The Sun.
London, England, 1839-02-04 00:00:00

ON FRItE TRADE IN CORN.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN. ,
SIR,—In calling the attention of the public to the subject Wit
" Free Trade in Corn," I am aware' I may be told I alp °id
repeating that which many others have often written upon's°
that with more forcible arguments than I can make use of:to
Long habit has so accustomed the public to pay from 8e• it
lod. for a 41b. loaf, that they never stop to inquire whetbFr4
is right they should pay it or not. If people think at all
an
it, they are apt to consider it cheap at 7d. or 8(1., because 4
has been-scarcely ever below that price for the last 30
and when it rises to 9d. 10d. or I Id., it naturally strikes tli°
as the effect of seasons.
consumers eirtssaorehatphpeehnasrtdhatwtohrekilnagrgepomratijoonrityofefththee
egorrucaint lusnrid;
and others with large families; and these have not the 17,bad
of judging what it is prevents bread from being lower; •".0
think about it, their thoughts on the subject extend onlY
comparison of prices within the reach of their own mentoriot
ii
and as they can all remember much higher prices, they
$l,
down content when (what they think) moderate prices prev.ols
never dreaming that Acts of Parliament prevent them
their loaf at a much lower price when the bounty of Prear
det.cy would permit it. f eye
Many are aware no doubt, but few to whom it is o
most consequence, are aware, or never think of it, that l,
moment the landowners are threatened by a bountiful Pr°l(jo
deuce with a good crop, up they start with their readY•elB,27
Act of Parliament called the Corn Bill, and say to the
millions of people, '° No ; this bounty on the part of Providee_cap
may bu very well for all other nations—they may cat drug
bread, if th&r rulers please to let them, but it won't 6°3 j
landlords of this little island to let you do so : we have tastep:i
and always enjoyed (in our times) the sweets of high rents, l!ust
we will still continue to do so as long as we can, which is Jo,
as long as you will permit us ; and as you (the people) 1),10
never, in your times, enjoyed the sweets ty: low prices, Y°°,o
not know any better, and therefore you do net miss it, hee'tse
lour ignorance of the cause makes you rest cooteut with
effect."
edit t°
lam stating no more than fact, nor do I take the er- 00
myself of stating anything new ; some few dozen persoos
written to the same purport, but unfortunately dozens
the/
write in vain, if the millions won't read, and act wilah t
have read.
My friend's calculations, so often to be seen in the Prl
ii
newspaper, under the head of the City article, are pert
true, where he shows that the same money will buy Two le° 4
of bread at Dantzic or Hamburg, that here in England re,
must pay fur oars ; and in Paris, Amsterdam, and other &Lien
nut sixty hours' journey from hence, bread is almost as o°4;
I know you cannot go to Danisic or Hamburg to eat Y°o
bread, but that is no reason why Dantzic or Hamburg sboesi
not be permitted to send it to your own doors, that you ni
eat it as cheap as possible.
If what is called a protection to our landlords is necessall:
surely the expense of bringing wheat from Poland, P0110111;0
Mecklenburg, &c., is a large one—being fully 15s. a guar,,'
from the places in which it is actually grown in those countribis
to the time it is actually consumed here ; and observe, thet
protection is exclusive of any duty on its arrival here, so that f
difficulties that naturally exist in the carriage and transport,
corn are largely in favour of the home grower without creete)!
artificial barriers to the suppl c food.
Far more noise was made about gr. Pitt's tax upon the light bds
the sun than is made about the landlords' tax upon the stoular,
of the people, because that tax was felt by a description of Peer
sons who knew how to make their voices heard in the Polo,
quarter; whilst the millions who are paying the bread tax eveii
meal they eat, are nearly unconscious they pay any tax at
so insidious are the Corn-laws. the
So far then all I have written only goes to show that bo
landlords enjoy a tax on corn, and that the people,sval
are least able, pay the greatest part of it ; but I shall
show enough unless I prove that notwithstanding all the cico
cekoneuoprut in my n agghemt
o feed e
ete
office, given
thef people,ehe
fo
thet lanadsotwr
t i
wnteer appears
y_ theye
igbbty have
years,a o
u nccno
tts I the
foreign arrivals of all sorts of grain and flour in the P°'l
of London, that it has amounted to an annual average„.,°/
about 300,000 quarters, notwithstanding the almost excluel
duties. I take it that London on an average has impotte
one-third of the whole of the kingdom; aid with all the
t
elusive system, we have had about an annual average i01.,13'9,.
of near two millions of all sorts of corn, and to get tbis (1:;;
tity what an enormous tax. the landed interest nuacti
be-
squeezed out of the people on all that they have groS°uw
cause they have a sure guage to guide them, as they ,o
by the graduated scale of duties they have nothing to (0).4
long as they can keep the top price of wheat anything
85s. per quarter. So a little refit ction will show the eettf
mous tax the people pay on about forty million quarters 0f
cgdwou.er
t come;
should.:
rn: we o t grown k
eaen
sode np u a
tl
them
surelyl
paying ye ,
ab
net from
this
advanced
ait
nshs
ctne
eay
udr
t starving cpiaarn
price
ei et about two millions
lat
es
gwohnh: esnta
fortytae of
million
tpinchhi n agcs t
tq, utiaho
tern annually to support high rents on poor lands or on 41.11

