The Sun.
London, England, 1841-11-30 00:00:00

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song writers and singers, attended out of respect to the
meeting, who, with Messrs. Furness, Hall, Bert, with
several other musical gentlemen, entertained the com-
pany with some excellent songs ' • and the hilarity of the
meeting was kept up with good feeling and spirit until
a late hour.

ANTI-CORN-LAW LECTURE AT
HUDDERSFIELD, BY COL. THOMPSON.
(From the Leeds Times.)
The Operative Anti-Corn-law Association of Hud-
dersfield having invited Col. Thompson to lecture in
that town on the subject of the Corn-11ws, a meeting of
the members of the Association and the inhabitants ge-
nerally, was held on Monday evening, the 22d, in the
Philosophicall Hall. The hall was quite filled, and we
understand that it will contain 1,500 persons. A con-
siderable number of Chartists were present. _ _

Mr. B. RourNsoN Wa.? electeJ Chairman, and having

briefly stated the object of the meeting,
Col. THOMPiON came forward amidst loud cheers.
He said, after a few introductory remarks, that he knew
there was a great variety of opinions on every one of
the subjects which he should prohab!y touch upon. He
did not come there to invite disputation or quarrel on
those points, but to lay before them, for their judgment,
the conclusions to which he had arrived ; but he should

