The Sun.
London, England, 1845-04-10 00:00:00

T R SUN, LONDON, THURSDAY

' that time obliged to sell it for 455.---( Hear, hear.)
Anil he would say now, after ten years' experience,
that it was an egregious fallacy to endeavour to con-
trol the seasons, or to state with certainty what should
be the price of bread.—(Hear, hear, and cheering.)
That was the case, and he would affirm that while it
was already proved that while the amount guaranteed
was 545., tile sum they sold it at was 455. Such was
the effect of protection.—(Loud cheering.) Know-
ing this, it was necessary that all should come for-
ward on this occasion, whether landlords, or tenants,
or labourers, and when at last the immense mass
of the people would feel their interest in the cause,
there could be no doubt of its being ultimately car-
ried.—(Cheers.) Why, it was the interest of the
landlord, it was the interest of the farmer to do that
—(Continued cheering.) And let them not forget
that it was their bounden duty to fill the mouths of
their vastly increased pauper brethren with the good
1 with which God had gifted them. They knew that the
seasons had their cycles, and that while the only kind,
the great and the bountiful Giver of all
Good might he showering down his gifts
on one portion of the earth, he might at the seine
time withhold his favours from them, by scorching
no what they had sown, or by drenching their fields
with rain. Let them apply to every part of the globe
for food.—(Cheers.) Let them carry their produce
wherever it might find a market ; and let England be,
as it was intended at first to be, the workshop of the
world.—(lmmense cheering.) Let all in that assem-
blage do their duty ; landlords, tenants, and opera-
tives, until, like the phoenix from its ashes, they should
arise, and show by their determination their desire
to do away with the stigma which now attached to
their country. He would mention what had oc-
curred to his own mind within the last three
years, when Irish butter was introduced into this
country, and Glasgow alone could be found to
purchase it. He remembered lately that in Ireland
he spoke to a manufacturer, and these were his
words :—" Where is the sense of your giving us
such prices for our butter, for all the farmers' wives
want shawls now ?"—(Laughter.) In carrying out
that principle, they need not mind whether other
countries grew corn, for they, also, would try to
grow it—(Hear, hear)—and, like the farmers' wives
who wanted shawls, theywould find their wants grow
in the same proportion.—(Cheers.) He had just left
the shores of Ireland, and he had been told that the
corn-laws had done a great deal of good for that
country. He would now ask this simple question—
Had it made the farmers of that country rich ?—had
it increased the happiness of the popula-
tion ?—(Hear, hear.) It was no use to occupy the
public mind of Ireland in this manner. It would
make the country worse ; it would bring the people
into a state of greater degradation. After seeing the
state of the farmer in England with his thirty years
of protection, he was compelled to ask, if he was in
the position to which that protection entitled him ?
He said no; and he did say that he was unwilling to
give any protection. He had supported protection
conscientiously, because all he had in the world was
on land or in land, and he had the consolation left
that let the wind blow high or blow low, he had
acted throughout conscientiously, because, though he
was interested in the question, he had changed his
opinions, and he was not ashamed now to avow them.
—(Tremendous cheering.) He would tell them this,
that he had changed those opinions conscientiously.
He would tell them more than this, he advocated
these new opinions because he believed them,
and he would advocate a free-trade not
only in corn, but in sugar, and in
timber also. He could not ask for sugar, because
the Crown said it was to be protected ; but if he built
a house, he might surely see what the quality of the
timber used in it was, and he might wish to make
_ _

that timber better. He asked for the abolition of the
corn-laws, because it would enhance the comforts
and the happiness of the people.—(Cheers )
Mr. COBDEN, who for some time was so voci-
feroesly cheered that it was impossible for him to
obtain a hearing, at last, when silence was
somewhat restored, said that he was sure that the
expression of the feeling of every one in that
assembly would agree with him when he stated how
deeply they felt themselves indebted to the Hon.
Friend who had just appeared before them, for his
candid expression of his conversion from the princi-
ples which he had before then advocated ; and he
thought it looked like the beginning of the
end.—(" Hear, bear," and laughter.) They had, if
he might say so, been going round the circle, and
had just completed the journey. They had be-
gan with the manufacturers, then they had gone to
the shopkeepers, and new they had got among the
farmers. When the agricultural interest was intro-
duced to the notice of the House of Commons, and
when its most distinguished supporters brought for-
ward a motion on the subject, it would astonish the
landlords and their friends to find that nothing de-
serving the name of an argument had been advanced
on the sub ect on that side of the House.
