The Sun.
London, England, 1864-01-27 00:00:00

want to see done, and I believe it would be better for the
public if the freedom was given to the owners of land what
is given to the possessors of other property. (Loud cheers.)
There is one other point on which I wish to make a remark.
The man who buys and the man who sells property finds
the law regulating the transfer so complicated, that if Solo-
mon himself were here he could not come to any fair deci-
sion about it except that very curious one which he is re •
ported to have done upon another point. (Cheers and laugh-
ter.) Now, everything which I am proposing is carried out
to a somewhat greater extent in the United States, in most
of the States, and to a greater extent on the continent of
Europe; and it is being carried out in all the Australian
colonies. It is the most curious thing in the world that
whenever an Englishman leaves these shores, whether it be
the effect of the salt air, or of sea sickness, or of that pro-
longed meditation which a long voyage invites, he seems
to peel off, not the rags of his body, but the verminous rags
off his intellect and soul ; he lands in Australia with his
eyes perfectly clear, and he can see things in a common-
sense manner. (Laughter and cheers.) Now, I want to
ask you, as reasonable men and men of business, if there is
a man here who cannot understand the question mode-
rately well in the way in which I have endeavoured to put
it. Is this spoliation? Is this agrarian outrage ? Is
this stimulating working men and the agricultural
labourer to—what shall I say ?—incendiarism or
anything else he may have recourse to ? It is nothing
of the kind. It is laying before them just principles
of law, admitted to be just in every other country in
the world except this, and which we admit to be just
in regard to everything else, charged with all sorts of dread-
ful things by that gentleman in the mask, On the 27th of
November he wrote this about Mr. Cobden :—" He (Mr.
Cobden) stoops down and picks up a missile which has never
yet been used but for anarehy and for revolution. Is it not
in effect to tell the labourer and the workman to look over
the fence of the labouring proprietor, and to learn them to
think they have a natural right to a slice of the soil ?" The
law steps in and makes it difficult to sell and to buy ; then
I say that labourer has a right to look over the hedge and to
feel that the law deals a grievous injustice—(loud cheers)—
and it is this gentleman in the mask that frightens the
landed proprietors. I met the other day with a gentleman
connected with one of the largest properties in the kingdom.
Ho said to me (and ho is a very liberal and thoughtful man),
" You have no idea of the terror which your speeches create
among the landed gentlemen." (Laughter.) I never
frighten any of my neighbours. I do not know why I should
be so alarming to those gentlemen who live in their great
houses and their castles ; but the fact is, that the landed
gentlemen are not a wise class. (Laughter.) There are
brilliant exceptions. (Hear, hear.) There are many men
amongst them who cannot be surpassed by any of their class,
or of any class in the world ; but as a class—and perhaps
one might say it of nearly every class—l believe it is true of
the class to which I belong in Lancashire, they are not a
wise class. They know something of agriculture. County
members have to get it up for agricultural dinners—(laugh-
ter and cheers)—and they know something about horses,
and they know all that can be known on the subject of
game. (Laughter and cheers.) Well, on the principles
of law and of government, speaking of them as a whole,
and judging of them by their pest force, they are dark
as night itself. Would you believe that the landed
proprietors never found out, till Mr. Cobden and I and a
few others told them, that the corn law was a great
injury to them. (Laughter and cheers.) They did not
know that it actually diminished the value of the lanSi
and diminished the security of their rents, and that
it loaded them with an inconceivable amount of odium.
whilst at the same time it beggared hundreds of thousands
of the people, and it menaced this nation with revolution.
(Cheers.) Mr. Cobden and others who acted with us—
chiefly perhaps because we were the most prominent—were
slandered then, and by the gentleman in the mask, just as
we have been now. (Cheers.) Tho Times was as foul-
mouthed upon us 20 years ago as it is now. (Cheers.) They
said that we went about the country setting class against
class. (Cries of " True," and "Shame.") They said that
our views led to the confiscation of landed property. They
said, in fact, everything that was spiteful and untrue, as
they say now ; and yet is there a man in this country who
will not admit that property is more secure in consequence
of the abolition of that law which they believed to be the
anchor of their safety, that animosities between class and
class have been allayed ; and who shall tell how much it is
owing to that that our Queen at this moment wields an un-
challenged sceptre over a tranquil realm ? (Great cheering.)
A landowner in the House of Commons, an old member of
the house, a representative of a south-western county, a man
of excellent character, for whom I have always had the
greatest respect, even when he was the most wrong—(hear)
—said to me not long ago, speaking about the corn laws,
they didn't then know the good we were doing to his class.
