inadequate wages. You in reality proclaim it to be the keystone of your system; for you eternally assert, that the cheaper ships, silks, &c. &c. are, the better, no matter what loss of profit, capital, or wages, the cheapness may impose on those who own, or produce them.

In addition to this, you have rendered your whole system one of continual change. Your protecting duties and restrictions are confessedly only temporary ones; and annually you throw interest after interest into stagnation and distress, by reduction of duty or change of regulation. By this your whole trade is, directly or indirectly, greatly injured; it destroys all security of property, and makes the investment of capital, no matter in what way, a desperate speculation. Landed property can scarcely be sold on any terms, because buyers feel that your existing corn laws cannot be maintained, and that what is worth twenty thousand pounds at present, may, twelve months hence, be worth only ten thousand. The taking of a farm is a thing of great hazard, because what would be a fair rent in the present year, may, by some new law,

be rendered a ruinous one in the next. Who would be foolish enough to risk money in the business of silk throwster, when Government has intimated that even the present protecting duties are only temporary ones; or in colo. nial property, amidst the uncertainty created by the slave, and foreign sugar questions? Who dare engage in the herring fishery, when the bounty is on the eve of expiring? Similar questions may be asked touching most of your interests. In every way, this has pernicious operation.

Your laws for destroying employment and rendering wages inadequate, have been, of necessity, laws for promoting ignorance, insubordination, vice, and crime; and you have done almost every thing to render them as fruitful of these as possible. You abolished the enactments against combinations, and taught the servant to cast off the salutary control of the master; you filled the working classes with the most injurious ideas of their rights and importance, and with the expectation that your changes would overwhelm them with felicity. You have continually declaimed against your game, corn, and most other laws, in a manner calculated to make the body of the people regard the violation of law as a thing almost meritorious. Various of your laws you have denounced, on the ground that they sacrificed the poor to the rich. You have never stirred a finger to protect public morals, but, on the contrary, have done every thing to injure them. Religion has been reasoned and laughed out of your cabinet and legislature, and the tone of both is decidedly opposed to the practice of its precepts. Who now would have the intrepidity to provoke the sarcasms and roars of laughter of Parliament, by proposing some corrective to vice and infidelity? The irresistible example of the great is entirely on the side of immorality and profligacy. Let not the godless, lewd, and unprincipled minister of state, imagine that the community will not be inoculated with his guilt; let not the titled, or other knave, who in Parliament sells his country for place and emolument, believe that his knavery will find no imitators amidst the body of the people. If respect for principle and trust, virtue and common honesty, be banished from the Cabinet and Legislature, they will

soon be banished from the countinghouse, shop, and kitchen.

The inevitable consequences of all this-combinations and dissensions, tumult and outrage, licentiousness and crime have increased in no small degree the distress.

Here then are the great causes of national suffering and demoralization. The majority of your population is distressed because it cannot obtain better prices, and your laws prohibit it from obtaining better. Bear in mind that this is fact, and not opinion-that if its prices were for a moment a little advanced, such a glut of foreign goods would follow, as would speedily make them lower than they are. The causes you plead are thus manifestly below no tice; but we will say a word touching overtrading. If your manufactures, &c. had produced less goods in the last twelve months, they must have employed less labour; this you will scarcely deny. Had they done so, the quantity of unemployed labour would have been very great, wages would have been lower, and the working classes generally would have been in extreme distress. It is preposterous to speak of overtrading when your population is always insufficiently employed, and when foreigners will overload your home market, if your own producers suspend production. And it is in the highest degree preposterous in you to declaim against public distress as an evil, when you eternally maintain that the cheapness which it produces, and which can be produced by nothing else, is essential for public prosperity.

