Answer. They were passed to keep corn stationary at an unjust price. Suppose the manufacturers were to get a tax on home-grown corn, and say they did it to make the price of waistcoat-pieces stationary. 26. 6. Another argument made use of was, that the poor man would get his bread much cheaper by a repeal of the Corn La vs. But he might be allowed to ask, would he have as much money to buy it with?" Answer. The poor must get more corn, or more corn cannot be eaten, for it is the poor, and not the rich who have the hungry mouths. To say, therefore, that more corn shall come into the country and the poor not get more, is the same absurdity as it would be to tell them that if they would consent to let the quantity of corn be halved, their wages would rise till they got as much corn out of the half as out of the whole. 27. "What would the experiment cost? and what would the results be at home?" Answer. What has the experiment cost? and what have been its results at home? The loss of nine-tenths of the manufacturing for Europe which has been thrown into other hands. The killing of millions of the population by premature diseases dependent upon want. Every man's bankruptcy, and the bankruptcies of all his cousins. The making the country a little country where it might have been a great one. short, all that men complain of-women cry for, and both will join in teaching their children to alter. In 28. "Small farmers would be ruined, and large farmers would lose half their capital. No money could be borrowed upon estates-farms would be unlet for fear of low prices-land would be unsown, and there would be a greater scarcity of corn than was ever known." Answer. This is the place to let out a correct account of the effects the Corn Laws really have on farmers and on labourers. When the Corn Laws were first imposed, there is no doubt they made a flush of employment for farmers. They made, suppose, a demand for five farmers where there would only have been four; and so far the farmers were like every other set of men whose trade has an increased demand. But how much of that is left now?— Is the consequence anything but that there are five farmers' sons bidding against one another for farms, where there would only have been four? If trade had been free there would have been an opening for farmers' sons, and husbands for their daughters, in trade and commerce, and all the various ways in which the increasing wealth of a growing coun 66 try spreads itself into general happiness. But the farmers have known better than that. They have shut up the country, and said: Hitherto shall ye grow, and no further ;" and then they stand amazed that there are bad times for farmers as for other men. But they will say, "Should we be menced by taking off the Corn Laws?" Yes, you would, provided only it were done with so much of a little at a time as should allow the benefit that would arise to you from your share in the general opening for employment for children to keep pace with your losses from ceasing to rob your neighbours in the price of corn. Besides, you are not the men to lose much. There is no denying you might lose something: you might lose to a certain extent in the quantity of demand for farmers; though this is among things doubtful, because it is a question whether the demands for the use of land, though it might be in new ways, would not balance the old; and you might lose something by your leases till you can alter them, which is no business of ours. But you have the rent to draw upon. Excepting scraps and pickings, the loss must fall on the rent; and this it was that made your lords and masters so anxious that none but a rent-owner should enter the House of Commons. . But even the landlords, if they had the wit to know it, are not without hope in the matter. In the first place, the absolute money losses that are to arise are nothing like what men look for. In numerous places (though not in all, the opening of Great Britain to commerce would be attended with a rise in the value of land. A landlord in the East Riding lowered his tenant's rent at their request, upon condition that they agreed to go back to the old rent or quit on the removal of the Corn Laws. But there is another side to be looked at yet. Suppose a landlord does make his two thousands a year into three through the Corn Laws, what good does that do him, if his eight sons and daughters are to be thrown on his hands as annuitants, because there is no way for honest men to live; because there are three times as many doctors as anybody wants to fee, twice as many clergy as anybody wants to hear, five times as many lawyers as anybody can find briefs for, and twelve hundred candidates waiting for the first asignee at the disposal of the Commanderin-Chief? Does this let out the truth that men may ruin their country, and get themselves no good after all? In fact, no landlords can finally gain by it, except two classes; those who have the faculty of causing all their families to be provided for at the public expense, and those who, by their statutes, (as is still the case with some ecclesiastical land owners,) should have no families at all. These two classes may gain. All the rest will be brought to a stand-still in the end, by the connection it has pleased heaven to put between injuring others and suffering ourselves. The reader has here a specimen of Colonel Thompson's ready style. Had we extracted from the Corn Law Catechism, specimens more pithy might have been adduced; or from any of his six volumes of "Exercises" reprinted from the Westminster Review, wit and learning, in varied profusion, might have been selected. SECTION VIII.