(Laughter.) I nuged him and said " Well, if you would
only have faith I could tell you one or two other things—
(laughter)—that would do you just as much good if you
would let us try them." (Cheers.) But he had not faith,
(Great laughter.) Now I will just say to the landowners
that I never was more their friend than in discussing this
question as I am doing to-night without the least animosity
to them—(laughter)—and with a belief as firm as I ever had
on the question of the corn laws, that their interests are bound
up with tho interests of the people in the right solution of
this question. (Cheers.) I would ask to what are they tend-
ing under the operation of these law ? 'They are becoming
every year smaller and smaller in numbers—the large ones aro
rapidly eating up the small ones. The census returns show
that the number of landed proprietors is but a handful in
the nation, and every day becoming fewer and fewer. Their
labourers remain at the old nine or ten shillings a •week.
Somebody will write to the papers to-morrow and say they
get twelve shillings—(laughter)—but bear in mind that
they do not always receive wages on wet days—(loud
laughter)—and I believe that the average money income of
the agricultural labourer throughout the United Kingdom
will not exceed, and many persons will say it will not reach,
ten shillings per week. The smaller in number these landed
proprietors become, the more, it may be, these labourers
become discontented, There may arise some political acci-
dents, and political accidents come almost as unlookel for
as other accidents. Yuu do not hear the tread of the earth-
quake which topples down your finest architecture, and the
country gentlemen do not see the tread of that danger—it
may be that catastrophe which inevitably follows upon pro-
longed unjust legislation. (Cheers.) And there may come
a time--and I durst prophesy that it will come if there be
an obstinate retention of our present system—when there
will be a movement in this country to establish not what I
believe to be the just, moderate, and sufficient plan which I
recommend, but a plan which shall be in accordance with
that which is established by the Code Napoleon iu France,
and which is spreading rapidly over the whole continent of
Europe. I would ask them again how do they propose to
keep their population if this system is to be maintained. And
now I beg the attention of you working men who are here to
two or three observations upon this point. America, though
3,000 miles off, is not so far off but that people may go over
there in about 12 days, and they may go there for a sum
varying from £2 to £5. During the year that has just
passed, I think 150,000 or 160,000 persons have sailed from
this country to New York. (Bravo and cheers.) Every
man who settles there is not blinded by mystifications and
falsehoods of the New York Correspondent of the Times.
(Cheers.) He is there, and can see what the working man
gets, how he is considered, and what ho is, and he writes
over to his friends in this country, as has been the case for
years in Ireland, and the result has been that Ireland has
been drained not of its surplus population, but of the popu-
lation actually necessary to the proper cultivation of the
soil. (Loud cheers.) Now let me tell you a fact, and if you
do not treasure it up in your minds, I hope one of those
gentlemen, the landowners, who think I am very hostile to
them, will just think it over, if he has time, as he eats his
breakfast to-morrow or next day. (Laughter.) In America
there are at this moment 140 millions of acres of land sur-
veyed, mapped, and set apart for those who are ready to
settle upon them. In the year 1861, that was the first year
after this war attained its present proportions, there were
not less than 40,000 new farms, over 80 acres each, occupied
in the Western States; but the Government of the United
States, not content with that measure of progress, passed
an act which came into operation on Jan. 1, 1863, which
was called the Homestead Act. I have a copy of the act
here, and I have a copy also of the circular which was issued
at the same time. What is that Homestead Act? It is this
—it says that any man or woman, 21 years of age, or
younger, if the man happened to have been for a fortnight
or a month in the service of the United States—whether in
the army or navy, may go into these territories, may choose
what is called a " section," which is 150 acres of land, being
one-fourth of a square mile, and on payment of a fee of
10 dole., which is equal to £2 English, he may apply and
have this land conveyed to him for no other payment for
five years, and it cannot be alienated. He is not allowed to
sell it, It remains in his possession, and at the end of five
years—he having done to it what the Government requires,
that is, settled upon it and begun cultivation, and so forth
—then the law gives him what is called a patent, but which
is, in fact, what we call a Parliamentary title—the land is
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get, I believe, now about 20s. per 'week waeses besides
his board and lodging ; and if ho worked as a labourer for
two or three years ho would be able to save a small sum,
sufficient for him to commence the cultivation of a portion
of his farm, and ho would be settled down there as a farmer
and as a freeholder. (Loud cheers.) Now, do not let me
leave you with the idea that there is no rough and rugged
career in this. There is much that is rough and much that
is rugged. hut there is a good deal of that in this country
now. (Cheers.) When a man looks upon those children
that make, even in the poorest house, sometimes a gleam
of joy—when he thinks what these boys and girls must be
in this country—never to rise one step higher than that
which he occupies now as agricultural labourers ; and then
he looks abroad and he sees them not labourers in the sense
that we use the word here—not tenants even, but freehol-
ders, and landowners, and farmers of their own property,
then I say that the temptation held out to men here to emi-
grate, if he knew all the facts, would be irresistible to hun-
dreds and thousands who have now no thought of moving
to another country, Even our agricultural labourer's con-
dition is improved in some respects. There are some feeble