The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-04-02 00:00:00

FRIDAY MORNING, APRIL 2, 1841

No subject of agitation presents greater facilities
than that of the " Corn Monopoly," as it is called, and
we are therefore not surprised at the number of active
agents employed in its service. What can be easier
than to expatiate on the advantages of cheap food, or
less difficult than to show that high taxation will cause
high prices ? A few striking facts may be easily col-
lected for the nonce, such as the comparatively low
price of corn in lightly taxed countries, the increase of
trade and revenue which 'not unfrequently follows a
lowering of duty, and so on. These will seem to put
the case on a solid basis of facts, and give an appear-
ance of inquiry and figurative elaboration to the argu-
ment ; and then nothing will remain but to declaim
against the inj •stice of depressing and grinding down
the many for the gain of a few ; and to " go it," as we
say, in the style of Mr. Lawrence Heywood, of Yew-
tree, near Liverpool, and talk of " the cruel, dishonest,
and, of course, impoverishing corn-laws, which are a
national iniquity, devised purposely to create scarcity
and famine prices, reckless of the wide-spread poverty
and destruction of human life which such a state of
things necessarily involves."
We are not disposed to speak of the anti-corn law
agitation with the slightest levity. On the contrary,
we think it a matter worthy of the most serious atten-
tion. When we consider how extensively and how
perseveringly it is carried on, and the little opposition
it encounters in its own proper field,—and when,
moreover, we consider how essentially the reform bill
has altered our constitution—how defenceless it has
left the proprietory classes against the pressure of num-
bers,—it is a matter of anxious inquiry with us, what
in the end is to prevent such an agitation from gaining
its point ?

It is difficult to come at the agitators on their own
platform, and almost useless to appeal to men who
have ears only for one line of argument—men to whom
the argument of the agitators is readily intelligible,
whilst that of their adversaries seems perplexing and
intricate. The agitators have now pre-occupied their
minds, and, having gained them over, can, by a due
administration of "lectures," cheap publications, and
the occasional assistance of almost all the liberal press,
without much difficulty keep them in the same course.
To attempt the conversion of a multitude so affected
would he a hopeless task. They would most likely
read no publications but such as favoured their own
prepossessions, nor hear any speaker but one who
would confirm them. Orators such as Mr. Lawrence
Heywood having wound them up to the true pitch of
fanaticism, it would, we say, be quite a desperate at-
tempt for others to endeavour to unscrew the pegs
and engage them heartily in a new service. And
here, having mentioned this gentleman a second time,
we will not part from him without giving one more
specimen of his talents and wisdom as an instructor
of the people :
" The crisis is now come," says this great man, " that
sordid legislative restrictions on the interchange of the pro-
duce of labour must be removed from our code of laws, or
tardy retributive justice will linger no longer, but will
avenge the outrage done to our common humanity, by dis-
tressing more fatally our waning commerce, and causing our
wretched operatives to pine away under the two-fold evil of
dear bread and want of employment. The national guilt of
purposely preventing, by legislative enactments, cheap bread
and other necessary comforts and commodities from being
brought to the dwelling of the poor, is now laid bare by the
Report of the Select Committee of the House of Com-
mons on the Import Duties, with the principal Evidence ;
and a continuance of them will be a daring and presumptuous

national sin, a direct rebellion against the laws of the Most
High."

Such is the firebrand style in which this gentleman
and an hundred others of his school address the work-
ing classes on the subject of the corn duties; and it is
plain that if their stupid hut inflammatory harangues
produce any effect on those to whom they are addressed,
their auditors would have but little disposition to hear
any thing on the contrary part.
Now, previous to the passing of that great act the
Reform Bill, all this might have been endured without
much apprehension. We could then rely on the de-
claration of a minister—" that he considered a repeal
of the corn laws as little short of madness." We
could repose on such a declaration then, because, as a
minister, lie had in the machinery of the constitution
a sufficient security against the mere sic volo, sic jubeo
of the masses ; but he has nothing of the sort now,
and to every pressure from without he must yield, or
lose his place, unless some Conservative power, on
which he has no right to calculate, come fortunately
and opportunely to his aid.
Under those circumstances Conservatives have ma-
nifestly a dutycast upon them now from which they were
before in a great measure exempt. The oppidan Con-
servatives might then say, "this corn qu.,,stion is one
between th 9 farmers and the manufacturers—the landed
gentry and the factory folk—and there is no need for
us to interfere, especially as we know that the ministry
holds the balance, and is in no danger of being coerced
against the general good by either side." But the
Reform Bill has changed all this, and made every man
more or less in point of duty a politician. No man
can now say that he has nothing to do with this or al-
most any other great political question ; for the Reform
Bill, so nicknamed, has reduced our government to a
sort of wretched republic—such as General Harrison
describes that of his great and glorious countrymen—
which, he says, " a breath of the people, as it has
made, so can it , unmake, change, or modify at will,"