The Sun.
London, England, 1846-02-18 00:00:00

hoped that the same principle would be extended to all.—( Hear,
I bear. ) He would say it was not just to protect sugar, if it was
withdrawn from corn; and on the same grounds he hoped that
Hon. Gentlemen would see that if any interest or trade in the
country was unprotected, while corn was protected, it was
equally unjust to that particular trade or interest. Hun. Mem-
bers could not deny that. Ile must say this as the represen-
tative, if so he might term himself, of one of the largest trades
in the country, to which no Member proposed the protection of
the House, and a trade that did not require it. Since he came
into that House a proposition had been made to remove all
impediments in the way of exporting machinery, and he was,
glad to say that every Member in that House, as well, he be-
lieved, as every one connected with that trade out of the
House, supported that motion. Last year the 10 per cent. im-
posed on the exportation of cotton yarns was repealed, and
every one connected with the trade in the House voted for
the proposition. Not only the Members in the House con-
nected with the cotton trade gave their votes in support of the
repeal, but out of the House it was supported by nearly all in •
terested in that pursuit. klut lie would not take cotton, or
woollen, or silk, but he would come at once to the real
question to be considered—the policy of a protective
duty on corn—( Cries of " Hear, hear ")—and on which
Hon. Members on the Opposition side had talked as if they
knew so much. He was walking past the offices of the protec-
tion party in Bond-street the other day, and he must say the
place seemed seedy and forlorn.—(Loud laughter.) There
was not the slightest appearance of business there. He saw a
large brass plate on the door, on which was engraved in large
letters " The Central Society for the Protection of Agricul-
culture and Native Industry." And what, he would ask, was
that industry which it was proposed to protect? He recol-
lected in 1842, when his Hon. Friend the Member for Stock-
port (Mr. Cobden) proposed that if the protection of the
lbaended interest was agreed to, that it should also
to raise and keep permanent the rate of
wages.—( Hear, hear.) It hat answer was given to that
proposition? Honourable Members said that they could not
understand how that proposition could be agreed to on princi-
ples of political economy. If warres could nut be
settled by Act of Parliament, was it not equally opposed
to the laws of political economy, and equally absurd to
law to raise the produce of the landlord's estates He passwould
a
beg the Hon. Member to give a clear and satisfactory answer
to this point. That Hon. Member professed to understand
the question, and he (Mr. Bright) believed that the Hon.
Gentleman was a reader of the Economist newspaper. If he
did so, and professed to know the principle which regulates
trade and commerce, he (Mr. Bright) could not understand
how he could reconcile those principles with the speech which
he had made the other night. That speech was skilfully con-
structed,
but it was nothing more, and did not deal fairly and
comprehensively with the question before the House. Let him
look at the increase of population—consider the limited extent
of these two islands, with a population of 27,000,000, and
which was increasing at a great rate, a million and a half hav-
ing been added since the corn-law of 1842 was passed—
let him consider this, and see how he could
reconcile it with the principles of political economy.
They would, if they dared, shut out foreign produce altogether
from this country; and he believed that many of their sup-
porters sighed for a law that would do so.—( Cries of " Oh,
oh.") Well, then, they would prohibit it to the point at which
it would be safe to stop.—to the point of starvation.
