The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-01-17 00:00:00

MR. VILLIERS ON THE CORN LAWS.

(From the Farmer's Journal.)
Mr. Villiers being the recognised leader of the anti-corn-
law party in the House of Commons, the sayings and doings
of the honourable gentleman, in regard to the great question"
of free trade in corn, possess at all times considerable im-
portance. A dinner was given to him a few days ago, by his
WolverhamptOn constituents ; and on that occasion he in-
dulged, after his accustomed fashion, in invective against the
agricultural " monopoly." We desire to weigh the value of
his statements :

" He alluded to those silly and selfish laws (loud cheers),
that proposed to regulate the price and quantity of our food,
and which regulation had been made by those whose incomes
depended on that price. (Cheers.) He must consider those
laws a perversion of the powers of the state for selfish pur-
poses (cheers) ; and it was they, and not the people, who
discredited the legislature by maintaining laws so selfish in
object—so unsound in principle, which were, beyond all
possibility of question, injurious to the community—which
each year received their condemnation by the further evil
which they annually produced, and -which evil, annually in-
creasing in intensity, at length presented the country in its
present condition. (Loud cheers.")
Mr. Villiers proceeds to charge on the corn-laws, the re-
cent derangement of the currency ; and then observes :
" Will they who defend the corn-laws venture to repeat the
foolish falsehood that this limited territory is adequate to the
supply of food for its constantly increasing people—cries of
" No, no"—and will they speculate upon the results of
trusting to this untruth, when the consequences are bringing
misery and ruin to every man's door, and leaving no man in
doubt of their policy. (Cheers.) For what is the effect of
restricting the intercourse with the food-growing countries,
and being cast in utter dependence on these home producers ?
Why that, in our emergency, they were obliged to send out
their money to buy up at great cost other men's focd.
(Cheers.) And when they got the food, in what plight were
they without their money ? (Hear, hear.) Why, like a car-
penter who had pledged his tools for bread ?—when his bread
is gone how is he to earn more without his tools? (Cheers.)
What then does he do ? Why he is then obliged to sell up
all he has, his household goods, to get back his tools, and has
to endure, for this purpose, great privation and distress—
(cheers)—and this is the position at this time of the country."
(Hear.)
Mr. Villier's charges against the corn-laws resolve them-
selves into the following points :—The soil -of England is in-
sufficient to feed the population of England. The corn-laws
deran7,e the currency, by compelling, from time to time, the
exportation of large quantities or•bullion in exchange for
foreign corn. The corn-laws, therefore, act upon the condi-
tion of the English operative, as- if they should compel him
to pawn his tools !
In reply to the assertion that the soil of England is insuffi-
cient to feed the population of England, it might be sufficient
to advance a single counter-assertion on the subject. It might
be no difficult matter, moreover, to establish that England
possesses many millions of acres uncultivated—a vast amount
of capital lacking profitable investment—together with a
" surplus population " craving employment. Until the
energies of the unemployed population, and the " fructifying"
power of the unemployed capital shall be brought to bear np-
on the uncultivated land, it will be unsafe, especially for a
" philosopher" of the stamp of Mr. Villiers, to pronounce
that the soil of England is unable to sustain in comfort all
the inhabitants of_England !

What reasoners like Mr. Villiers really mean, when they
allege that the soil of England is unable to feed the popula-
tion of England, is—that if the land were fully cultivated,
and the population fully employed at remunerating wages,
our modern system of foreign trade would be annihilated.
England, in other words, cannot fully cultivate her soil, and
employ her population, unless her foreign trade, as now con-
ducted, shall be abandoned! When so shaped, Mr. Villier's
proposition is true. So costly to England—so destructive of
national happiness—is that foreign trade, to which Mr. Vil-
liers would sacrifice all the more profitable varieties of na-
tive industry !
_ _