land whatever.
Land is the commodity of the landlord the same as al
other article is that of any merchant, trader, or shopkeePee;
and they have no exclusive laws to protect them; then siisJe
.l'
should the landlord have any ? If the landlords paid all 5,
Poor-rates, Tithes, County-rates, and all the State Telco,
then indeed they might have a pretext for protection, bet
tad,
then the taxing of bread would be too odious to be tolerate so
It is not even the interest of the landlord to retain there
laws, for they have this bad effect the last six years, that c°„
merchants have had their capital locked up in bonded grs',:
which otherwise would have been employed in holding the
plus wheat grown during the said years, so that whenever
produce more (be it ever so little) than we can actually ee:;4
sume, down goes the price, from the inability of farmers $ t
merchants to hold it over, the landlords having taken care tl3ll,
the farmer shall not be in a condition to do so, by keePl
his rents high, and at the same time showing him the Celt)
Bill as a pretext, and after all, he cannot pay all he enegle
to do, though I must say, the landlords have very generous to
given him back 20 to 25 per cent., which I have often done it
my debtors under a more proper title, " say Bankrupt LaWs'
but then my generosity has not been stuck in the papers.
the
By the working of the Corn Bill we virtually say to ,
merchants at Dantzic and other places, " We will not t3l
sack of your wheat at the moderate:prices you offer it at. 1.4° ',.
we will wait until our necessities oblige us to give you 205, o
30s. more than you would be willing to take or we can afford 0
give, with this disadvantage, that we show you our help
situation as we go on, so that the Dantzigers may with t'n,
more safety take every advantage of it, and having clearly eeet
fessed our urgent wants, you would be to blame if you did n'/,
profit all you could by our folly." So we either import large
bus
at a very high price, or we take not at all, which causes t
prices to go very low at times on the Continent : by this tins%
tied and widely fluctuating state of the corn trade the foreig
cultivator gets but little for his corn. The merchants of Ile:
cessity must get it low to insure them against loss by our caPrii
cious laws; and hence the boors and serfs live in a state 4)
poverty, when, under a different system, they would constitut".
thousands of our best customers fur our manufacturers.
I wish to observe, for the satisfaction of our landlords, tbat
they need be under very little alarm, for the price of wheat
being so low at times on the Continent is not because the Y 4
the foreigners, can afford to grow it so low, but because we Wii
nut take any. Wheat does not get down to 255. or 30s. pei,
quarter at Dantzic because the farmers in Poland can grow "
at 20s. Certainly not; the low price (at times) is caused by
the reasons I have before stated. If we had a free trade id
corn up we uld instantly get their price of land, labour, aPe
charges of all sorts, to a price corresponding with ours ; 0"
but the merchant's profit of a shilling or two after adding
freight and other expenses to England of full lOs. per Tear--
ter ; this in itself is a protection to our landlords, and quite a;
much as they ought to expect ; there ought to be no legislative
interposition with the bounty of Providence.
I have purposely avoided naming the farmers in anythieg•
I have written, because I am satisfied, and I believe they are
also nearly all satisfied, that the Corn Bill does thent
no good ; I know that they very generally see it so, and veil
properly term it exclusively a landlords' Bill. What signifies
it to the farmers in general ? Nothing. Nor can it signiff,
unless they could all at once, and ail of them, get new sou,
long leases at the low rents of forty or fifty years ago, an
then such a Corn Bill might indeed do them some good; but
as it is, the landlords, to say the least of it, get every shilling
and more than the farmers can afford, or ought to afford, to
pay, and the very best of them do but just live, and that they
must and would do, if there were no Corn-laws at all.
Of course I have heard it asserted that the farmer pays the
poor-rates—that I grapple with at once, by boldly denying
that he does ; because there is no man who takes a feral
(if he is not an idiot), without first ascertaining what the
poor-rates arc, and taking them into his calculation. Then
it would appear to follow as a matter of course that the
landlord pays the poor-rates if the farmer does not' but
not so, for he has taken care the last forty years to
more than doubly protect himself by Corn-laws, which
have caused such an advance in the price of corn and land,
in consequence, that even if he does pay it (all), still he has
not only nothing to complain of, but is a gainer to a very large
amount. But it is the public who keep the poor in the end.--
it is the public who pay all of this rate and all others, in the
price of the produce of the land ; and even if the landlords did
actually pay all, why should they not do so? Ought not the
soil of any country to keep the inhabitants of that country
Tell me if you can why the land should not keep the aged,
decrepid, fatherless, and widows, in short, all the really neces'
sitous ; or why the landlords should stand between the bountY
of Providence and the hungry stomachs of their fellow-crea-
tures, merely because they are the landlords, and per conse-
quence the law-makers ; and which fact of being the landlords
they can all trace to mere accidental circumstances? There is
no divine right in being a landlord—it is fortunate, and no-
thing more.
To elucidate what the tax on wheat (commonly called
Corn-law) amounts to per annum, and at the same time
to bring it home to the understanding of every one, let n 0
suppose that they (the Corn-laws) make bread only 2d. per
loaf dearer than it otherwise would be ; this 2d. then amounts

to the very enormous sum of 10,833,333/. 6s. Bd. per annum;
and if 3d. per loaf, 16,250,0001. per annum ; and if 4d. per
loaf, it amounts to as much as half the interest of the national
debt, and quite a fourth of the whole revenue of the Govern-
ment. That bread is dearer in England than on the Con-
tinent by nearly 100 per cent. at this present time, is a fact , 6
not to be disputed ; therefore, as the price of bread is now 9d•
here in England, and we take it to be sd. abroad, this dif
.11
ference of 4d. shows the 25 millions of her Majesty's subjeets',ll
are paying near 22 millions per annum more than the satnn'
number of people on the Continent are paying for the same fl
thing. This calculation is made at the rate of one loaf of
-fibs. per week each person, young and old, which is as near 130,A
possible the fact. And another striking fact is, that it takes,,i,
250,000 qrs. of wheat to make only one loaf each for the people.
In continuation of my preceding remarks on the necessity al