The Sun.
London, England, 1844-03-12 00:00:00

Mantintt

LONDON, TUESDAY, MARCH 12, 1841.

The proceedings at a meeting, on Wednesday last, of
tenant-farmers, merchants, and tradesmen of Har-
leston, in the county of Suffolk, held at the Swan Inn,
in that town, and convened for the purpose of peti-
tioning Parliament to repeal the duties on foreign
corn and malt, and in favour of free trade, generally,
were, with some trifling exceptions, worthy of the in-
telligence, good sense, and spirit of one of the most
important agricultural districts in England. We are
disposed to notice the affair, the rather because the
scope which the address of the respected Chairman
embraced was remarkable for the novelty of some of
its views, in combination with a demand for corn-
law repeal, and the soundness and sagacity of the
opinions avowed with regard to the operation of our
system of currency, past and present. Desiring
to say so much, without any sort of offence to the
agricultural bodies of this kingdom, we must own
that, in general, their notions upon the theory of our
monetary arrangements by no means square with
those which we have formed upon the results of long
and attentive observation. But the Chairman of the
Harleston meeting enunciated some propositions on
these subjects, highly important in themselves, and to
us not the less interesting, because of their coinci-
dence with those which, from time to time, we have
advocated. This gentleman, Mr. T. L. TAYLOR, of
Starderston, a landowner of station and considerable
property in the neighbourhood, reminded the meet-
ing that if the corn-laws were really beneficial, as had
been contended, to those immediately interested,
they must be so to himself. But he was for their
entire repeal ; believing that they now were,
and had, almost always, been, injurious to the tenant-
farmers, and their labourers. He proceeded to il-
lustrate this important point by some statistical de-
tails, very well digested and very much to the purpose.
At the same time, and with a becoming and manly
ingenuousness (which we could wish to see exten-
sively imitated at other meetings, whether of societies
for the protection of British agriculture, or of their
opponents), he said that he was far from thinking that
the repeal of these laws would produce very cheap
corn, as the Anti-Corn-law League assumed that it
would do. He went so far as to state that the League
" had much injured the cause of repeal and of free
trade by holding out thatllope." In his:opinion the effect
would rather be " to produce greater uniformity be-
tween French and English prices,—and also greater
regularity." He regretted, too, that " both ma-
nufacturers and landowners are too selfish and one-
sided in their views of this question."
There is much of grave truth in all this. If the
fact is to be deplored, it is not the less essential that,
like other disagreeable testimonies of truth, it should
be deliberately heard and considered. For our own
parts, we have so recently and so often urged the
claims of those most important, but most neglected
classes—the producing labourers and artisans, who
are the great sufferers in this squabble of contending
interests, by reason of cruelly diminished wages and
exorbitantly increased demands on their working hours;
and by the almost absorption of the needful " intervals
for food and rest ;"—that we are compelled to concur
in this grave imputation of selfishness upon both
those classes of capitalists alluded to. The Chairman
next developed the results upon the scale of rents and
upon the prices of corn, which had been realized under
the various corn-laws passed from 1805 to the present
time. And first, as to the period from 1805 to 1815.
Between 1805 and 1814 the price of corn never fell
so low as 665. the quarter (the "pivot price" of Mr.
BoniNsores Act of 1815), and consequently the trade
was free ; and yet, notwithstanding that freedom of
importation, in some parts of this same term, the price
ranged up to 120 s. per quarter.

This was a salient and remarkable event in the
history of the first corn-law ; and Mr. TAYLOR skil-
fully availed himself of so prominent a fact, in order
to explain his own convictions of the opera
tion of other causes—seldom or never sufficiently
allowed for in corn-law discussions,—in bring-
ing about the high prices, and the high rents put
upon the land, which are usually ascribed to the sole
agency of the law in question. " Did not," said he,
" the paper money produce some effect ? And he
would ask, might not the present currency-law (he
referred partly to Peel's Bill of 1819) produce some
effect,—more even than the present corn-law does on
present prices." If these questions were answered
affirmatively, then were the farmers wrong in looking
for protection to the corn-law and a sliding-scale
only." The lovers of " protection " would really do
well to lay seriously to heart these considerations, at
once so inconteStible and so pertinent, and especially
the statistical proofs of which we have spoken above.
Thus, in the same ten years, 1805 to 1815, the import
of foreign wheat averaged about 500,000 quarters
per annum. " This showed," Mr. TAYLOR
argited, " that with open ports and high
prices to tempt importation, we cannot have
unlimited supplies, as some suppose." In 1838, 1839,
and 1840, its' our importations of wheat ex-
ceeded 2,00,0,04 i 4tuu.ters per annum ; and yet it
eould4t tie\ s 1 -ti.icrthat,tlieii cas, all that time, a sur-
plus i.,,,e)1 ~t, -or that-wheat was especially cheap.
The pfs ‘,,that with the lapse of years our popu-
La
latio
factures ; with these, the manufacturing community;
and with that community, our consumption. " The