50 



creased supply of it produced at home, or produced 

 even within our own territories abroad ; this cheap- 

 ness would arise, not from the displacing of agri- 

 cultural labour and agricultural capital, by the 

 introduction of corn, produced by the capital and 

 labour of foreigners, but from an enlarged employ- 

 ment of British capital, from the super-addition 

 of the labour of the British peasantry. Abun- 

 dance and cheapness thus created, created by the 

 employment of the industry of the agricultural and 

 pastoral population, might be a blessing to the 

 country. And if encouragement were given to our 

 own agriculture, if the expectation of a free impor- 

 tation did not retard improvement, and drive capi- 

 tal from the soil, with the moderate protecting price 

 of the present Corn Laws, and with rents some- 

 what more moderate, but not ruinously depressed, 

 additional capital and labour would be employed 

 upon land now in cultivation, and in bringing into 

 cultivation those extensive bogs and plains into 

 which " neither spade nor plough have entered," 

 so that our own territories would yield a much 

 greater produce, and we should have both abun- 

 dance and cheapness. 



We do not mean to contend that the labourer in 

 husbandry is benefited by a high price of corn ; 

 but we do maintain that he is in a much better 

 condition when corn is dear, than if it were cheap, 

 such cheapness being the result of the introduction 

 of corn into our markets not produced by the 

 labour of our own population. 



