The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1838-09-11 00:00:00

1 HE CORN LAWS

( From the Oxford Herald.)

•
A statesman of antiquity charged his chief political adver-
sary with living and thriving upon the public danger.
" While the state is prosperous," said he, " you rest in com-
partive obscurity ; but let any cau'se excite the apprehensions
and depress the spirits of good men, and then you are to be
seen conspicuous and exulting, just as our old ailments of
body are sure to return upon any serious deviation from
health." The party thus described was a traitor, and his
practice has been characteristic of the betrayers of public
interests, from his time to our own.
The somewhat unfavourable weather of the last and pre-
ceding months, concurrently with the lateness of the season
iyenerally, has caused some unpleasant doubts as to the pro-
duce' of the harvest. The danger of a failure is probably
exaggerated, but it would be wrong to deny, that, notwith-
standing the late happy change in the weather--succeeded,
however, by a day or two of rain--much of the corn in the
remoter parts of the kingdom is still in .a precarious state.
It is possible, therefore, that bread may rise to a higher price
than it has reached for some years past—and they who " live
and thrive upon the public-danger" are resolved to make the
most of the calamity. The corn-laws are to be the topic of
agitation—and the command has gone forth through the

ministeral journals (ministers all the while professing to up.
hold the proscribed laws), to merge all other subjects of agi
tation in this one. We haYe lately heard a great deal of the
" march of mind" and the " spread of knowledge," and a
whole vocabulary of such-like cant. The fate of this new
enterprise will tell how much wiser the men of our time are
than the generation of their fathers. Looking to the kind of
persons that are sent to parliament, and to the description of
journals and other publications that are patronised by many,
we, fur ourselves, must confess some misgiving as to any very
extraordinary improvement. Had we to deal with rational
men, we should say, " why choose this particular time to
raise an agitation against the corn-laws? The very circum•
stances of the day, in truth, afford the best possible prcof of
the necessity for the code against which you would excite the
country. Anxiety prevails as to the probable supply of grain
in the United Kingdom. Why.? because from the bad wea-
ther it is feared that part of the tillage land will prove unpro-
ductive, and the whole imperfectly productiie—and this is
the time you select to recommend putting part of the land
wholly out of tillage and causing the land to be less pro-
ductively tilled because tilled at a less profit !'! SUrely yin
must imagine that
_you address yourselves to animals more
stupid than those that draw the plough."
Suppose that the fears of a deficient harvest are realised,
what then ? the ports are opened much before grain can reach_
a famine price : and as long as England shall retain her
capital—and she will retain it as long as she protects her
agriculture, but no longer—the whole world will starve before
Englishmen can want. The foreign 'corn will come in, it
will be paid for if, money, and this money will come back to
our manufactories, if the enemies of the corn-laws speak
truly—and as far as a single year is concerned, they probably
do speak truly, for it would require more than the experience
of one year's drain of capital from England to induce the
foreigner, and to enable him to create other channels than
those already prepared for the money so received. Upon
this, the least favourable hypothesis, the supposition that the
harvest prove deficient, much will have ben gained by the corn
laws in the amount of grain already in the country, and in the
security that the money to be paid for foreign grain must come
back, while nothing will have been lost. And now take the
other, and, we trust, the more probable, hypothesis—the suppo-
sition that the harvest will prove sufficient, and consiler the
corn-laws with reference to that event. We all know what COrm
mercial speculatiOn" is capable of, and can we doubt that but for
the corn-laws the existing anxiety about the harvest would
cause the markets and granaries to be gluttedivith foreign grain
long before this, to the ruin of the British farmer, indeed, but
no less to the ruin of the British importer and of the foreign
grower—anti, if the enemies of the corn-laws speak truly, of
the British manufacturer. These are considerations suggested
by the particular time at which the present agitating is raised
—a time which affords the most irrefragable proof that the
laws in question are a necessary defence again speculators
gambling with the lives of the people; and thus demonstrates
the faith of the agitators in "the beast blindness" of those
whom they would halloo against their best protectors.
Dr. Bowring lately told his hearers at Edinburgh that
Switzerland is the great commercial and manufacturing rival
of England, because Switzerland has no corn-law. W ill the
polyglot quack say what is the profit of the commerce and ma-
nufactures of our great rival, and where are its accumulations
to be found? Switzerland has enjoyed within the last century
about three times as many years of peace as Great Britain,
yet we do not hear of any loans contracted for with Swiss
capitalists—no Swiss railroads are talked of—ports, docks,
and a marine, are, of course, out of question—and where is
the accumulated saying of the.commercial and manufacturing
rival of England ? The truth is, that under the influence of
our corn-laws, and since these laws were enacted, or their
provisions practically anticipated, single towns have grown
up in England incomparably richer than the whole Swiss
confederation. But Dr. Bowring has inadvertently let us
into an important secret by his reference to Switzerland. The
Swiss are an industrious, an ingenious, and a frugal people:
their country is the most secure in Europe—secure not only
its mountain rampart, but also in the interest of all its neigh-
bours to maintain its prosperity and independence. But
Switzerland has always been, and still is, one of the poorest
countries or the world. As if to complete their title to Virgil's
mperfect line—

"Sic vos non vobis,"
the Swiss labour for the profit, as they fight for the safety,
not of themselves but of others. This does notarise from the
minute size of their territory, for, it is larger than any of the
Dutch, Venetian, Genoese, and i,lorentine states, when each
in turn engrossed the commerce of the world, and was the
hank of Europe, as England is now. The poverty of Switzer-
land, notwithstanding its industry, and its advantages, arises
from the very fact in which Dr. Bowring sees the spring of
of its wealth. It imports its corn, and every state importing
its provisions, however industrious Of well circumstanced other-
wise, insist become progressively poorer. This is a moral law
as absolute and as free from exception as any law of the Ma-
terial world. What has called into existence the numerous
towns and villages that adorn the face of England ?—the de-
mand of the agriculturists. These towns have grown up to
supply the wants of the landowner and farmer, and to share
in his profits, as they do most amply. What has expanded
some of these towns into such prodigious hives of industry, as
Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, Ism, the least
progressive of which has more than doubled in extent, popu-
lation, 'and wealth, since the enactment• of the corn-laws?
What has expanded these towns to their present diniensions;
if not the application of savings, the, saving qf agriculture.
always in the first instance to make the best use of local ad-
vantages; Geneva is now no larger, no more populous, and
no more rich than Geneva was 300 years ago; the Genevese
have been for three centuries, employing their distinguished
ingenuity and indefatigable industry to enrich nottheinsetres
but those from whom the J jmustbuyfood and so will it ever be.
The mere manufacturer will ever be the drudge of the pro-
ducer of forid, if the producer of food'is not his own country
man, and is not, as such, compelled to share gains and bur-
thens with him. - •