The Sun.
London, England, 1842-12-15 00:00:00

by Tory writers as illegal and. unconstitutional,
succeed in compelling the Legislature to do
1 justice, for any men, even the most ultra-
Tory, far less those engaged in a good cause,
to place the least value on loud assertions that
language is seditious, and that conduct is illegal
and unconstitutional. All the charges that are
vehemently made by the Quarterly only mean
that the League has discomfited the bread-
taxers. The League will disdain to reply to
them, and if we were to undertake so unneces-
sary a task we should retort the charges. We
should say that the first Anti-Corn-law Society
was not formed in Manchester till after the
landlords, conscious of an overwhelming majority
in Parliament, had treated with contempt the
prayers of the people to be only heard against
the law. That the League was not formed till
every reasonable exertion had been made to
influence the Legislature, without the least avail.
It bad shown itself equally insensible to the
decay of the masters and the starvation of the
workmen. A careless Prime Minister had pro-
nounced it madness to abolish a system
which openly decreed fraud, and consecrated in-
justice. Yet he was more friendly to their
views than the man who was seeking his post by
the help of the monopolists. The justification
of the League, and of every strong term it has
used, admitting the correctness of the Reviewer,
is to be found in the fact, that the leading states-
, men of both parties were allied with the mono_
polists, that the Legislature was pledged to a
great wrong, and that the League could have no
hope of obtaining justice but by its own exertions.
Even the Quarterly Review will admit that
there is a degree of tyranny which calls for re-
sistance, and justifies rebellion. Degrees of
tyranny short of the greatest enormity, require
to be met with corresponding degrees of opposi-
tion and rebuke. From what the Quarterly
calls the " unappeasable greediness of gain,''
which " has created and sustained the per-
severing activity" and union of the landowners,
they set at defiance, years ago, all the principles
of the Constitution, and to enrich themselves ex-
clusively the law-makers taxed the bread of the
people. Obstinately did they persist, in spite of
petitions, prayers, and remonstrances, to main-
tain a great violation of everything which ought
to be law. They adhered, we admit, to the forms
of the law and the Constitution, only the more
securely to trample the substance of both under
their feet. The true defence of the League, if
any person care to defend it against the abuse of
the Review, is to be found in the conduct of the
Legislature. The one was the natural conse-
quence of the other. Only energy approaching
to violence is a fit match for the hardhearted,
unrelenting, systematic extortion which the
landlords have practised, and still practise, by
their power of making the laws.

It was observed by the Morning Chronicle on
Tuesday, which was heeetofore an advocate for
a fixed duty on corn, and is now, we believe,
like the Examiner, a convert to the total repeal
of all duties, that " there are really no supporters
of the existing Corn-law. The question is now
not between the sliding scale and a fixed duty,
but between absolute freedom and a fixed duty."
The business of all Repealers, therefore, is nar-
rowed to the one point of contending against a
fixed duty, and as there is a disposition in many
persons to believe that it would at present be
just and proper, as a safe means of conducting the
nation to a perfectly free trade, we shall state some
of the arguments which influence us in thinking
it ought not now to be adopted. We shall re-
serve Sir R. PEEL'S stringent arguments against
a fixed duty in general, till we learn on adequate
authority that he means to forfeit every claim to
public respect by adopting a nostrum, the fallacy
and folly of which HE has admirably exposed.
We must begin by clearing the ground of Mr.
HUBBARD'S fallacy. That gentleman stated in
a pamphlet on the present Corn-law, that a duty
on corn would be paid by the importer, not
by the consumer, and would diminish his profit.
This opinion, which was developed and defended
with much mercantile subtlety, was eagerly em-
braced by Lord PALMERSTON, to whom it sup-
plied the means of reconciling his grandiloquent
phrases and theories in favour of free trade with
his practice, and the intention of the Whig Ca-
binet to burden the most precious and important
trade of all with a permanent duty ofBs., amount-
ing to 18 per cent. on the probable average price
of wheat with a perfectly free trade. This opi-
nion we must try in the first instance to refute.

It is perfectly clear that the consumer must,
in the long run, pay all the cost of the bread he
Rats, including the ordinary and average rate of
profit of all the traders and capitalists in any way
instrumental in supplying him. On that condi-
tion alone is he or can he be supplied. In a
fixed and regular trade, the importer will not be
contented with a less rate of profit than other
capitalists; he could only get an equal rate of
profit and pay the duty, provided the difference
in the price of corn abroad and at home was
sufficient to yield him that profit, and also pay
the duty. Such has occasionally been the case
under the sliding scale, and Mr. HUBBARD and
Lord PALMERSTON have drawn a general infer-
ence from that exception, and applied, as a rule,
the consequence of that law, to the corn-trade
at all times. It is certain that a free corn-
trade would have a perpetual tendency
to equalise the price of corn in this country and
other countries, plus the charge of conveyance
from one to the other. If there were no
.other
.difference in price than this cost of the convey-
ance, a fixed duty would be, and must be, paid by
the consumer, to enable the importer to realise a
remuneration.

No principle has in modern times been more
insisted on, and more clearly developed, as the
foundation of the theory of rent, than that the
coots however high, of the very dearest portion
of the necessary supply of food determines
the price of the whole. There cannot be two
prices for corn of equal goodness in the same
market. This principle is applicable to corn im-
ported as well as corn grown at home, and the
price of all corn here must rise to thatlevel which
pays the expense of importing corn and the
amount of the duty. That which is imported is
a part of the necessary supply. It neither could
nor would be imported unless the whole cost
were paid, and to assert that the importer pays
the duty is tantamount
to asserting that the
farmer pays the profit he makes on home-grown

corn.
If, indeed, wheat be 735. here, and 455. at Ham-
burgh, the cost of bringinghither
it los., and the
importer lucky enough to introduce it under the
sliding scale at ls. duty, he would gain 17s. per
quarter; if, at the same time, from the operation
of that scale, no nations had prepared. corn to be
imported, and all the supply we could obtain
was not equal to our need, the price would con-
tinue far higher than paid the cost of im-
porting corn, and in that case a duty might
be paid by the importer. Such was the ac-
tual operation during several years of the
sliding scale. If, however, the average price of
wheat here was 50s. and 455. at Hamburgh, the
expense of importation 10s., and the fixed duty
Ss., then it is clear that before wheat could be
imported from Hamburgh, the price must rise
here on all wheat to 635. or 645., that being the
sum by which alone we could obtain the last
needed and imported supply. Something like
that might happen under a fixed duty. It seems
to us a perfect fallacy, therefore, to infer,
because the importer might have been enabled,
from the great difference in price, to pay the
duty under a sliding scale and an interrupted
trade, that he would also pay it under a fixed
duty and a regular and permanent trade. We
should hope that we have sufficiently exposed
the fallacy so unadvisedly adopted by Lord PAL-
MERSTON, that we shall hear no more of it.

We Purposely pass over the great injury which
a duty of 18 per cent. on corn, would inflict on
our manufacturers, exposed as they now are to
keen competition in all the markets of the world,
on our trade, and—through our trade and manu-
facturers—would inflict on the agriculturists—to
consider its immediate effects on the latter.
We quite agree with the following remarks of
Mr. GREG :

The existing Corn-laws profess to secure a certain