FISCAL POLICY AND AGRICULTURE 371 



A personal experiment in this matter would be 

 instructive, and show what the improved condition of 

 the labourer meant. Let the head of a household of 

 six or eight persons have the highest rate of wages 

 (say about 14s.) that ruled for fifty years after free 

 imports placed in her hands to supply all the wants 

 of the family. She would have to provide food, 

 clothes, boots, sundries, and to pay rent ; to provide 

 for the incidents of sickness, loss of work, child-birth 

 and death. And further, with one pair of hands 

 she would have to do all the cleaning, washing, cook- 

 ing, nursing, mending, etc. After this experience 

 of domestic economy — not carried on throughout a 

 lifetime, but only for a few weeks — there would be no 

 more talk of " the improved condition of the labourer" 

 as the result of free imports. 



The present writer was among those who signed 

 the petition to Parliament in favour of the repeal of 

 the Corn Laws. He remembers the extravagant state- 

 ments and promises made to the country folk by those 

 in charge of the petition. Wages were to go up, 

 victuals were to be cheaper and more abundant, and 

 the condition of the labourer and his family was to be 

 improved in every way. These statements were 

 believed, and the petition was eagerly signed by the 

 village people. Mr. W. J. Fox, one of the ablest, 

 certainly one of the most eloquent and persuasive of 

 Cobden's colleagues, gave assurances which reached 

 the ears of the rural population, and were believed 

 by them. He declared that the abolition of pro- 

 tection would exterminate pauperism, and that in 

 a few years the ruins of the workhouses would mark 

 the extinction of protection in the same way as the 