What mattered it how much distress might be felt by the
labourer in Wiltshire or the weaver in Lincolnshire, if high
prices for wheat could be safely maintained ? Up to that went,
then, they wished to prohibit the importation of foreign corn,
although they well knew that, with the increasing population,
there would be a greater difficulty in supplying them with
home-grown corn. But the landlords probably argued that the
increased demand for food would involve an increased amount of
rent for the land.—(Hear, hear.) Was this protection to the
labourer or to the farmer ? They said, yes, or they would not
thus struggle to maintain it. Ile (Mr. Bright) had heard a
clergyman of the Church of England say that the labourers'
protection was the poor-law.—( Hear, hear.) The poor-law
was as much a protection to clergymen as to the labourer, for
the reduced clergyman like the labourer could fall back upon the
workhouse. In what condition was the land under the existing
system of protection? He (Mr. Bright) would tell them it
was badly cultivated in most parts of the country. There was
scarcely a parish in which there were not more labourers than
could find employment. They found one labourer competing
with another—they found a fierceness of competition that was
destroying them, yet that House had never passed a law regu-
lating the wages of labour. The Honourable Member
for Wiltshire, the senior Member (Mr. Bennet) he expected,
iorne time ago, at a meeting held in his own county, made a
long speech to the farmers, and made one of the most extra-
ordinary statements that ever had been made in the hearing
of his fellow men. He was reviewing the state of agriculture
in that very happy county, and he was lamenting his misfor-
tune in being born to the possession of some thousand
acres. He said that if he had the happiness to come into the
world again, he knew no condition which he should choose with
so much alacrity and contentment as the condition of the agri •
cultural labourer. Well, he did feel some delicacy—(lronical
cheers and laughter)—in saying, that this remark
might imply a doubt as to the wisdom of the Ho-
nouable Member's choice. But he certainly ought to knoe
the condition of the labourer; he lived among them, and
therefore was qualified to form an opinion on the subject. Bill
he (Mr. Bright) would rather have the opinion of the
labourer ; and he would still confine the Hen. Gentleman to
his own county of Wilts. They had heard of a meeting at
Goatacre. —( Hear.) Some Hon. Member had stated that
this meeting was got up by the League.—(Cheers, and laughter. )
Hon. Gentlemen opposite were so convinced of the omnipresence
of the League, that he, perhaps, need not affirm that the League
had nothing to do with it. But they had a later meeting of
labourers at Bremhill, and a certain labourer, Job Senning,
took the chair. He did not know whether he was a prize la-
bourer cr not.. But Job said, " I be protected, but I be
starved." It was not in Wiltshire alone that misery existed.
An Hon. Friend had put into his hand a paper, drawn up by a
respectable person in the town of Tiverton. The paper gave the
condition of 28 families, the number of children, and the
wages which they earned for a week. What were these wages ?
Seven shillings. Men with wives, and five, six, or seven
children—living in miserable huts, paying high rents, and
obliged to pay out of their scanty means a high price for
winter fuel—and all this out of seven shillings a week. Now,
he should like to ask the Hon. Member for Northamptonshire,
who boasted that the labourer could earn 125., if this was the
protection that they gave to the labourers ?—( Hear)—and if it
was, whether it was commensurate with the benefits which the
landlords had been reaping for the last thirty years.—( Cheers. )
The Hon. Member spoke of the condition of the coachmakers
Would the Hon. Member go clown to Southampton, and ask
Mr. Andrews, the celebrated coachmaker, what the state
of trade at that time was ? He would find that he was building
coaches for all the countries of Europe. He (Mr. Bright)
would not insult his countrymen, as Hon. Members opposite
did, by declaring that they were behind their rivals on the
Continent in anything requiring fine taste and execution.
Why even foreigners acknowledge the superiority of the English
workman in all the branches of manufacture. But these gen-
tlemen affirmed that the tradesman was behind the artizan of
France, as their labourers were behind the serfs of Poland.
lion. Members had expressed great horror of coming evils if
these corn-laws should be abolished. There were different
sorts of inundation. He had heard of inundation of water,
but now agricultural gentlemen were alarmed
at a threatened inundation of corn.—(Hear, hear. )
Those who had travelled abroad must know there was nothing
in the climate, nothing in the land, which was likely to com-
pete successfully with the agriculture of this country. What
could be more certain than that they grew for every acre of
land in England a larger quantity of corn than was grown
upon an acre in any other country in the world. Mr. Web-
ster, in a speech in the United States, gave a statement of the
number of acres grown in this country, and the number of
quarters per acre, and Inc pointed to -England as exceeding
America, and he exhorted his countrymen to en-
deavour to equal this country. If they grew more
acres than any other country in the world, another
thing was just as sure, and that was that the labourer gut a
smaller portion for his share than in any other country in the
world.—( Cries of " No, no.") Why if tire prices were so much
higher in this country, as they said they were, and if wages
were seven shillings per week in some of the countries, and it
their acres of land grew clearly twice as much as any
other acres in the world, he would ask how was it possible
for them to come to any other conclusion than that the
labourer reaped their fields, but got a smaller portion of the
produce for his subsistence than in any other country in the
world! Let them look to their advantages, They had a
larger supply of manure than was found in any other country
they had far better agricultural implements —s the)
had them at a much cheaper rate they had fat
better roads than they found anywhere else and
they had markets so much better that hardly any com-
parison could be drawn. True it was that protection had da-
maged them. It was not foreign competition that they neer.
fear. They had protected the farmer into a state of decripi-
tude, and now, when a stimulus was offered to them, the)
trembled for the consequences that might ensue.—( Hear.)
