The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-06-15 00:00:00

rant is equally to
h,hia?

4sgracefal proceedings. (Cheers.)
You will excuse me, I hope, if I proceed to make a few
observations upon the grand apple of discord which has ber
thrown into the country, and upon the confusion arisio,
the official production of which her Majesty
) be I seem to be reposing their forlorn hope
mean the proposed repeal of the corn laws

ministers

—(hear, hear)-1
(Hear, hear,

and cries of

It is very easy to cry "

cheap bread !" It is v
;e in the pre

easy to

a clamour for a than

had'sinci I made ava:

do theppreap, nor gather into barns, yet our Heavenly Father
feedeth them ! (Hear.) They pay no tax on corn, yet our
Heavenly Father feedeth them. Well, " Why," ask these
gentlemen, "should man eat taxed bread seeing that God
sends untaxed rain from heaven, and causes untaxed corn to
spring from the earth, for the bird and the beast ?" We
answer, be consistent, gentlemen, let man neither sow, nor

reap, nor gather into barns, and then if our Heavenly Father
still feeds him with corn, undoubtedly it should be untaxed
corn. Being given without labour and without cost, it should

certainly be without taxation. But do we find corn a natural
production of the earth ? Do we find wheat where there
has been no human labour? Certainly not. We find red-
berries, and blackberries, and _nuts, and weeds, and various
sorts of wild fruits, appropriate food for birds, and monk4s,
and savages, and anti• corn-law leaiuers. (Cheers and laugh-
ter.) All this we find beyond the precincts of taxation, and

beyond the precincts of civilisation ; but wheat we do not
find. (Hear, hear.) The means whereby it pleases God to
feed man are suited to the intelligent nature of man, just as
the means whereby lie feeds the birds are suited to the instinct
of the birds. (Hear.) The means whereby he is pleased to
feed civilised man are complicated means ; they involve sow-
ing and reaping and gathering into barns; they involve sun-
ken capital and permanent periodical expense ; they must
not be looked upon in an insulated way, but as a part, as a
limb of a treat living body ;—(hear,.and loud cheers,)—and
belonging to such a complicated system of things they are no
longer to be put coolly and rashly on.a par with the original
grant to beasts and birds and insects, but must be considered
with regard to the circumstances connected with themselves,
and in that they involve capital sunk and expenses incurred,
they arc entitled to corresponding protection. (Loud cheers.)
Therefore, to quote this original grant .of Almighty God, of
foo.i to every creature, as if it belonged to the subject before
us, is either wilfully to deceive the unwary, or else it is to
advocate a return to a state of nature; to that happy and
delightful state of equal rights and total exemption from tax-
ation, enviable specimens of which are presented in the fo-
rests of America and in the jungles of Hindostan. ([Lear,
hear.) Every lion in the forest is born to equal rights, to
equal liberty, and an equal right to eat untaxed food with the
others of his species, and when he comes to years of dis-
cretion, he takes the liberty of exercising those rights. (Hear,
hear.) To deprive himself of a portion of his • personal
liberty and consent to eat his meat under any prescribed re-
gulations of order for the sake of improvement in the gene-
ral body, is disdained by the noble beast ; he is determined
to have his natural rights, and his untaxed food, therefore he
reigns in all the dignity of his natural liberty, in all the glory
of his unmitigated ferocity. (Tremendous applause). If the

ness would bloom and bloisom as the rose ; improvements in
dens and dishes would immediately follow, and machinery
take the place of tusks and claws. (Enthusiastic applause.)
Now the anti corn-law gentlemen, like the noble king of
the forest, disdain to give up their natural rights, and their

untaxed bread ; they disdain arrangements for order ; all
protective management is quite below their dignity, (laugh-
ter and cheers). What nave we here on this subject in this
"Anti-Corn-law Tract for the People?" Upon the autho-
rity of a Col. Thomson, whoever he is, (loud laughter) it is
here put forward that . " All protection means robbing
somebody else!" (Hear, hear.) It is in vain to say this is
distorted from its context. If it be distorted from the con-
text, who is to blame ? They are to blame for it, who print
it to give away and circulate among the people. - (Hear,
hear.) " All protection means robbing somebody else 1"
That is all ! (Laughter.) What does it prove ? it proves
that all policemen who take care, of our houses at night are
robbing the housebreakers of their " natural rights." (Loud
cheers.) Every gentleman who has a secret button to pro.
tect his pocket, or by a secret chain protects his watch, is
robber, as, in the exercise of ungovernable selfishness I-

" (Lot

111 our lawyers, 2,

magistrates, and town.

councillors, all our mayors, and all our judges, an are no
thing but a set of systematic robbers, giving protection to
some, and of course, robbing some one else ! (Loud cheers
. .„. .

and laughter.) This is a specimen of one of the Anti
bread tax tracts for the people." (Hear, hear.)
But before I leave this subject, I want to call your atten-
tion to other quotations which they profess to give from the
Holy Bible, and which are quite as relevant to the subject as
the one I have just commented upon. There is.a curious

specimen here.„__ Among the quotations, professed to be ta-
ken from the Bible., there is a passage not in the Bible at all !
(Cheers and cries of "hear, hear.") It is taken from the

i n gles the Apocrypha
,tprq throw the Apo-

them, nevertheless, provith
le holy bible, both by separati►