164 The Re-assembling of Parliament. [FEB. 



would build the chapel of St. Stephen's, from the floor to the ceiling, 

 they would never enable an ignorant and idle squire, to fare better than 

 an intelligent and industrious merchant or manufacturer. Adam Smith's 

 definition of the sources of national wealth will ever remain the true one, 

 they are " the land and the labour" of the country and nation. These 

 two are in no certain ratio to one another. When the people are few, 

 and their manners rude, the spontaneous productions of the soil supply 

 all the cravings of their savage appetites ; and then the land is the chief 

 source of wealth. But as civilization proceeds, and as the desires and 

 devices of men multiply, the value of the land always sinks in proportion 

 to the value of the labour ; and in a country, circumstanced as England 

 is now, the land really forms a very small part of the source of the 

 wealth, while the labour of the people constitutes the whole of the 

 remainder. The mere proprietor of the soil is, whatever he might be 

 supposed, lord only of the entangled wood, or the barren heath ; for it is 

 the labour of the people which have stamped its agricultural value on the 

 soil ; and with the exception of what the land was originally, a quarter 

 of wheat is just as much a manufactured article as a bale of woollen 

 cloth, or a steam-engine. Nay, if the matter were fairly gone into, and 

 allowance made for the long preparation of the field, and all the labours 

 of the husbandman, it would be found that there is not a greater frac- 

 tion of the value of the wheat immediately resolvable into the abstract 

 and intrinsic production of land, than there is in the other two com- 

 modities that have been cited. 



Now, the question of the Corn Laws, is not, as has been absurdly 

 supposed and said, a question between the mercantile and manufacturing 

 interest, and the agricultural interest. It is a question between labour and 

 land, between all, w 7 hether they produce food, or clothing, or houses, or 

 ornaments, or any thing else, w T ho live by the exertion of their intel- 

 lects, or the application of their hands ; and those who, without pro- 

 ducing any thing by their own skill, or their own industry, live upon 

 the rent of the soil. Such being the case : arid that it is the case is as clear 

 as any proposition in political economy can be, it is obviously just as 

 much for the interest of the farmer and the agricultural labourer, that the 

 corn laws should be repealed, as it is for that of the manufacturer or the 

 artizan ; because in proportion as each of these can get cheaper food, so in 

 proportion must he enjoy more luxuries, or have more leisure tospend in amuse- 

 ment, or in the cultivation of his mind. Nor does the advantage stop even 

 here ; for the people who live by labour, are so prodigiously superior in num- 

 bers and intelligence, and consequently in power, to those who live upon 

 the mere rent of land, that it would be contrary to every principle of philoso- 

 phy, every deduction of logic, and every result of experience, to suppose that, 

 in the matter of prices, they should not be the controlling party ; and 

 that, whatever the owner of the land may impose upon them in the form 

 of rent, they will take back from him, with all the interest that he can 

 spare, in supplying him with those necessaries without which he cannot 

 exist. Experience has shown clearly, that though it be true that the 

 corn law T s have kept land at a forced rent, the other interest have advanced 

 more rapidly in wealth and comfort than the land-holders. Compare any 

 great proprietor of the soil with the majority of the people now ; and in 

 as far as history affords data, make the same comparison two hundred 

 years, or even fifty years backward, and see what the soil-man has 

 gained by all his legislation. It is of no consequence how much a 