Let them take the county of Cheshire. There was
a high aristocracy there and a very poor tenantry. Therew
land of at least an average quality most wretchedly cultivated,
uallmg
and there would be a mass of pauperism in Cheshire
e e
the south-western counties, if it were net for the prrnrxilni.ty to
Lancashire, in which county the labourer found nelt
was not the soil of Cheshire that made the farmer poor—
it was not the climate—it was the Legislature.
of that House which destroyed the vitality ot agriculture.
in the course of this debate, nothing, had been said upon the
subject of mortgages. The lion. Member for Berkshire said,
that he did not ask for protection—if the law was not a good
law, let it be abolished, and if the principle were unsound let
it be abandoned. The late Paymaster of the Forces it was
who first talked about mortgages, and they need
not be surprised if the people in the country
used that ergument which had been put into their mouths.
But he would discuss this question solely with reference to the
peculiar interest to the landowner. The lion. Member for
Berkshire spoke of burdens—he spoke of poor-rates. Now
he (Mr. Bright) thought he could show that Hon. Gentleman
that the capital of the tenant-farmer of this country
paid no poor-rates whatever.—( Hear, hear.) They
complained that he ( Mr. Bright) did not pay rates upon ma-
chinery in his mills. They said that stock in trade should be
rated to the poor-rate. But if that argument were applied to
him, it must be applied to the agriculturist also. how did
this work? The Hon. Member for Berkshire, he would say,
' bad some thousands with which to cultivate his. land. He paid
nothing in the shape of poor-rate upon his household furniture,
or the produce in his barns—his growing crops—upon 11'
ma-
nure, upon his cattle, or upon any kind of stock orimple men t
he might have. Ile did not pay a single farthing fer poor-
rates until the time when a permanent improvement in the soil
had taken place, anti sumo portion of the tenant's capital had
become incorporated with the land. Now if he (Mr. Bright)
was to pay upon his machinery and his cotton, it was quite
clear that the tenant mnst pay poor-rates upon tire stock he
had mentioned. They had better say nothing, therefore,
about the poor-rates.
Mr. PALMER—I did not allude to the poor-rates.
Mr. BRIGHT-1 think the lion. Gentleman did.
Mr. PALMER—I quoted from a speech of the Right Hon.
Baronet.
Mr. BRIGHT—WeII then there was another burden which
had not been mentioned, and that was the burden of game.
There were two sons of the Duke of Rutland in that House,
who had 'spoken in the debate, and 'S ho were about to vote
against the proposition of the Government. In 1844, that
Noble Duke paid 9151. for game damage on 309
acres of land. Now he asked how Honourable Members
could come to that House, when for their own amuse-
ment the produce of the land was being devoured ?
He was of opinion after all that Hon. Members opposite were
not in earnest in this debate. He believed there was no fear
of the repeal of the corn-laws amongst them. They were
angry with the Government, but they were not afraid of the
abolition of protection. In that House, however, they
had stated that if the corn-laws was abolished, the
land would be thrown out of cultivation, and there would
be no rents paid: they had told their tenants that it the corn-
law. was abolished they would be ruined, and he would
.pro,Tair3
them that before twelve months had passed over theitrlieml.
that statement would be brought up in judgment ago's* 1
They said that such a step would involve thecooufntthrties ruin,
for there would be no revenue; and the aristocracy Ountry
would be abolished; and that the( Church,and tchoiensagsuunentol
Christianity, would be j thaatnd
injured,
that meant.), would
f
England (he did not knowin
opposite had predicted
be set for ever; which lion. Members
would result from the abolition of the turn laws ; but did they
adhere to these statements and were they anxious to rep-
new
diste them? Why there was no alarm in the country ,although
these 111ov:table calar;.ities were laid to 4 fastcionain
upon then. There nit no ielottwe to the meulue of any un.