1826.) Le Babes 5 
LETTER UPON.AFFAIRS, IN GENERAL, FROM A GENTLEMAN IN 
- LONDON TO A GENTLEMAN IN THE COUNTRY. 
PARLIAMENT assembles onthe 14th of this month. It is expected 
to proceed to business (without adjournment), as soon as the formal 
arrangements are completed ; and the session, whenever it commences, 
will: be'long, protracted, and stormy. One of the first questions tried, 
will, no doubt, be the question of the Corn Laws ; for that ministers should 
venture to give up that question, I apprehend, is impossible. With all the 
abuse which was showered upon Castlereagh, he would have disdained 
such a.compromise as this. He would no more have waved his opinion 
in fear or deference of the: aristocracy, than he did in fear or deference 
of the mob... And to talk of ‘“ Parliament’s being left to exercise its un- 
biassed judgment.” upon the Corn question, is impudence as well as trash. 
It is too much to.find money jobs the only measures upon which ministers 
will condescend to use their influence. If parliament is left to exercise 
its ‘ unbiassed judgment ” upon the question of the Corn Jaws, it will be 
high time that it should be left to the same free agency upon the ques- 
tions which come before it altogether. 
Whatever measure may be brought forward touching the repeal of 
the Corn Laws—and perhaps the mere expectation of such a projected 
measure—will probably bring on some proposal for (practically if not no- 
minally) reducing the interest of the Debt. And as “‘ between two stools,” 
according to the proverb, a certain portion of a man’s body “ comes to 
the ground,” so the country should look sharp, that—between its expec- 
tations of aid from these two interests —it does not end in obtaining relief 
from neither. 
For myself, upon every principle of equity and justice, I think the Debt 
is the /ast of the public burthens which should be touched: Not be- 
cause it is guaranteed by “public faith ;” for I would not ‘say a great 
deal for public faith, in decided opposition to public advantage. Nor yet, 
very especially, upen the score that, having been a common marketable, 
transferable property, it has been bought, at least in many instances, by 
its present possessors, at a full price ; for the land has, a very great deal 
of it probably, been also bought at a “full,” that is to’say, at a high 
rent price; and hundreds of those who possess it will be seriously in- 
jured by any heayy change inits value. But the last interest which I 
would touch isthe Desr ; because, notwithstanding all that we hear of the 
jews and the stock-jobbers—a sort of people who are offensive enough in 
all conscience, and whom I wish with all my heart our peers and landed 
proprietors would find to be such, and abstain from imitating, or mix 
ing themselves up with them—it is still a fact capable of proof—a fact 
which figures alone will shew beyond the possibility of contest—that it 
is the landed interest which has been increasing the value of its property 
during the whole of the last thirty years, not only beyond—but three or 
four times over beyond—any advantage obtained by the funded. 
With all the outcry which is daily made about the original purchase of the 
funds in a depreciated currency, what (practically ) is the present increased 
value of the stockholder’s dividend ?—how much more, zm commodities, 
does he get for his dividend upon £1,000 three per cents now, than he 
obtained for that same dividend during the full circulation of one and 
two pound notes? Take the following articles of comnron consumption, 
and it would be easy to carry the list still farther—house-rent, bread, meat, 