And now, what steps will you take? you must either proceed or return, for you cannot stand where you are. You say you are determined to proceed-let us, therefore, impartially, and in utter contempt of your wild generalities, ascertain the consequences,

It is utterly impossible for you to lower the prices of any Interest with out increasing its distress. If you reduce the prices of agricultural produce, it must necessarily add greatly to the sufferings of the agriculturists; and the same cause must have the same effect in any trade or manufacture. The economists, indeed, tell you that the cheapness of corn, &c. is highly advantageous to landowners, farmers, and husbandry labourers; but this outrageous fiction cannot, we think,

delude you. If all past and present experience be lost upon you, listen to reason. You know that when cottons are very cheap, they leave no profit to the manufacturer, and scarcely any wages to his workmen, and that this arises solely from their cheapness: you must see that what is true in respect of cottons must be equally true touching other articles; and that excessive cheapness of the produce of land must inevitably deprive landowners and farmers of profits, and husbandry la bourers of wages. It must be evident to you, that while such produce is excessively cheap, landowners, farmers, and husbandry labourers, must be greatly distressed, no matter what prosperity may be enjoyed by the rest of the community.

In proceeding, therefore, you will lower your protecting duties, and in consequence you will add mightily to the distress of various of your Interests. Your economists insist that foreign corn ought to be admitted almost free from duty, the existing duties on corn are considered by Mr Huskisson and his brethren to be too high, and they have been held forth as temporary ones. They cannot be maintained under your present system. Your Ministers and Legislators have assured the community, that in so far as they cause corn to be dearer in this country than in others, they tax it; the mass of the people have been taught that they are sacrificed by them to the great landowners; and public animosity will soon reduce them, if profits and wages continue to fall in manufactures and trade. Your landholders need not dream that they can have an exclusive system of protection. If there be any truth in the principles of free trade, they must be especially true in regard to corn; this is undeniable. Your system, however, contemplates an ear ly and large reduction of these duties.

The duties, therefore, on corn, provisions, butter, cheese, &c. will be lowered, and this will add immensely to the distress of half your population. The fact is unquestionable. The duties on various other articles will be lowered, and this will add largely to the distress of great numbers more. In proceeding, you must make a gigantic increase to the permanent distress of the majority of your population. Re member that this is not opinion, but demonstration.

What will be the effects to the minority? Here you will put forth your senseless, destructive generalities, and exclaim―The manufacturing and trading classes will draw vast advantage from the cheap food, and the export of manufactures will be incalculably increased by the import of foreign corn. The reply is below our contempt; we must have one less tainted with ignorance and falsehood.

The mass of your manufacturing labourers cannot, on the average, earn more than eight or ten shillings per week each. Such wages will not afford any quantity of bread or animal food worth naming; they can only command potatoes, and such other cheap food, as the reduction of duties can only cheapen in the most trifling degree. These labourers would manifestly derive none but the most insignificant benefits from the reduction.

The mass of your Irish population consumes no bread or animal food, therefore it would reap no advantage from the increased cheapness of them. If this country produce as much corn as it can consume, there will be no import of moment though the duties be wholly removed. Such removal will speedily reduce British corn to the price requisite for excluding foreign; and the exclusion will continue until there is a deficiency. As to consump. tion, excessive cheapness will largely diminish it amidst the agricultural classes; it will not augment it in any material degree amidst the mass of the manufacturing ones, and upon the whole, it will reduce it. In addition to this, your manufactures are excluded from foreign countries by law: if you cheapen them, these countries will raise their duties and still exclude them.

Ireland is chiefly an agricultural country, and your reduction of duties would injure it grievously on the one hand, without yielding it any benefit on the other.

Then the increase of distress to the majority must demonstrably diminish very largely its purchases of the minority. The latter must be distressed with the former, and you are well aware that distress always reduces its prices and wages to the lowest point. In reality, the reduction of the duties on corn, &c., must make food dearer to the mass of your population.

You may retain these duties, and

still, if you persevere in lowering the protecting ones on manufactured goods, the prices of agricultural produce must fall very greatly. The body of the working classes will be compelled to abandon, in a very large degree, the consumption of wheaten bread and animal food, if their wages be a little more reduced, and the abandonment will soon make both much cheaper. Perseverance in your system cannot therefore do other than increase immensely the permanent distress of your whole population. You can offer nothing worthy of the name of disproof.