Let us, however, place in yet another point of view, Mr.
Villier's assertion, that the soil of England is unable to feed
the population of England !
Does Mr. Villiers forget that he, and the other leaders of
the anti-corn law party are in the habit of taunting the agri-
culturists of England with the " distress" of which farmers
and landlords complained some years ago—that " distress"
being adduced by the advocates of free trade as a proof that
the corn laws do not protect the English farmer? But was
there, let us ask, contemporaneously with the " distress" in
question, any complaint that the soil of England did not pro-
duce enough to sustain the population of England? Or ra-
ther, did not the " distress" of the years alluded to prove,
that the farmers of England extracted more from the soil
than the people of England could afford to pay for? And if
the surplus production of the years 1833, 1834, 1835, and
1836 had been stored up, in order to meet the deficiencies of
the last two harvests, will Mr. Villiers venture to allege that
there would have existed any necessity for introducing five
millions of quarters of foreign wheat into England within the
last eighteen months ?
On the average of years, therefore, even under the des-
tructive influences of our prevailing system of foreign trade,
the soil of England is proved to be sufficient to feed her po-
pulation. A better system is, it is true, required, in order
to bring the surplus of one year in aid of the deficiency of
another ; but the want of that better system is, clearly
enough, not to be assumed as an objection against the prin-
ciple of the corn laws.
_

•
If, again, as we have already shown, the capital and the
industry olEngland could be fairly brought to bear upon the
uncultivated soil of England (and the only obstacle to such
an arrangement is our system of foreign trade !), England
might, with ease, sustain a population twice as dense as her
present population !
But the corn laws have, according to Mr. Villiers,derang-
ed the currency !
. _ _

The charge may be safely denied. The currency has been
deranged because we have been called on to pay for foreign
wheat in gold ; and if a free trade in corn were established
to-morrow—and if the basis of that trade should be an ex-
change of English manufactures for continental wheat—still,
whenever a dearth should make itself felt in the country with
which we might deal, then, as now, would arise the necessity
of sending abroad English gold in exchange for the wheat of
some country on which we should not, even on the assump-
tions of the advocates of free trade, habitually depend for
food.

A free trade in corn, therefore, would obviously not pre-
serve our currency from occasional derangement ; nor will
any other system than that which we have hinted—the system
of storing up the super-abundant produce of one year to meet
the deficiencies of another—the system, in short, of elevating
England above dependence on the harvest of each successive
season—prevent the recurrence of such an exportation of the
precious metals, as that, from the effects of which, the trade
of Englang suffers at the present moment. If, when wheat
should fall in the home market to a certain price, it became
the business of government to buy; and if, on the other
hand, when wheat should rise to a certain price, it became
the business of government to sell, England would be ren-
dered absolutely necessary and at all times independent on
foreign countries for her supplies of food ; and the currency
of England would be preserved from that ruinous derange-
ment to which it is now liable.

Mr. Villiers, as we have seen, waxes figurative, as he dis-
cusses the Corn-law question. He alleges that the Corn-
laws, by driving gold abroad, act upon the operative, as if
they should compel him to pawn his tools for bread—the gold
of England representing in Mr. Villiers's simile the tools of
the operative !
We have already shown that the Corn-laws do not drive
gold abroad : and, as to the metaphorical reasoning of Mr.
Villiers, it seems to us liable to the charge of being confused !
When Mr. Villiers alleges that money represents the
tools of the operative-.' and describes the payment of money
as the infliction on the operative of a severe hardship, does
Mr. Villiers mean to insinuate that the operative ought to
receive bread without paying for it ? Or does Mr. Villiers
mean to prove, that the hardship in question consists in the
payment of money to the foreign grower, rather than to the
English ? Such is, undoubtedly, Mr. Villiers's meaning ;
but that meaning being admitted, Mr. Villiers's argument
resolves itself into an argument in favour of home trade,
rather than of trade with foreigners !
Mr. Villiers is a person of respectable talents ; but let him
avoid reasoning by the aid of rhetorical figures. The figures of
arithmetic, he will find to press with severity enough against
his arguments in favour of free trade !