mistaken the means and sources of their prosperity. At the end of nearly twenty years of trial of their own nostrum, accompanied by an immense reduction of taxes-in the second year of abundant harvests-with a protection, amounting to a total prohibition of foreign corn, and at a time when other interests are, at least, without immediate cause of complaint, the distress of agriculture is such that it is proclaimed from the Throne and reiterated in both Houses of Parliament. The landed interest have either aimed at more than is attainable, or, in their impatience, they have sought their object by wrong methods. I believe the error to be of the latter description. A country like this cannot be isolated from the rest of the world; it cannot take an arbitrary level at its own choosing: it has never done so; and the condition, aimed at by the corn law since the peace, is totally new in practice. A country requiring foreign markets for its surplus industry, to the great extent that England does, can no more assume a station inconsistent with the relations of commerce than it can create a peculiar atmosphere for itself. In the case of the precious metals we have seen how vain it is to attempt a fictitious local standard-it is only not quite so difficult to fix an artificial local price for corn. Commerce is the unrelenting rectifier of either error; and the only difference in the operation is, that in the one case the correction is rapid and palpable, and in the other it is slow and lingering, and not readily perceptible to common observation. The foreign price and the British price have a natural tendency to assimilation, whether direct mixture be permitted or not. The influence of the foreign price is felt through the medium of the exports; it comes back upon the British price in the form of low returns for those exports. The only question is, at what level shall they meet? The landed interest are manoeuvring for the lowest level that can be apprehended in any case. Their plan depresses the price abroad, and the home price must be drawn downwards the more. If they would take courage and consent at once to direct mixture they would elevate the foreign price, and thereby arrest the downward progress of their own prices.

Those of the landed interest who are not so besotted as to despise foreign trade, seek to extricate themselves from the dilemma of their position by professing unlimited confidence in the superior faculties of British industry, and the greater energies

of the British workman. I beg them to follow out this view of the question. Suppose it to be true, as they say, that one Manchester factory-man is equal to two foreigners, are those superior powers their property or his? Have they a right to make him carry double weight for their emolument? Are we to treat a superior breed of men as we would treat a superior breed of horses? But are not the labourers in agriculture of the same breed? We know they are; and it is also known, that the farmer as well as the manufacturer obtains a greater produce from a given quantity of bone and muscle in England, than in any foreign country whatever.

But the landed interest are afraid that we shall become dependant upon foreign countries for food. Let them, I say again, follow out also this proposition; to what conclusion does it lead them? Simply this, and no other-that the population must be kept down by starvation. This is treating the high-bred Manchester workman rather worse than the high-bred horse. However severely the horse may be matched by his unfeeling master, he is sure to have all the invigoration that the most heartening food can give him. But suppose it to be the policy of the nation to check the increase of the people by the dearness of their foodwould that be a reason for giving the additional part of the price to the producers? Most certainly not. The instrument used for the purpose should be an excise tax, the produce of which should increase the public revenue for the general benefit.

And yet, notwithstanding the strength of my case, I will agree to a compromise. The whole difficulty of the subject lies in a misappropriation of the soil of the country-caused, in the first instance, by the high war prices, and imprudently kept up since the war, under the fallacious promises of the corn laws. We have lately purchased Negro emancipation-let us now make a similar, and a far easier, effort to purchase Corn emancipation. If about a million acres of our strong arable lands were laid down in (or for) grass, the quantity of corn withdrawn from the market would be such, that the foreign supply would not be able to distress the good lands. The scheme of our agriculture is absolutely defective from the want of a greater breadth of inferior grass land: the graziers, notwithstanding the richness of their pastures, and the high price of meat, complain much of low profit, from the want of lean stock at reasonable prices.

The outline of the plan is to impose a duty of 10s. the quarter on every species of corn; to be reduced by 1s. a year for five successive years, until it settled at 5s. the quarter. The produce of this duty might be a fund to be applied in bounties to those landowners who should lay land down to grass, under covenants not to break it up again within twenty years, without returning the bounty and the interest upon it. There might also be given to the parishes in which this conversion of land took place, and in proportion to the quantity converted, some of the money to assist a part of their labourers to emigrate, if they should be disposed to do so.

That there is no way out of our difficulty, except by giving up the arable cultivation of a large breadth of our worst land, I am most confident. The only question is-whether the consummation shall be brought about in a sure and beneficial manner, by a legislative measure, or left to the slow operation of distress. The corn farmers are like trees too closely planted-none flourish until a sufficient number of the weakest have died off. The measure I suggest is like that of the woodman, who thins them out at an early state of their growth.

I propose the same duty upon oats, barley, &c., as upon wheat, because a greater encouragement to the spring corns would lead to a more wholesome and more ameliorating system of husbandry. I am not at all afraid of the difficulty of the details for the working of the measure I have here suggested.

27th February, 1834.

H. B. T.

These letters attracted the attention of, amongst others, Sir Benjamin Hawes, who thought not only that they bore internal evidence of being the compositions of Mr. Hume, but that they displayed such an amount of sound political economy, combined with a practical acquaintance, equally large, with all the details of trade and commerce, that he was the only person who could have written them. To Sir Benjamin Hawes it was entirely owing that these letters were republished; for no sooner had Mr. Hume admitted that he was the

author, than he urged the reprinting of them in the form of a pamphlet.

It was not without difficulty that Mr. Hume was persuaded to commit them a second time to the press. He thought few persons would read them except in the columns of a newspaper. The publication, however, was most successful, and a second edition was speedily called for.

In the early and more moderate days of the AntiCorn Law League, the energetic directors of its movements published copious extracts from those letters in the form of a tract, which they circulated through the country we might literally say by the ton.

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CHAPTER V.

ALTERATION IN THE LAWS RELATING TO SILK-MR. DEACON HUME VISITS THE PRINCIPAL SEATS OF MANUFACTURE - POLITICAL OPINIONS - EVIDENCE BEFORE A SELECT COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS-MR. HUSKISSON-MANCHESTER CHAMBER OF COMMERCE-MR. DEACON HUME'S STATEMENTS RESPECTING SMUGGLING CANVASSED IN PARLIAMENT BY THE EARL OF DERBY.

"It is to the increasing wealth of the manufacturing population and the progress of industry, and not to artificial regulations for creating high prices, that this country must look, not only for relief from her burthens, but for the power of making fresh exertions, whenever her situation may demand them. It is not in the power of any artificial measures to give that real relief to agriculture, or to any other mode of occupation, which can only flow from the increasing activity and increasing industry of the people."-HUSKISSON.

Ir has been correctly observed, that "the manufacture of silk is singularly characteristic of the industry of France and England, showing the addiction of the one to luxury, of the other to utility. Of all the views which can be taken of this subject, this is the most interesting and the grandest. Profit and loss may captivate the merchant's mind; the financier, the statesman, may consider labour as a mine of national wealth, and some ministers will hold it to be a source of taxation; but philosophy, which comprises these and every other view, which presides over them all, will never be satisfied by any inquiry which is not at once

K