570 Population of Great Britain and Ireland [DEC. 



country stop in to cramp us in any attempt at change. All that the man 

 whose property was thus suddenly depreciated had to receive, under the 

 new state of things, would be diminished by one-half; but all that he 

 had to pay the whole amount of his liabilities would remain the same. 

 With only ten shillings of rent received from the farmer, he would still 

 have to pay twenty shillings of claim for the public defence, or for the 

 interest of the stockholder. His bonds, his settlements, mortgages, and 

 securities of every description, would remain in their full extent : his means 

 of meeting those liabilities (the rents upon the faith of which they had 

 been contracted) would be diminished by one-half: the result would be 

 that his estate would pass to his creditors his person, if not protected by 

 privilege, to a gaol. This course (putting out of the question the abate- 

 ment of home trade, which the fall of the rents would occasion) would be 

 little else than to create one great mass of misery and ruin, in our endea- 

 vours or anxiety to get rid of another. 



The truth is, that those persons who are so assiduous to convince two of 

 our contending parties, the agriculturist and the manufacturer, that they 

 are " brothers," carefully forget always that we have two classes of 

 manufacturers those who supply the home market, and those interested 

 in the foreign : the latter of whom, in spite of all the logic of all the 

 schools, will feel and believe that their interests and those of the English 

 corn-growers their immediate interests are opposed. The home agri- 

 culturist, who would keep up the price of wheat, tells the home manufac- 

 turer truly " We are brothers, and our interests are one. Pay me a high 

 money price for my corn, and I will pay you a high price for your cotton :" 

 the advantage of which course will be, that each receives a high price from 

 the public generally, and pays upon a great body of particular claims no 

 more than he must pay whether his general receipt were high or low. For 

 example : A, a landowner, has 3/. to pay (to the public defence, the pen- 

 sion-list, and the fundholder), in the shape of a tax upon his footman ; 

 and 3/. (to B, the manufacturer), for the livery which the footman wears. 

 Corn being at 60s. a quarter, two quarters pay the whole demand 61. 

 But, if corn be reduced to 2/. a quarter, although the cost of the livery has 

 also fallen to 2L, still the landlord is a loser; for the tax remains where it 

 did. The livery and the tax together amount now to 51. ; and to pay that 

 he must give, not two quarters of wheat, but two quarters and a half. So, 

 again B, the Home manufacturer, who pays 6s. to his workman, for 

 weaving a piece of cloth, and 4s. (to the fundholder) for duty on the raw 

 material, if he sells his cloth in the market for 12s. (the cost being 10s.), 

 gets 2s. although wheat shall be 60s. a quarter by the transaction. But 

 if wheat fall to 40s., and the market value of his cloth in the same propor- 

 tion to 10s., then, although his workman's wages have fallen to 5s., yet 

 the duty of 4s. remains the same, and he loses Is. of profit by the change. 

 Thus far, therefore, nothing can be more true than that the agriculturist, and 

 the home manufacturer are brothers : but here and this is the point which 

 we are apt to lose sight of here, in one moment, the mutual interest, 

 which has run so smoothly between the parties, is broken up. For 

 the manufacturer for the foreign market for whom it is impossible to 

 make especial provisions and arrangements is forgotten in this treaty, and 

 is starving. His customers in Germany and America will not pay him 

 high prices, because wheat is dear in England. Buying grain at 31. a 

 quarter, he is undersold in his market by rivals, who can buy it at I/. 10s. ; 

 and he says fairly to the English agriculturist, " You purchase none of 