But you will abolish your poor laws; and here again you overwhelm us with your crazy generalities. What will the abolition do? It will lighten the burdens of your people of property, and add grievously to the burdens of your working classes; it will take six or seven millions from the yearly income of your starving labourers, and give them to the landholders and the owners of shops, warehouses, and dwelling-houses in towns. It must add largely to the distress of the majority of your population, whatever benefit it may yield to the remainder.

Your generalities represent that the abolition will compel your working classes to find employment in one place if they cannot in another. Is there then always employment for these classes, if they will only seek it? A very decisive answer may be found in your plea of overtrading; in it you practically declare, such an excess of labour is even now employed, in every business, that it ruins the market with excess of goods; how then could more labour be employed, or, if it could be, what effect would it have on your glutted market?

The poor laws form the great prop of wages; abolish them, and with your redundant population wages will speedily fall almost one half. What will follow? The body of your British labouring orders will be compelled to abandon the consumption of taxed articles, to feed on potatoes and butcher's offal, and to wear rags. In their fall they must pull down with them not only the small tradesmen, but to a great extent the larger ones. How will the landholders and the owners of buildings in towns fare? The produce of land, and of course land itself, must

determination, it must thus inevitably follow, that your landowners and farmers must lose a large part of the frag ments of their property, and be bound to continual severe suffering, that the mass of your working classes must be bound to the lowest standard of living

As to taxes, if you act honestly, you cannot reduce, but must increase them. Your revenue declines, and a little further fall in prices and wages will cause a serious deficiency; push the farmers, the body of the working orders, and the small tradesmen, a step or two farther on the path of cheapness, and they will scarcely touch your taxed articles. You must either confiscate the property of the fund holder, as you have done that of the landowner, farmer, shipowner, &c., or raise your taxes. If you decide on confiscation, and rob the state creditor of half his money, it will enable you to take off about one-fourth of the taxes; and what effect will it have we will not hear your generalities-in removing the distress? The suffering part of your working orders consume but little of taxed commodities; if we assume, that each individual, with his family, contributes two pounds per annum to the revenue, his weekly gain would be about twopence farthing. If we assume, that the best paid workman contributes eight pounds, his weekly gain would be about ninepence. If we assume, that the farmer contributes twenty pounds, his yearly gain would be five pounds. The gain of the distressed manufacturer might be from five to ten pounds per annum. On the other hand, the fundholders would be bitterly distressed by the loss of half their income, and they would expend fourteen or fifteen millions per annum less with the manufacturers and traders. Your generalities will not bear the test of arithmetic, and if you possess the understanding of manhood, you must see that this criminal remedy would be almost powerless. Your Ministers say that twenty-seven millions of yearly taxes have been repealed since the war ceased; and yet your population, greatly enlarged as it is, has been far more distressed since the repeal, than it was previously.

If you persevere according to your

must be chained to penury and wretchedness. How this must operate on your trade, revenue, domestic peace, Irish population, national power, and the slender threads which hold the members of your empire together, we need not describe. If you be blind to the appalling catastrophe-to the horrible precipice on the brink of which you stand, your sight cannot be restored by human power.

If we appeal to the memory of your fathers-to your hallowed institutions

to your humanity and patriotismto that native spirit of nobility which once distinguished the Englishman as proudly amidst his species, as its fruits distinguished his country amidst nations, it will only excite your derision; we will not, therefore, commit the folly. But, by your thirst for trade-your lust for lucre-your sordid affection for your purses, and your base passion for the gains of confiscation and robbery, we conjure you to pause! cast from you your mad generalities, and ascertain the real character of the objects for which you are thus plunging your empire into ruin.