He would not say that there were not Mem-
bers on the Government side of the House of
Commons who could not make out a good case to the
advantage of their own principles, and the questions
which they themselves defended. He should not say
that they descended to any unworthy practices in
order to confer a peculiar benefit on a elms, but he,
looking after the interests of the farmer and the farm
laboneer, would meet them on the equal ground, that
the corn-laws were more injurious to the farmer than
to any other class in the empire.—(Cheers.) Now,
really, when he considered the state of the House of
Commons that it contained at least 200 county Mem-
bers, besides 140 Members more, sent up from
pocket boroughs, he would ask them what they could
possibly expect from one or two men ? It appeared
to him, and he had a lively faith in the character and
credit of Englishmen, that they would not allow
the counties to send up Members to stop the
advocates of the people in the body of
the House. He had faith in the qualities
of his countrymen, who had that staple in their
composition, that out of one hundred, ninety-nine
employed the privileges entrusted to them correctly.—
(Cheers.) He could only account for the deficiency
in argument on the Ministerial side of the House, by
a reference to the considerations which influenced
their opinions. They supported the Crown—they
supported monopoly, and it would take the eloquence of
Demosthenes himself to support, with any degree
of fervour, the corn-laws. The Prime Minister of
England ought to be wary that he did not induce
his followers to stretch the bow too tightly, lest the
present evil might be still further increased. Upon
the subject of the kitchen stuffs of Sir Robert
Peel's tariff, he (Mr. Cobden) never heard a man so
eloquent as Mr. Bickham Escott. Even Colonel
Wyndham was roused into a state of agitated elo-
quence, when referring to the little Parliament of
No. 17, Bond-street.—(Cheers and laughter.) The
question now arose, what were they to do between
Peel and Russell ? There appeared to be a sort of
rival bidding on either side, but he would not say
which should have the honour of carrying
out the great principle of free-trade.—(Hear.)
If he (Mr. Cobden) were in the position of Lord
John Russell, he would be very—very jealous or the
honour of the House of Woburn, and would not like
that the House of Peel and Co. should take it out of
his hands.—(Hear, hear.) He would bid high for it.
If put to the vote, probably a majority would be dis-
posed to give an old friend who had a hand in the
Test and Corporation Acts the preference.—(Hear,
hear.) And then he made the first bid also in 1841,
but he did not bid quite up to the mark. He thought
that after reading what Mr. Haughton had said that
night, Lord John ought be very much disposed to
put another foot forward in the matter. He did not
see how statesmen could falter—how they could hesi-
tate for one moment, when agentleman like Mr. Haugh-
ton came forward, whom he knew to be employed and
trusted by some of the noblest of the land in the ma-
nagement of their estates : who had been for three
days under examination before an agricultural com-
mittee in 1835, and who was a great agricultural
authority—when he saw such a gentleman come for-
ward and declare himself a free-trader after mature
deliberation, he could not see why Lord John should
hesitate in carrying out the principles of free-trade.
It was a very remarkable fact that, go where they
would, there was something in their cause that
attracted all the men of sense, eloquence, and feeling
to them.—(Cheers.) There was Mr. Haughton, and
he saw another old friend of theirs behind him, Mr.
Latimore—(Hear, hear)—and there were some other
independent and intelligent farmers sitting just below
him. If any of those who were listening to him hap-
pened to go into a farmer's dining-room, which was
his ordinary, he would tell them how they could re-
cognise the free traders amongst them. Let them
just take their hats, and see which were the biggest,
and these would belong to the largest heads, who
were free traders.—(Laughter.) If any of their
opponents had heads above the average size, they
would soon be found to desert the ranks of the pro-
tectionists, and come over to the ranks of the free
they
kingdom on their side. There was one of great pre-
tbraadder somes . (Hear,of the hear,ery best and
pre-
eminence, whose name was hardly ever quoted,
Mr. Coke, of Norfolk, afterwards Lord Leicester.—
(Hear, hear.) He was a man, who sixty years ago
went to Norfolk, where he found an estate which was
little better than a rabbit warren. There was not a
blade of grass for a rabbit to feed itself upon. Well
he set to work with this estate, he sank wells, threw
up clay, mixed it with sand and made a surface, so
that this land, which was not worth 25. 6d, an acre

when he got it, was worth 255. an acre in his hands.
—(Hear, hear.) A property not worth 2,000/. rose
to the value of 20,000/. in his skilful hands. Now,
if any man ought to be afraid of foreign competition,
afraid that any produce of the fertile lands .of the
Mississippi and the rich central land of Poland
would throw out of cultivation the comparatively
barren land which he had cultivated, it was Mr.
Coke. But he (Mr. Cobden) knew that from the
first he was a strenuous advocate of tree trade in corn.
