Additional hiformation. 43 



be lamented is, that the farmer cannot afTord to pay the same wages that a manu- 

 facturer can for a labourer of the same skill. But that he cannot, is owing to 

 circumstances which admit of remedy. The farmer contents himself wiih the 

 smallest profits on the employment of his capital and knowledge, of any speculator 

 whatsoever; and it is doubtful whether he often would not be a richer man at the 

 year's end had he received day wages for his labour, and placed the value of his 

 stock out at interest, instead of trusting to land in his own hands for a return 

 for both. The amount of his rent he knows must be as much as will give the 

 landlord 2^ or 3 per cent, for his money, should he have bought the land, or 

 should the value of it be calculated; and he would be wrong if he considered the 

 payment of it as a hardship : he may call it, if he pleases, the interest of capital 

 employed in purchasing his farm for the time he is to occupy it. But if the price 

 he has to pay for labour increases during his occupation of the land, without the 

 value of his produce increasing also, and if taxes are so laid as to fall on the occu- 

 pation of land heavier than on the other trades and concerns of the country, he has 

 a right to complain, and to expect redress, if it can be afforded. The price of 

 labour, it is evident, has increased without a correspondent increase in the principal 

 production of the land, namely, corn, and the malt tax, the property tax, the land 

 tax, the horse tax, the poor rates, the taxes for raising and maintaining the militia 

 and army of reserve, the highway duty, and every tax, whether paid out of the 

 county rate or otherwise, for the police of the country, besides many other charges, 

 fall on the land in a very unfair proportion. Thus, the present system reduces 

 itself to the absurdity and injustice of taxing die land which is to produce corn, as 

 much as possible; and allowing the corn produced on land untaxed to be brought 

 into our markets to prevent the consumer paying his share of the taxes imposed on 

 the land of his own country. It is impossible for the English farmer, under his 

 present circumstances, to afford his corn at the same price a foreigner can, or even 

 an Irishman ; his corn must pay him back many more expenses than the corn of 

 any other country has to pay back to its producer. In justice, then, you must do 

 one of two things, take all the taxes off which fall immediately on the corn grower, 

 or give him the full advantage of his own market, as long as the country can pro- 

 duce a sufficiency for its own consumption. If you do neither, men of capital and 

 superior knowledge will abandon country concerns ; ignorant and poor labourers 

 will, by degrees, occupy the place of our present farmers. They will gain their 



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