1826.] Rich and Poor. 245 
an important constituent of the price of corn,—that the landlord believes 
‘it is, and acts upon the belief; and farther, that the higher he can force 
up the price of corn, the higher rent he imposes on the land; and as a 
natural consequence of these facts and this belief, he makes use of his 
station and influence,,to raise those prices to augment and secure those 
rents. / 
But what, after all, can he do to effect this purpose? What power or 
influence has he to, augment prices? His LEGISLATIVE PowER. But 
every landowner is not.a legislator. No, but every legislator is a land- 
owner, or a landowner’s representative. Nay, county-members are the 
only land-representatiyes. That is the letter of the laws; and the letter 
of the laws we treat, not, with the contempt it deserves, but with the 
contempt, with which. by all it is actually treated. With the exception 
then of a few town-members, the House of Commons consists of the 
representatives of the landed interest. The members themselves must 
qualify as owners of land, and in reality either are men of landed pro- 
perty, or the locum-tenentes of such men. It is, too, every man’s 
ambition, to be a landed proprietor, and every one hastens to the glorious 
goal of general competition. The exceptions then are so few, that the 
fact may be taken as indisputable—the House of Commons is the repre- 
. sentative of the land; and of the Peers, in this respect, nothing of 
course need be said. 
Now we ask,—if a government be intended to protect the universal 
interests of a nation—and we cannot understand why there should be 
exceptions—if the purpose and destiny of a government be the real and 
best benefit of a whole country,—where is the equity, or the justice, of 
the legislature consisting in reality of those who represent one interest 
only? The probability is, that, take the country through, not more than 
one out of twenty are landowners at all. The other nineteen are en- 
gaged in trade, commerce, manufactures, professions, literature, as 
masters, labourers, and agents, who have no sufficient, or rather, no 
representative at all in the Legislature. But are not we perpetually 
bored with long-winded discussions upon commercial and. business-like 
questions, which shew—nothing but that the landed, which is the 
aristocratic interest of the country, is overpowering and exclusive. 
Were it otherwise,—were it really the fact, that the general interests 
of the state were fairly represented, that the concerns of the poor as 
well as the rich were regarded, does the man exist, who can for one 
moment imagine that these corn-laws, of which we are speaking, would 
ever have been passed? They had an object or they had not: if they 
had one, let us understand what that object was; if they had none, why 
suffer them to exist? Yes, they had an object, a definite and a bene- 
ficent one—to keep corn, as we said, at a steady price. Ata steady 
price—yes, and at a high price ;—and at whose cost was this high price 
to be obtained, but that of the rest of the community? The labourer 
exclaimed and. protested—in vain; he had none, at the seat of power, 
to give eloquent tongue to his protests; the merchant and the manufac- 
turer, who usually are lulled by their own privileges, grumbled and 
growled without, and their representatives, as they call them, were 
silent or impotent. within; while the landlord, earnest, resolute, and 
powerful, carried his own measure, by his own forces, triumphantly, and 
in the teeth of the puny opposition. 
_»In,short, the landowner is omnipotent; and he is omnipotent, not so 
