The Sun.
London, England, 1841-06-21 00:00:00

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LONDON:
MONDAY, JUNE 21, 1841.

Certainly the bread-taxers are the most impu-
dent of robbers. Other plunderers try to make
their victims believe that they have taken little
or nothing from them; the bread-taxers delight
in magnifying their booty. The great object of
some dozen of pamphlets and hand-bills they
have recently put forth, is actually to vaunt of
the extent of their robbery. They make it out
that wheat from Podolia could be sold in England
for 435. sd. per quarter, with a profit to the
importer of 335. per cent., after paying all
expenses and charges. If it be so, then, instead
of the Corn-laws levying a tax of 10s. per quar-
ter, as is usually calculated, on the consumer of
English grown food, they levy a tax of double
that amount.

Some other Tory sages have asserted, and even
said in the House of Lords, that wheat from the
North of Europe may be imported into England
at 30s. per quarter. If the Anti-Corn-law
people were to make such statements with a view
to exaggerate the wrong which the landlords
of England inflict on the suffering and starving
people, we could comprehend their object, but
for the landlords and their partisans so to exag-
gerate, implies either boundless impudence or
boundless fatuity. The lower the price at which
corn can be purchased abrOad and brought into
England, the greater is the amount of plunder
obtained by the landlords in keeping it out ; and
the greater the abundance of foreign corn which
we can obtain, the greater is the injury which the
landowners inflict on the starving people.
For our parts we laugh to scorn all these cal-
culations. We do not doubt that in a particular
year a single ship load of wheat may have been
bought at Odessa or Dantzic at such a price,
that it could have been brought to England,
and sold here at a profit, for 355. per quarter.
But to make a law on the single contingency
of one such case, implies that the seasons are
always abundant, and suffer no variation in other
countries, whatever may be the case in England.
On the contrary, only last year, or the year be-
fore, such was the scarcity of corn in Russia,
that exportation was prohibited, and none could be
obtained from it at any price. Three years have
not yet elapsed since corn or flour was sent from
England to the United States, where, on the
average, we believe, it is grown at a much leis
cost, by free labourers, than by the serfs in
Russia. The attempt to frighten the starving
people from demanding and obtaining justice by
such contemptible statements as these will injure
and deceive nobody but the silly men who rely
on them for success.

If those who make them were acquainted with
the A B C of political economy, they would lay
down their pens. Corn is an article of manufac-
ture, depending mainly for its production or labour
and skill, like cotton cloth, on steam-engines. It
follows, as a matter of course, that, like other
manufactures, it will be produced at a less costin
countries where skill and industry are great than
where they are little, at a less cost therefore in
England than Podolia, and at less cost in
England than the United States. We
say at a less cost, meaning a less quantity of
labour, not a less money price, because
the money price is determined partly by a law
passed to keep it very high. In fact, with the
exception of labour and skill, there is no other
element to be considered, and he must be little
acquainted with the condition of this and other
countries who doubts that labour is more skilful
in England than in almost any part of the
globe, and consequently is more productive, or
the cost of all which it produces is less.
Some persons think fertility of soil an ele-
ment; but what constitutes fertility no per-
son knows, dit is no more an element
of cost tha sunshine or rain. All are
equally the free gifts of a benevolent
GOD. Labour is the sole element of cost,
and it is invariably productive, not in proportion
as the soil is fertile, but as the labourer has ac
quired knowledge and skill. The valleys of the
Mississippi and the plains of New Holland were
just as fertile when they were inhabited, the
former only by Red Indians and the latter only
by prowling savages, as at present. Then, how-
ever, they produced nothing but lofty trees,
tangled grass, or scrubby brush-wood, and now
they teem with a great abundance of food cattle
and flocks. What has made the vast and blessed
difference ? The labour of skilful men.- It is that,
turning knowledge of soils and cultivation to ac-
count, which has, as it were, filled the two coun-
tries with all the means of subsistence.
Now it does not admit of one moment's doubt
that the cost of producing all the present abun-
dance of food which prevails in the United
States and New Holland, is much less than was
the cost of producing the wretched subsistence
of the red men or the prowling savages. A
whole day's labour scarcely sufficed to obtain a
single meal for the savage,while the skilful labourer
in the United States, in New Holland, or in Eng-
land, by a day's labour not only feeds himself,
but feeds a considerable number of persons who
produce nothing whatever: But the same prin-
ciple, in degree, applies to all countries less
peopled and less civilized than Britain, and
more peopled and more civilized than were the
present United States and New Holland three
centuries ago. In all countries, and at all times,
fertility is no element of cost, any more than
sunshine or rain; and in all countries at
all times the cost of subsistence will be
Less, as the inhabitants are most ad-
vanced in knowledge and skill. Where
the people know, as in Mexico, how to
scratch the ground, and sow maize, a favourable
season yields them an abundant harvest, but in a
bad season they get little or nothing. Between
the most abundant and the least abundant seasons
in England there is no such difference as is ob-
served in the produce of Mexico. The skill of
civilized man, therefore, whatever may be the
presumed fertility of a soil, will more surely than
that, give him an average abundance of food.
We extend these general principles to all coun-
tries, and affirm that, on an average of years,
wheat is grown at a less cost in England than in
any of the countries in which it_ is sold for a
latn We
much less money price thanin E
will not now advert to all the causes the much
higher money price in England than in other
countries, but they may all be explained without
supposing that it costs more to grow wheat in
civilized England than in half-barbarous Podolia.
Some persons affirm, for example, that as coun-
tries become peopled and civilized all things be-
come dearer, and therefore they say the pre-
sent high monied price of food in England
is a natural and necessary effect of our civiliza-
tion and the multiplication of our people.
But what do such reasoners say to the
price of all kinds of cotton manufactures, which
has fallen in proportion from lOs. to Is., within
the memory of man ? What do they say to the
price of all kinds of hardware, of all kinds of
silk goods, of all kinds of groceries, not subject
to a monopoly—to teas and coffees, to every
thing which is brought from abroad, most of
which, as every body, we believe, knows,
but the Corn-law advocates, have fallen in cost
amazingly within the last century? Corn ap-
pears not to have fallen, because they have
fallen so much more ; but corn • itself has fallen
in cost price. So far from civilization and the
multiplication of people having a tendency to
raise the cost of production, they have the con-
trary tendency ; and all things, except food,
which the law will not allow .us to have at a low
price, cost less and less as the increase of people
promotes knowledge and civilization.
gvea the money price of food is following the