The Descent of the Landlords. 4 1 1 



flowers of diction as "chopped limbs," "wounded gaping skulls," 

 " fiends in Hussar uniform cleaving a passage through human 

 flesh and blood, and women and children massacred by the 

 monstrous orders of reckless landlords." 



A cry of indignation went up from all the crowded manu- 

 facturing centres of the north, the Reform party gained an 

 immense accession of strength, and the feeling that a large 

 majority of their countrymen favoured their cause, inspired 

 the few extreme Liberals and Whigs in Parliament with un- 

 wonted powers of rhetoric. 



Henceforward the contest became embittered, the Radicals 

 throwing away the scabbard, and the Tories disputing every 

 inch of ground. It is too late now to ask if some form of 

 compromise might not have been arranged before the one side 

 had wrested from the other all the rights it required. There 

 were as yet all the elements of an equitable bargain. The 

 one interest had not lost, the other had not gained, all that 

 was respectively worth losing and gaining. 



To the calmer mind of economical philosophy protection was 

 no subject of party strife. Being a means to certain ends it 

 was useless if those ends were not attained. The interests 

 of three distinct parties were concerned, and nothing which 

 benefited one at the expense of either of the others ought to 

 have been worthy of consideration. What was required was 

 some measure which would secure to the agriculturist a re- 

 munerative return for the products of his labour, to the manu- 

 facturer his present superiority over the foreigner, and to the 

 labourer and mechanic one moderate and uniform price of 

 corn. If then protection in its present form failed to effect 

 this, protection in some other more effectual form had to be 

 sought. Some economists at this period looked back to the 

 time when an extraordinary impetus had been given to both 

 trade and agriculture by the suspension of cash payments, and 

 a certain Mr. Topling saw, in a less wholesale adoption of this 

 resource, the required substitute for the Corn Laws. Burke had 

 once declared in the House of Commons that a Bank of Eng- 

 land note was worth its full nominal value on the Exchange, 

 for the very reason that it was not worth a farthing in West- 



