The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-01-03 00:00:00

THE CORN LAWS.

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Fr te Standard.
We have thrown out ah )
great many propositions to the
corn-law repealers, calling upon them to- take up our chal-
lenge. The following are a few of them :
We have asserted that
A repeal of the corn-laws would at once silence the manu-
factories which carry on their work by bank credits; first,
because the country banks are all, or chiefly, based upon
landed capital, which a repeal would depreciate beyond cal-
culation. Secondly, because the necessary contrac.ion of
the currency by the Bank of England, consequent upon an
importation of foreign grain, of which we have had a sample
already, would Compel the country banks (as many as should
escape ruin from the depreciation of their capital) to with-
hold discounts altogether. Note.—About five-sixths at least
of the manufactories of the kingdom carry on their work by
bank credits. _ _

We have asserted that a repeal of the corn-laws would ruin
all the retail dealers of Great Britain, not only by the total
discontinuance of discounts, consequent upon a contraction
of the currency, but by the impoverishment of their custom-
ers—the landed nobility and gentry, and all persons depen-
dent upon rents for income—in short, by leaving the retail
dealers to deal exclusively one with another. These dealers
have, like the manufacturers, had already a sharp lesson as
to the consequence of a contraction of the currency ; and
they would all—even to the man (if there is any) who never
saw a blade of corn growing—feel by far more sharply the
effect of a general bankruptcy, of the agricultural body. These
would be the immediate consequences of a repeal of the corn-
laws—Manchester would present, for much its greater part,
a pile of ruins ; and Regent-street something very like a
street in a " city of the desert," within a very few months
after a repeal.

We have also asserted, that upon the extravagant hypo-
thesis that the social state could survive causes so necessa-
rily tending to anarchy as those recited, all Persons engaged
permanently in manufactures would be ultimately losers, by
a repeal, to an enormous extent. The master manufacturer
would lose his home market by the same operation which
must transfer British capital to raise
rival manufactures on
the continent. The wholesale and retail dealers would lose
their customers in all gradations--; an -the labourer-fina his
wages reduced in a far greater proportion than an • possible
reduction in the price of the necessaries of life. Already the
supply of labour exceeds the demand for it, to an extent
which enables employers to name the rate of wages. A mil-
lion or so of agricultural labourers would be seat by the
proposed reveal to augment that supply. Ireland alone,
indeed, would send nearly two millions ; and the half-ruined
masters would have a motive, which generally they have not
now, and which, to say truth, many of them do not seem to
want, to screw down wages a few degrees below " the starv-
ing place," at whatever point " the starving place" might
be fixed by the price of provisions.
We have asserted that a repeal of the corn-laws would
render necessary a vast additional taxation of manlffacturers,
wholesale and RETAIL dealers, and all others, to make good
the deficit caused by a bankruptcy of the agricultural class—
or a national bankruptcy. Gentlemen fundholders ought to
look to this alternative.
We might proceed recapitulating oar propositions, but we
believe that we have repeated enough for one day.
Now these propositions may be false in the opinions of
some men, but nobody, we think, will eay that they are not
sufficiently plain and distinct ; yet, as far as we can find, no
corn-law repealer has, either in speaking or in print, ven-
tured to grapple with any one of them. This confirms us in •
the notion that we are not mistaken in our views ; for surely
if we have propounded fallacies, there must be some one
among the enemies of the agricultural interest acute enough
to discover where the fallacy lies, and bold enough to ex-
pose it.

Instead of this, the parties with whom we have to deal,
well knowing where falsehood can lurk with most safety,
very carefully confine their argument, or what they call ar-
gument, to vague generalities—a mode of answer imposing
upon us, who make it, a rule to suffer nothing in the shape,
or disguise, of an argument, to pass unexamined, to engage
in the somewhat distasteful task of analysing and dissipating.
balderdash—the Greek's called the service S'kiomachia—and
though balderdash it is, and must be called, since the cause
of our adversaries will afford nothing better, we entreat them
to believe that the plain English term is intended to be dis-
respectful to their cause, not to its advocates of the press.
The Morning Chronicle of Saturday [in the same course
of theological reading no doubt which lately disclosed to it
that Abaddon and Apollyon arc iu the Hebrew and Greek
languages respectively the names of a Conservative] made
the discovery that the late unpropitious seasons by which the
whole of Europe has been visited, but by which the United