be quite willing, after the conclusion of the lecture, to

answer any question that might be proposed to him,
only conditioning that the questions should either be
put through the Chairman, or be put in such a concise
and tangible form as might be easily understood. They
were told that this was a complicatsd question, and if
by that term were meant that it involved a great many
individuals in the consequences, he was ready to admit
it; but if it were meant that it was so complicated a
question that an ordinary man was not to touch it, then
he very much doubted its complication. He would
suppose them the inhabitants of a small island, as they
were of a large one, and that the soil of the small island
was moderately good for agricultural purposes, but that
the interior was mainly composed of coal and iron, and
everything necessary for carrying on manufactures, and
that they also had a hardy and bold maritime popula-
tion, willing and able to carry the results of their manu-
facturing industry from the island, and exchange them
with foreign countries, for whatever was more valuable
in their produce, when brought home, than what they
carried abroad. Suppose population increased in this
island, as increase it must, and the time came when the
proceeds of agricultural industry began to be rather
scanty for the population, there being of course no in-
crease of the soil of the island, but a great increase of
the population, and that at the same time the manufac-
turers were aware that they could carry their goods
abroad, and exchange them for food there at a much
more advantageons rate than at home. Nov: it seemed
plain, that after being driven to cultivate*soil more and
more unfit for cultivation, and which would produce less
and less of corn, the time would arrive, as the popula-
tion went on increasing, when the wants of that popula-
tion would press upon the products of the soil. In this
state of things, then, suppose the growers of corn stood
up, and said, " Oh, no ! that will never do for us ; corn
has now risen to a certain price, and if we allow you to
go and buy corn abroad, it would never rise above it ;
and that would be a sad thing for us ; and, therefore,
we, particularly if we possess the power of making the
laws, will make a law to prevent you from bringing
home the produce of other countries, and if we do not
prohibit it, we will lay a tax that shall cause the price
of our corn to rise." In other words, " we, the lucky
owners of the soil, will put the difference into our
pockets."—( Hear, hear.) Was there anything fair in
such a system as this ? Was it not a confiscation of
the property of those who owned the under soil, the
coal and iron, and other things employed in manufac-
tures, to put money into the pockets of the owners of
the upper soil, on which corn was grown ? Would it
not be just as easy for the manufacturers to do the same ?
Suppose they were to say, " A bounty on foreign corn
would be a capital thing," that would be very like a tax
on home-grown corn ; suppose they were to make a
proposition of that sort, what outcries and exclamations
would arise from the agriculturists. How then did they
establish the justice of putting a tax on the manufactu-
rers any more than on the:nselves ?—( Hear, hear.)
Look at the speeches at agkicultural meetings ; they
wanted nothing but fairness, nieatting the present laws ;
they wanted nothing but justice, meaning a tax on the
industry of the manufacturing classes.—(Hear, hear.)
He feared the time would not soon come when the in-
justice would be done away with, unless the manufac-
turing classes began to talk of putting a tax on them by
way of compensation.—(Loud cheers.) See whether
that would not bring them to their senses.—(Cheers.)
Let the manufacturers ask for a tax on home-grown
corn, or a bounty on foreign corn, which is the same
thing. Take all the arguments of the agriculturists,
and they would serve on the other side as %veil. The
agriculturists said they spent their money in buying the
goods of the manufacturers, and therefore the more they
had the better it was for the manufacturers. They did
not say so to the man who took their money out of their
till ; they did not allow him to persuade them out of
their senses, by telling them the more be got the better
it would be for them.—(Laughter.) Suppose he said
he would come and spend it all at their shop, did that
satisfy them for the robbery ? He thought not ; he
thought it amounted to nothing, but robbing them of
the prime cost of their goods, and returning them the
profit.—(Loud cheers.) They would find the agricul-
tural gentlemen telling the manufacturing classes all the
money they got from them came back again and was
spent with them.—(Cheers.) Perhaps they would say
that this was but a rough statement. It might be so.
There were many more consequences to follow. Let
them endeavour to trace what would be the consequence
of allowing such a system to be carried on in the sup-
posed island ? if the landlord succeeded in preventing
them from purchasing corn from abroad, and population
went on, pressing, as of course it would do, against
the limits of the food produced in the island, what
could be the possible result but that the same food
being divided amongst more people, every one must
get less.—(Cheers.) He did not mean to say that the
Archbishop of Canterbury would gct less. He was
well fed, and likely to be ; but this only proved that the
scarcity would be more severely felt by the rest. Then
do not let them be deluded by seeing that there were
some men not brought to starvation by the system.
Lord Wellington said he did not believe that men were
starving. He saw food enough.—(Hear, hear.) But
if he were to ask him (Colonel Thompson), or still bet-
ter, those whom he was addressing, he thought they
could show him men aild women not suffering under the
exhuberance of food.—(Hear., hear.) The Duke of
Wellington said it was want of employment, and he
(Col. Thompson) was quite sure that it was the want
of the food which employment ought to divide amongst
them. If they could go abroad and provide trade, ca-
pitalists would find the means of employing the opera-
tive advantageously, and giving him good wages ; and
it was because they were surrounded with a wall of
brass, that they did not do this, and that the operatives
and their families starved.—( Hear, hear.) Suppose
the captain of a Hull vessel took some of their Hud-
dersfield goods and carried them to Hamburgh. They
would sell for so many dollars, and the Hull merchant
would say, " What can I lay these dollars out in, so as to
take back a cargo of goods for sale in England, that
shall make my employers smile ?" The Hamburgh
merchant, perhaps, proposed that he should take corn.
" Oh ! but," said the Hull captain, " Don't you know
there is a tax on foreign corn ?" Timber, perhaps, was
next proposed, but that was .just as bad. He might
take Canadian timber, which was rotton and full of
creeping things, but not good timber. "Oh !" said the
Hull captain, " you will not find me coming here again,
if I may take back nothing that will pay." If there is some-
thing at Hamburgh that he cannot sell in England he
might bring it here, sticking-plaster, or anything else
they did not want.—(Cheers.) Was there an Hudders-
field merchant there who did not see how injuriously
this operated upon himself ? To take the subject in
another point of view, let them suppose the Hudders-
field merchant sent goods to America, then they had to
compete with the Saxon merchants. Say that the cloth
sold in America for 10 dollars. Of these 10 dollars
two must be paid by the Saxon merchant for food for
his labourers. The Huddersfield merchant might give
exactly the same food to his labourers as the Saxon
merchant, suppose it to be neither better nor worse,
but he had been obliged to pay two dollars
for the food and two dollars to the landowner
as a tax on the food. The Huddersfield merchant,
therefore, had only six dollars out of the ten, while the
Saxon had eight dollars out of the ten.—(Cheers.)
Was not this a clear premium to the Saxon merchant
to sell us out of the market ; and the consequence was,
that he did sell us out of the market.—(Cheers.) He
could go on selling for two dollars less than the Hud-
dersfield merchant to the American. Let them is all
their operations look at the landlord's tax as something
tied like a log round the necks of the manufacturers.
What was the consequence to them? Reduction of
profits, and getting into the bankrupt list.—(Hear,
hear.) What was the reason why the young men who
had begun business within the last ten or twenty years
had entered in such a large proportion into that dread-
ful list ? Then with respect to those who, like Solo-
mon's lilies—and it was the only respect in which they
were like them—" toiled not, neither did they spie.”
Rent, if they examined it closely, was not the produce
of industry. It was the last thing a man ought to
think of increasing by restrictions on his neighbours
Here was a man whom God had made rich, who said,
" It would be very convenient for me to have 20,000/
a year, instead of 10,0001., and I beg you will be so
complaisant as to assist me in getting it." And what
was the effect on the operatives, those who lived on the
wages of labour ; and first the manufacturing opera-
tives ? Was it not plain that unless they could put an
end to the increase of their numbers, or find some way
of reducing the numbers that actually existed, they
must, under the present system, go on hidding against
each other for less and less wages ? Was it not clear
that if the people went on increasing in population while
the quantity of corn was not allowed to be increased,
they wore in the situation of a town besieged,
whose resources were cut off by the enemy,—.
(Hear, hear.) The quantity of food must be
divided in smaller proportions, time after time, amongst