72 Tithes versus Rent. [JAN. 



not amiably distinguished from other nations), from trade and merchan- 

 dize to the proprietorship of land. 



The great majority of both houses, being by far too delicately jealous 

 of the presumed peculiar dignity of the higher classes, to exhibit an 

 open tendency to any of those grovelling and plebeian pursuits, by which 

 vulgar men are wont to satiate the " auri sacra fames," were of course 

 delighted at the prospect of indulging the hidden passion of their 

 essentially vulgar souls, unsmutched by contact with the profane herd, 

 amongst whom vulgar money-getters are obliged to struggle for their 

 gains. Nay, more ; how must they have exulted in their hearts, in 

 many instances, of course incapacitated from a consciousness of wrong, 

 by the self-deceiving force of extreme temptation ; how must they have 

 exulted in the opportunity offered by the profound stupidity of the 

 farmers, the prostrate brutish ignorance of the poor labourers, to enhance 

 their ancestral importance in the .estimation of a large division of the 

 people, at the very moment of their dealing humanity a deadly blow ! 

 With what avidity must they have seized upon the means thus offered, 

 of disguising their attack on the comforts of middle life, the subsistence 

 of low life, under the chivalrous baronial pretence, Amor patrice ! 



14. As was to be expected, the selfishness of the corn laws was too 

 gross and palpable to deceive all of those within the doors of parliament, 

 who were even intimately connected by ties of consanguinity, and 

 friendship, and party, with the landed proprietors : it seemed that 

 nothing short of a direct and extensive personal interest in the projits of 

 the proposed measure, could invest common sense with sufficient im- 

 pudence, could work upon it with a charm of deception potent enough, 

 to induce it to convert the comfort and subsistence of millions into the 

 wealth and luxury of a few hundreds. 



Thus we find the late Sir W. Curtis, whose property was not vested 

 in land, and who therefore had, on this subject, a chance of forming a 

 correct opinion though he was in general a most unhesitating sup- 

 porter of the ministry we find this member declaring on the 17th 

 February, 1815, in the House of Commons, that " rents having in 

 cases doubled, in some trebled during the war, he saw no rate of taxation, 

 no peculiar pressure on the landed interests, to justify the measure. 



Thus also in the House of Lords, the Marquis of Wellesley, and Lord 

 Grenville, similarly circumstanced with Sir W. Curtis as to landed pro- 

 perty, at all events much less interested than most landed proprietors, 

 protested against the corn bill on every account ; asserting, that the 

 country did not require it ; that the landed interest did not deserve it ; 

 that no human interference could prevent our being always supplied 

 from foreign countries ; that the measure was being hurried through 

 parliament without waiting for any evidence of fact in its favour, with 

 a most suspicious and disgraceful precipitancy ; but most urgently did 

 these comparatively wise, these humane noblemen protest against the 

 measure, because that, of all its directly mischievous consequences, by 

 ' far the worst was, its " enchroachment on the condition of the poor/' 



To complete this illustration of the fact, that a disposition to approve 

 of large investments of capital in land, indicates a gross vulgar per- 

 sonal interestedness, however disguised from the offender's conscience, 

 by the extreme force of temptation, to illustrate this fact by one striking 

 example more: Mr. Whitbread, the boisterous asserter of popular 