You say, you must bring down prices and wages in this manner, or you cannot compete and trade with fo◄ reign nations. Here again we have your destructive generalities. Are then foreign nations willing to take your manufactures, provided you cheapen them? No: they are determined to exclude them—and, in consequence, they raise their duties, as you lower your prices. Turn from your generalities, and look at these nations in detail: the great continental ones, and the United States of America, act on the system of excluding your manufactures, no matter how cheap they may be. You have ground down your prices, and still you are as much shut out of the market of America, France, Russia, Spain, &c. &c., as ever. Is there any hope that these nations will act differently? Not the least. They will take nothing from you save what their own interests require; they take your cotton twist, that they may ex

clude your wrought cottons; France will take your iron, that she may ri val you in hardware; they declare that they will not change their system until they can compete with youthat is, until the cheapness of their own goods can as effectually exclude yours, as laws.

With regard to the few open foreign markets, they will soon be in a great measure closed to you; the South Ame rican republics are adopting the exclusive system. There has been no necessity for you to reduce your prices so greatly in them, for in most articles you have been able to undersell all rivals.

Your reduction of duties on various foreign articles, has not increased the import of them; it has only put your own producers of such articles under distress prices. Your import of foreign silks, &c. has not enlarged your exports to the countries you receive them from. You may take off all the duty on corn, and this, as we have already said, will not on the average en large your import; it will, by the production of distress, rather diminish than increase consumption; it is impossible for you to have a regular import, unless you have a deficiency of home-grown corn.

You must own that distress diminishes greatly general consumption. It cannot be necessary for us to prove that the farmer's consumption of most articles of trade is much greater when he is prosperous, than when he is distressed; or that the workman's consumption is much greater when he has twenty shillings per week, than when he has ten. Every man must see, that if the country were in prosperity, it would consume infinitely more foreign and colonial produce of all kinds, than it now does; it would, of course, pay for this additional quantity with additional exports.

How, then, stands the case? On the one hand you evidently cannot enlarge your export of manufactures, and import of foreign goods to any extent worthy of notice; on the other, you evidently diminish immensely your export of manufactures, and im port of foreign goods. To have low freights, and import a petty portion of foreign corn and silks, you prevent the import of a vast quantity of timber, hemp, tobacco, sugar, coffee, &c. &c. By fruitless attempts to force your manufactures into foreign countries, you

lose an export of them to the amount of some millions annually. This is not all. The nations which have raised their duties against you, as you have lowered your prices, have chained you to these low prices in every market. Your export of manufactures in late years has been attended with heavy loss, instead of profit.

Detesting your generalities as we do, let us now look at some particulars. It will be sufficiently near the truth for our purpose, if we take the real value of the manufactures you export to foreign Europe and the United States of America annually at twenty millions. Two or three millions more or less are not material to the argument. These manufactures consist, in a large degree, of such as you cannot be equalled in, and they are to a great extent fabricated by machinery. If you had kept up your prices, you still would have exported most of them; but granting that it would have struck off one half from the export, what would have followed? You would have sold ten millions' worth of goods at a good profit, instead of twenty millions' worth at a loss; in addition, you would have sold all you exported to other parts at a good profit, instead of a loss, and all consumed at home at a good profit. And it is manifest that the additional home and colonial consumption caused by this, would have done far more than balance the lost ten millions.

You can only find the truth in this manner. The statesman will only judge of things by their real charac ter; therefore he must treat with scorn your ignorant generalities in favour of foreign trade. If the latter be profitable, it is beneficial; if it be attended with loss, it is injurious. The nation, as well as the individual, must be injured and ruined by a losing trade. To preserve a contemptible part of your foreign trade, you have made not only the remainder, but your domestic trade, a source of loss-you have made every business a losing one. A tradesman has fifty customers, and he is informed by ten of them, that they will buy of him no longer, unless he will supply them at a loss; instead of giving them up, and continuing to draw his profits from the other forty, he accedes to their terms; he cannot charge the forty higher prices than the ten, therefore he supplies the whole at a loss, and ruins himself. You are act