312 [Assembly 



manufacturer, ami if felt at all, will most assuredly vibrate through 

 every department of labor. The pretence for this strange anomaly 

 in legislation is, that Britain has boldly, liberally, graciously, made 

 an advance t9\vards Free Trade, and we are bound to follow her ge- 

 nerous example! Let us briefly look at the plain facts in the case, 

 and leave it to the common sense of mankind to say what this migh- 

 ty advance in Free Trade amounts to, which has been so potent as 

 to arrest the progress of a nation of freemen in its march to great- 

 ness. 



The British empire contains a population of 158,000,000. Eng- 

 land, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and the British Isles, under the desig- 

 nation of the United Kingdom, embraces only 27,000,000 of this vast 

 population. She has, of late years, permitted other nations to bring 

 within reach of this 27,000,000 of her people, a specified number 

 of articles which she cannot produce, under a system of nominal du- 

 ties, with slight discriminations in favor of her own subjects, and in 

 some instances, with neither duty nor discrimination, leaving all in- 

 tercourse or trade with the balance of her population, amounting to 

 130,000,000, subject to endless restrictions, discriminations, counter- 

 vailing laws and regulations in favor of her own subjects and her 

 own commercial marine. 



In the United Kingdom, 2,470,411 of her male adult population 

 have been employed in agriculture, with protecting laws, which ex- 

 cluded the products of other countries, unless this twenty-seven mil- 

 lions of her people, or a very large portion of them, at least, were 

 at the point of starvation. This was the effect of the memorable 

 corn laws, for the benefit of her landed aristocracy. It at length 

 became very apparent, that, notwithstanding her extraordinary efforts 

 in agricultural production, her people were miserably fed, and at 

 prices too, W'hich materially interfered with all other branches of her 

 productive labor. The warfare against these laws has been carried, 

 by her own starving people, to a point which compels the aristocracy 

 to yield. Will any fair-minded, intelligent man say the repeal of 

 these corn laws has not been the result of compulsion? And yet, 

 ever ready to make a virtue of necessity, she claims that the act is a 

 boon to free trade! That there should be found in this enlightened 

 republic, men high in station and powerful in adherents, ready to ac- 

 cept it as such, and shape the legislation of this mighty empire to 

 suit the views of Britain, because of it, surpasses my comprehension. 



Britain repeals her corn laws, or rather modifies them, so that 

 wheat and flour may come in from other nations at a duty of 31| 