Kingdom has, perhaps, suffered less than the Continent—
are a special interposition of Providence in favour of a repeal
of the corn-laws. The following are our contemporary's
words :
" The very seasons are urging on the doom of the iniqui-
tous system. Of old, " the stars in their courses fought
against Sisera," and now the clouds of heaven have paged
warfare against a worse oppression. The very elements of
nature, that withheld their' common benignant influences
from the later portion of the harvest, bear testimony to the
truth, in which, if in nothing else, the most discordant por-
tions of the great meeting at Glasgow perfectly agreed, that
the corn-laws ought to be immediately repealed.' "
They must have h higher opinion of the gentlemen specu-
lators, who only could gain by a repeal of the corn-laws (see
the Factory Reports) than we can prpfeSs to entertain, that
think them so especially the favourites of Heaven as to .ob-
tain from Providence in their behalf a visitation that has solely
afflicted all Europe, and a very great part of Asia ; but this
by the way. '

The question to be discussed,. may, we suppose, be put
thus—has the experience of two unfavourable seasons proved
the impolicy of the corn-laws ? We say•that it has not, but
that it has established beyond all controversy the wisdom of
those laws. Their justice, we may observe, in answer to the
Morning Chronicle's concluding sentence, is acknowledged
by the Chartist resolutions at Glasgow, requiring the repeal
of all taxes which affect British agriculturists, so as to ren-
der them burdened competitors with their Continental rivals
—that is, all taxes, or nearly all, as a necessary condition
preliminary to repeal. These are the resolutions referred to
by the Morning Chronicle with such convenient brevity. We
come back to our proposition, and repeat that the experience
of the last unpropitious seasons demonstrates the wisdom of
the corn-laws, by the comparatively light pressure of these
seasons upon our people. Let the relative proportion of
prices to wages in 1799 and 1839 be compared, and the good
effect of the corn-laws will be obvious. The season of 1799
was not worse than either of the two that have just passed
over us, in 1799, however, wages were little, if anything,
higher than at present, while the prices of provisions were.
we believe, at least double the present prices. This is the
testimony of experience, and it is easily accounted for by the
apriori consideration. The protection afforded to agriculture
has caused a vast amount of land to be brought into tillage
cuitivation throughout the United Kingdom, which wi' hout
such production would not be so employed ; in other words,
has caused an immense increase in the production of corn.
It appears by Mr. Emerson Tennent's excellent speech, that
this has been the case in Ireland to an almost incredible
extent, the exported surplus from Ireland reaching the five or
sixfold proportion in the course of a very few years. Now
this is an addition to the general produce of Europe, as well
as to the produce of the British Islands : and we may there-
fore fairly cohclude that Europe has, by so much, more corn
under the affliction of a bad ;iarvest than it would have but
for our corn-laws, while:the British islands hare all the bene-
fit of that increase. It has been said indeed, and we shall
hear it said again, that the increase to the general stock of
Europe would have been greater but for our corn-laws, inas-
much as the cultivation_of the Continent would have been
extended to meet the demand- of the British market. This
proposition assumes that men will embark money and labour
to a greater extent in contemplation of an un-certain than of
a certain sale of the produce! ! How un-certain must be
the British market to any foreigners will be apparent from
the consideration, that our ports once thrown open would be
open to the four quarters of the world ; and if the opening
promote agricultural speculation any where, it would promote
it every where—at Odessa, as well as in the neighbourhood
of New York—in Africa no less than in Germany.
Can any man in his senses, gravely entertain such a propo-
sition, namely, that the whole world would be put in
motion to meet the demands of a few manufacturing towns
in England, with a population of about a million, or less?
No, _we might ruin our own agriculture, but we should not
cause a grain of corn the more to grow abroad ; and thus an
unfavourable harvest would overtake us, without that solid
basis of a home supply, which now constitutes the security
of the country against famine. Under the system of the
existing law, grain can always be imported from whatever
country produces it, in such abundance, that it may be sent
into our market paying the amount of duty necessary to
equalise the burthens of the British and foreign farmers, and
in extreme cases, without paying so much, or paying any-
thing. Can wisdom contrive a better mode of insuring the
home supply, and at the same time of giving to this country
the advantage of the local abundance produced anywhere by
the particular bounty of Providence ? But sometimes it will
happen that the affliction of short harvests is general, and
then our corn-laws ensure that Britain shall suffer less than
any other country by the calamity. This is the case at pre-
sent, as any one may satisfy himself by reading the foreign
newspapers. All the nations of the Continent with whom
grain constitutes the staple of food, are suffering far more
severelythan we are.
This brings us 'to another of the Morning Chronicle's
so called arguments :
" How much the Duke of Buckingham deceives himself,
if he thinks, by a few complimentary phrases, he can make
the agricultural labourers in love with the corn-law ! A
gentleman of Honiton, in Devonshire, has sent us a state-
ment of the condition of the agricultural labourers in that
neighbourhood, to which we particularly invite the attention
of our readers. It will be observed that he states distinctly
that the high price of the necessaries of life has made it im-
possible to carry the provisions of the Poor-law Amendment
Act into effect : • _ _