When he was in Norwich lately, he took the
pains of ascertaining, from Mr. Coke's- most
intimate friends, what his opinions on the
corn-laws were, and he had the authority
of his personal friends for saying that he was from
the first a consistent opponent of the corn-laws—
(Hear, hear)—not that he took any great pains to
study their effect upon the commerce and manufac-
tures of the country, but he opposed them because he
thought they were eulculatett to make the farmers in-
dolent
riigniltthielairdaagn3riicultural pursuits.—(Hear.) Now,
not to go farther than Lord Spencer--(Cheers)—
agricul-
ture his study,
to ntthallil,: %Nato uhtada furie'te Itnraad ('i
e e
in corn
being injurious to- the farmers, when he had the ex-
ample of Earl Spencer to guide him on the subject ?
If any body chose to contend that it was beneficial
to commerce and manufactures, why, he may be as
competent to judge of it as Earl Spencer or Lord
Ducie, but when some empty- headed person came out
of his counting-house, or from behind his desk, and
said that the League wanted to ruin the farmers, he
would only point to the dicta of Earl Spencer,
the best crazing farmer in the kingdom—
(Hear, hear)—and of Earl Ducie, the best
arable farmer, and
ask him how he had the pre-
sumption to say that, with such practical farmers to
guide him, they were the enemies of farmers or agri-
culture ?—(Bear, hear.) Ile took an opportunity,
the other night, in the House of Commons, of drawing
the attention of his audience there— (Laughter)—to
the evils, upon the industry of the farmers, which
their law, which prevented the coarser kinds of grain
used for the feeding of cattle from being imported,
produced. But, would they believe it, Mr. Stafford
O'Brien, who called himself a farmer's friend, got up
and actually bullied the Ministry because he suspected
that they were inclined to let Dutch clover-seed come
in for the benefit of the farmer. There was a farmer's
friend !—(Laughter.) Was it not a privilege to have
such people for an audience, that one might be able
to teach them something ?—(Laughter and cheers.)
Why, if they had a free trade in grain, the
farmers were the class, of all others, who
who would participate most largely in the benefit.
They could indeed eat American flour and . Polish
wheat in the towns, but the farmers would be the
great buyers of Indian corn and Egyptian beans, and
Polish peas, if, as ought to be the case, they were
allowed to import those things free.—(Hear, hear.)
He would appeal to Mr. Haughton and Mr. Latimore
whether, at the time the Protection Society was
bullying the Ministry to keep up the restrictions
upon the food for cattle, the tenants of those blind
men, who were leading the blind, had not their cattle
starving for want of provender ?—(Hear, hear.)
The consequence was, that the farmers were forced to
send their cattle_to market, and sell them at a sacri-
fice, thereby running down the price, because they
had not fodder at home to feed them with ; and he
heard yesterday of one proprietor who bought, as a
favour, from his tenant, upwards of fifty cows to feed
the hounds in his kennel.—(Loud cries of " Shame,
shame.") The landlords now began to suspect,
he verily believed, that other persons knew '
their business better than they did themselves—they
had that virtue of modesty coming over them for the
first time—(Laughter)—and that accounted for the
more moderate tone they lately assumed. They had
doubts whether they were not wrong altogether, and
when they read the speech of Mr. Haughton he sus-
pected those doubts would very much increase,—
(Hear, hear.) There was one part of his speech
which he did not sufficiently dwell upon. He had
shown that the farmers derived no benefit from pro-
tection, but there was one part of the protective sys-
tem, the monopolies of sugar and timber, by which
they were injured.—(Hear, hear.) They paid dearly
for those articles, merely that the landed proprietors
might get up a partnership with the sugar and timber
monopoly in the House of Commons.—(Cheers.)
How many hundred tons of fruit were wasted every
year, which would be made into preserves and con-
sumed by children (and nothing could be more
wholesome), if sugar were sold at one-half the price
at which it had been sold for the last five years ?
