58 



the present prices of corn, and especially with 

 reduced prices, labour will become less in demand 

 and wages will decline, unless the other outgoings 

 of farmers are sufficiently reduced to enable them 

 to keep up the demand and wages of labour. If 

 they be not, the next Agricultural Committee in- 

 stead of having the satisfaction of congratulating 

 the Members of the House of Commons on the 

 improved condition of the peasantry, will have 

 the discomfort of condoling with them, that by 

 their own policy they have been the cause of the 

 deteriorated state of the British peasantry; for it 

 is very evident that the labourers in husbandry are 

 benefited by a law which prevents foreign com- 

 petition restricting our own agriculture, and 

 throwing the poor and inferior land of the king- 

 dom out of cultivation, and the labourers upon it 

 out of employment. 



To preserve the landed interest from embarrass- 

 ment, and still to secure to consumers a steady 

 and moderate price of the first necessary of life, 

 which was the intention of the present Corn Laws, 

 cannot be a restriction upon the productive labour 

 of other classes ; especially, when we consider 

 that the embarrassments of the agricultural portion 

 of the population, which would inevitably follow 

 unprotected and unremunerated industry, would 

 be a far greater check to the prosperity of the rest 

 of the community than a moderate price of corn. 

 For, as Dr. Chalmers says, " agriculture is the 

 aliment of all trade." The advocates of free trade 