" Take two instances,' he says, ' which lately occurred
here :—A. 8., an able-bodied man, applied for out-door re-
lief. He had a wife and four children ; his earnings, 7s. per
week ; he paid his master, who was his landlord, ls. a week
rent out of the 75., .and bought his wheat of his master at
10s. a bushel ! ! C. D., an able-bodied man, applied for a
continuance of the two loaves allowed by the guardians a
fortnight before; he had a rheumatic wife and three chil-
dren ; his earnings 7s. a week. I asked him how much
bread he had had the week before ? Only the two loaves
granted by the board, except some cakes made by my wife
from barley bought of my master at ss. a bushel; but it was
poor stuff; no meat whatever, the rest of my wages going in
potatoes and rent ;' nothing for clothes, bedding, drink, firing,
soap—education, of course, out of the question !'
" It is, as our correspondent states, quite impossible that
soul and body can be kept togethet4with such prices of food
and such wages. The labouring men, in love with the corn-
laws ! This would 'suppose them to rank lower than the
brutes that perish, far they have the instinct of self-preserva-
tion. Even a dog, attached as he is to our species, will only
bear a certain measure of pinching. The gentry of England
may depend on it that these poor gaunt creatures reflect, and
reflectlntensely,_on the cause of their privations. They can-
not, while they feel hunger gnawing their vitals, entertain
kindly sentiments towards those whom they see living in
luxury on the money wrung from them by the monopoly.
No t. the agricultural labourers suffer more than the workmen
in towns from the high price of bread, as their scanty wages
are inadequate to procure theM bread alone."
In reply to these remarks we have one or two questions to
ask :

First, how would the parties aggrieved be benefitted by
lower prices with lower wages also ? Suppose the employer
to give his barley at 2s. 6d. a bushel, and to pay 3s. 6d. per
week in wages--and the one reduction would be necessary to
the other—how would the labourer stand ? Why, he would
have a balance of one shilling instead of a balance of two
shillings.
Secondly, we ask, supposing this practice of disguised
truck to be harsh, tyrannical, and unjust—as we know it is
—does nothing of the kind obtain among manufacturers ?
have they no prescribed shops with which their slaves must
deal as the condition of employment?
Thirdly, supposing the dietary referred to to be insuffi-
cient—and as we are not looking for employment under the
New Poor-law' Ave can freely speak our minds, and admit
that, Heaven knows, it is cruelly insufficient—still, is it not
preferable to the dietary of the serfs of Poland and Pome-
rania, whom a repeal of the corn-laws would render the less
burdened competitors of the British labourer, and to whose
condition, or worse, therefore, such a repeal would bring our
peasantry ?
The Morning Chronicle to-day, availing itself of the so-
phism Pluriunz interrogationum, mixes up the two questions
of the Bank contraction of discounts and the corn-laws, and
asks, bow can the country go on with both ? We answer
the questions separately. The country can go on, as we have
shown, very well with the corn-laws ; but the country can-
not go on with the contraction of discounts permanently
continued.
That contraction is, however, but temporary—to meet a
particular contingency ; nothing less than a repeal of the
corn-law can perpetuate it.