-MANCHESTER ANTI-CORN-LAW ASSOCIATION. ABRAHAM WALTER PAULTON. FORMATION OF THE LEAGUE. BANQUET OF 1840. As we have seen, in a preceding section, the Manchester Anti-Corn-Law Association of 1838, originated in the visit of Doctor Bowring, in September of that year. The first public act of the Association was to initiate a system of political education by lectures. Their first lecturer was Mr. Abraham Walter Paulton, a young gentleman educated as a scholar, then resident in Bolton, Mr. Paulton's appearance as a lecturer was the result of an unexpected incident. A stranger in Bolton, of whose name there is some uncertainty, but published at the time as Dr. Birnie, engaged the theatre to deliver a lecture on the Corn Laws, in the first week of September, 1838. His audience was admitted by payment which rendered them somewhat ill-noticed on finding that the lecturer was unable to fulfil his part of the engagement. Either too tired, or unused to such a position, or ignorant of his subject he broke down. There were symptoms of a riot. The Mayor of Bolton sat in one of the boxes-Mr. Paulton beside him. At his suggestion the latter went upon the stage and addressed the people with a view to recover their good humour, and ended by promising to open the theatre without a price of admission on that day week, when a lecture on the Corn Laws would be delivered. With this the audience were, for the time, satisfied. It now devolved on him to redeem his pledge, and prepare his lecture. His education and natural eloquence fitted him for its delivery; but his inexperience made the acquisi tion of facts and substantial arguments a task of some diffi culty. In this he was assisted by Mr. Thomasson, Mr. Arrowsmith, and one or two other manufacturers of Bolton, gentlemen well known for their intellectual attainments, and extensive stores of practical information; also, by Mr. Thomas Ballantyne, then Editor of The Bolton Free Press newspaper, afterwards the founder and Editor of The Munchester Examiner. To this gentleman the present writer has, on later occasions, been indebted for information on matters of fact and references to books, as if all the cyclopædias, catalogues, almanacks, and statistical registers of the kingdom were stored in him, ready for the use of a friend at a moment's notice; indebted, not alone for references to useful information, but for the cheerful friendship of a generous mind. Thomas Ballantyne, when a boy, and up to the age of manhood, was a hand-loom weaver in Paisley, his native town. He read and studied deeply and earnestly, while driving his loom and shuttle, the books suspended before him. In this way, unaided by other teachers, he attained that extensive knowledge of books, and at his brief resting hours, that practical use of short-hand writing which made him first a good newspaper reporter, and, subsequently, a working editor, equalled not by many, unsurpassed by none within the whole range of periodical literature in Britain. Thus much incidentally of one of the best, most industrious, and most unassuming of men. The present is not the place to record all that should and may yet be written of him. Thus assisted, Mr. Paulton prepared and delivered his first lecture. It was accepted with enthusiasm, repeated the following week, and being reported in the newspapers, led the new Association at Manchester to invite him to lecture there. Mr. Prentice went to Bolton for that purpose pursuant to a resolution of the Association passed on the 17th of October. It was announced in The Manchester Times of the 30th, that Mr. Paulton had consented to deliver lectures in Manchester, upon the Corn Monopoly, its effect upon the trade and manufactures of the country, and on the condition of the people. The notice proceeded thus" Mr. Paulton, in addition to a thorough knowledge of the question of Free Trade, enforces his views with such power of illustration as to give high interest to what would otherwise be a dry discussion. The first lecture will be given in the Corn Exchange, next Thursday evening, at seven o'clock; the admission will be by tickets which may be obtained of members of the Association, and at our office." In the following week our additional list of committee men was published; and in it, for the first time, appeared the name of one who soon advanced to the front, and became the leader of the movement-Richard Cobden. Posterity will be gratified if we put the names of that committee on record. MANCHESTER ANTI-CORN-LAW ASSOCIATION. Elkanah Armitage, Cromford Court. Robert Bunting, Ardwick Green. Walter Clarke, Duke Street. Edmond Dodgshon, York Street, Cheetham. John Dracup, Chapel Street, Salford. J. C. Dyer, Burnage. Peter Eckersley, St. Mary's Gate. Edward Evans, Market Street. (Nicholson & Evans J. G. Frost, Water Street. John Henry Fuller, 24, Bridgewater Place. Jeremiah Garnett, Guardian Office, Market Street. J. S. Grafton, Mosley Street. George Hadfield, Fountain Street, Edward Hall, New Brown Street. Joseph Heron, Princess Street. James Hudson. John Hide, Oxford Road. Thomas Harbottle, Norfolk Street. Andrew Hall, Brown Street. Thomas Hampson, Great Ancoats Street. Thomas Hopkins, Broughton Lane. James Howie, King Street. William Harvey, New Cannon Street. Alexander Henry, Portland Street. James Kershaw, High Street. VOL. II 81 |