(Hear.) But the most important part of all was this,
and Mr. Haughton had not at all adverted to it, that
the many grievances which the farmers had to com-
plain of would never be got rid of, as long as their
attention was distracted by the cry of protection—as
long as that ignis fatuns of protection was held be-
fore their eyes. The farmers were always led away
by this artful cry. The landlord said to them, " Oh,
we must take care of the corn-law, send men to Par-
liament to maintain prOtection, and we will take care
of your interests." They were thus led to believe
that if they sent a majority to the House of Com-
mons, that majority would enable them to pay what-
ever rent they agreed to give. They had thus no
time to think how they would get fairer rents, or rid
themselves of the nuisance of game. The consequence
was, thatthe landlords, instead of meeting their tenants
on fair, equitable terms, as men of business, threw
something between them which mystified a very
plain matter—" There is my land, what will you give
for it." Were it not for this cry, the landlords would
have been compelled to grant leases to their tenants,
and to abate the nuisance of game—in fact such a
nuisance would never have been imposed on the
tenants. They would have laid out more capital on
the land, and would have made it more profitable,
were it not for the bug•bear of protection which mis-
led them.—(Hear, hear.) Now he would give an
advice to the farmers, and that was, that they would
not take leases at present--(Hear, bear)--unless they
got them at a corn rent.—(Hear, hear.) A lease was
necessary to the tenant—to the man who invested his
capital in land; and if there was no corn-law a man
might with great security take a lease at twenty-one
years' money rent, because under a free trade supply
and demand would be so regulatd that there would
be very little fluctuation in the price of corn.—(Hear,
hear.) But now that they had a corn-law every one
knew that the greatest fluctuations in 'the price of
corn occurred. That was a point on which every
sane mind agreed. How had the Scotch farmer ma-
naged to evade the fluctuations in the price of corn ?
They showed that they were twenty-three years in
advance of the English farmers, in shrewdness and
intelligence in this matter. In 1815, when the corn-
law passed, the Scotch, like the English farmer, be-
lieved that an Act of Parliament could secure to him
80s. a quarter for his corn, and he took land calcu-
lating upon that price ; but when, in 1822, the Scotch
farmer found that the price fell to 403. a- quarter, he
eaid immediately this law is a failure, the system
won't do. That class of farmers who took land, sup-
posing that the 80s. per quarter could be maintained,
were of course swept away; but when those who
succeeded came, they said to the landlords, we will
not take your land at a money-rent, because Parl'a-
led to expect, but as
there is one thing which Parliament cannot control—
thement does not fulfil its promises, and does not secure
the price of wheat which we were
can helpgrow—
we will pay you a rent
calculated at a
money-rent.
quantity of corn which, bywethe of na-
ture, and our own industry,
corn-rent, instead of a thus
the Scotch farmers showed themselves much
shrewder and more intelligent than the English
farmers. lie did not want to flatter the English
farmer ; he wanted to say something homely and un-
e a sharper and a wiser
pmaalantabthleaitio ih,eimr,etaillllyhewb,aesc.._am(, Hear, hear," and a
s• of the English farmers of
knew what a corn-rent
there were not ten per cen •
who •
laugh.) He said it with regret, but he believed that
the present day
corn as the rent of his farm.
give a 00in quarters of
was wheatta
taken
meant. The Scotch farmer bargained to give so
many quarters
of wheat• Scotland
his farm. The price
order to regulate the stipends of the
every year in
0,,
.pay to the s the year the average was
clergy, and at the end
Suppose he agreedf to
county ; and it was the
the year in the county that decided
average price for farmer was to
quarter averaged 603 then
land-
lord : well, supposing e d rgamed to give 200
tsht struck
pc
rki
cbey
wt hhei
which
htehrei ffo
At the en of the year, supposing
quarters of wheat.
of the
bargained
the price of wheat per
the farmer had to pay 1 but if "
600 e the price only
averaged 405., then the Scotch farmer would have to
hear.) Now,
pay only 4001.--(Dear, _ what. was the
condition of the Scot" farmer under this system ?
While they knew'Hous frome thof Commons
evidence s
given before a
Committee of the 1835, that
the English farmers declared themselves bankrupt,
the Scotch farmers
on the contrary, who were sum-
moned before the
Committee, said they were in a state
of prosperity with wheat at a price of 395. per quarter.
The reason was,while
that the Scotch farmer paid a
rent, calculated at 393, per quarter, the English
farmer was paying a rent of 645. per quarter.—(Loud
cheers.) What
was the condition of the Scotch
,
farmer at present? He lately saw in the Scotsman a
report of the
Fit
Lothian Agricultural District
Society in the first week in January. That report
stated that the farmers were not in a more pros-
perous condition since 1835, actually the last time
that wheat was dawn to 395. a quarter. Well,
in that very same week, he read in the Mark-
lane Express, a report of the state of the agri-
culturists in Essex, written, probably, by Mr. Baker
himself—(Laughter)—but however that may be, the
report stated that the small farmers were being
ruined—that they were sinking into the condition of
labourers—while the large farmers were in a state of
sullenness and discontent, partaking almost of the
spirit of the labourers themselves—(lleer, hear)—
that the union houses were full of unemployed
labourers, who were actually sent to gaol because
they were so insubordinate in the union houses.