1832.] Tithes versus Rent. 71 



term will save us from many serious errors of deduction and inference 

 in the process of working out the several rational problems, in which 

 the whole subject of political truth is involved. 



10. Attributing, then, the general distress of those who depend upon 

 any sort of employment to the scarcity of such employment, and its 

 inadequate remuneration ; inadequate to the reasonable wants of civi- 

 lized subsistence, after satisfying the unparalleled requisitions of our 

 national and local taxation ; assigning, moreover, such scarcity of em- 

 ployment, such insufficient remuneration to labour of all sorts, to the 

 general monopoly, arising out of our own perverse contrivances of late 

 years, to heap up capital into enormous masses; bringing home to 

 monopoly in general the whole of the general distress, except that which 

 our enormous debt has a tendency to create it is clear, that the portion 

 of this distress, most grievous to be borne, most obstructive of the 

 common happiness of the nation, most destructive of the endowments, 

 by which less cultivated humanity is distinguished from the brute 

 creation ; the most intolerable for suffering man to bear, the most pain- 

 ful for pitying man to contemplate, is that portion of distress, which is 

 inflicted on us by monopoly of land, or, in other terms, (< the existing 

 condition of landed property." 



11. Monopoly of land is the effect of large capital invested in land, 

 with a view to farther large accumulation. 



The great inducement to invest capital thus, results from a mere con- 

 trivance of man, and the profits of such investment therefore rank under 

 the appellation privilege ; this term being understood to imply, "facti- 

 tious right, of which we do not take cognizance a priori, communicable 

 by society, and therefore by society revocable also." 



The pretence for such a contrivance is the good of the community, 

 which community, as it first called this contrivance into operation for 

 its good, may, beyond all possible doubt, modify or annihilate it for its 

 good also. 



12. This privilege, then, of large profits returned to large capital 

 invested in land, may, without the least injustice, as soon as the com- 

 munity think fit, be curtailed, or altogether cancelled. 



13. The pretence upon which, in the year 1815, the corn laws were 

 passed, was the good of the country in general, and in particular the 

 advantage of enticing the men of England to attend to the cultivation 

 of the soil, as a means of independent supply for the country during 

 war. 



The houses of parliament consisted then, as they do now, mainly of 

 landed proprietors, and landed proprietors being, as all classes of men 

 always have been, averse from looking very carefully after arguments, 

 to disprove conclusions favourable to their profit, the following con- 

 clusions were promptly arrived at : 



Firstly. That the country would be deprived of the provision of 

 bread, in case of a war, if it did not raise enough corn for its own con- 

 sumption. 



Secondly. That the only way to insure a sufficient supply of home 

 grown corn, was to assimilate the commodity of land to other com- 

 modities, in respect of the grain to be derived from its possession by 

 private individuals, thus divesting the accumulative propensities of 

 Englishmen (by which, though to a certain extent unavoidably, they are 



