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nished an exhibition which no men, ancient or modern, have surpassed.*

The case was very different with the Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. The gentlemen composing that Committee are for the most part too well known to require any vindication of their integrity. They are above suspicion, whatever hireling scribes or heated partizans may allege. Of all the benevolent organizations of the present day, none has been characterized by a more inflexible and single-hearted devotion to its object than this committee. Appointed for the single purpose of promoting the extinction of the slave trade and slavery, it was natural that they should regard with apprehension the influence which the sugar branch of the ministerial proposition would have on the class whose interests they were appointed to watch over. Whatever opinion may be entertained of the ultimate tendencies of a free trade in sugar, no reflecting man can doubt that the immediate effect of throwing our markets open to the slave-owners of Brazil and Cuba will be to give a temporary stimulus at least to their nefarious traffic, and would consequently increase their importation of human victims from Africa. Believing that the immediate effect of the ministerial measure would be an extension of the slave-trade and an increase of the number of slaves, the committee only acted consistently with their vocation, in calling the attention of Government to the fact, and in urging such a modification of the measure as should ob-. viate the evils anticipated. They had nothing to do with the question of free trade or monopolies. Their sole duty was to watch over the interests of humanity, and perceiving that the immediate influence of the proposed measure would be injurious to these, they spoke out as it became honest men to do. It would have been a noble stand, one full of promise to the world, if the Government had been induced, while adopting the principles of free trade, to mark with its most effective prohibition those forms of human wickedness against which the British people have passed solemn judgment, and over which our Government possesses omnipotent though indirect power. For such a step, however, the nation is not as yet prepared, and we must

"Nothing had given him so much disgust as the arguments of gentlemen in parliament against a modification of the protection on sugar, on the ground of humanity-gentlemen, while they were putting forth these arguments, were taking their muscovado, and sweetening their own cups with it. They were exerting every nerve to confine the people to their colonial whity-brown or dirty-brown, while they were sipping their beautiful white Brazilian sugars, at half the price. He did not agree in the opinion, that a free trade would encourage slavery: on the contrary, he said, GIVE HIM FREE

LABOR AND FREE TRADE, AND HE WOULD HAVE FREEMEN ALL OVER THE WORLD. Speech of Mr. George Thompson.

"

therefore be content to effect the utmost which the present state of feeling permits.

As between the sugar monopolists and the British people, the question at issue does not admit of rational doubt. The interests of the few should give way, and that to a much further extent than the ministerial proposition goes, to those of the many. And were this the only aspect under which the subject could be viewed, we should feel no hesitation respecting the ground to be taken. As politicians simply the Government was right; but there is a higher and more sacred ground on which the matter may be viewed. The people of this country have already expended millions, and thousands of our seamen and soldiers have been sacrificed in order to put down the slave-trade and slavery. Consistency, therefore, would demand that they should forego for some time longer pecuniary advantage to which, in itself considered, they are righteously entitled, but which they cannot obtain without injuring somewhat the cause of humanity to which they have so solemnly and at so costly a price pledged themselves. We must protest against that false philosophy which invests the principles of political science with all the sacredness of religious truths. Sound and valuable as we esteem them, they are yet subordinate to moral considerations, and must be held in abeyance when they threaten to interfere with the latter. It would have been to us matter of unfeigned gratification if the nation had been ripe for the adoption of these views. But as this is not the case, and we are reduced to the alternative of receiving the ministerial measure as a whole, or of perpetuating a system which threatens the destruction of our commerce and the starvation of our people, we adopt the former, as involving least evil of the two. have no fear of the issue. The dreaded evil will be but temporary, while the expansive power of the principles to be recognized will be productive of progressive good through the whole circle of British influence.

The most important of the ministerial propositions is that affecting the duties on the importation of FOREIGN CORN. It is proposed to grapple with what Lord Melbourne has called the master grievance of the country-the corn monopoly, that taxes the bread of the working millions;-a thing which Earl Winchilsea himself, in his zeal for the corn laws, denounces as the greatest of crimes. The purpose and object of the corn laws is to keep up high prices in England and make bread dear. This object, which in the abstract is certainly a very iniquitous one, is openly avowed and even warmly defended. It inflicts a positive loss upon the consumers of Great Britain and Ireland of

The writer of a tract, adapted for circulation at the present crisis, entitled, The Many sacrificed to the Few by the Food Monopoly,' calculates

£21,000,000 annually, and is attended with the threefold evil consequences-injustice and suffering to the mass of the community, loss to the revenue, derangement and curtailment of our commercial operations with foreign nations. The ministers propose to destroy the prohibitive duty on foreign corn, and to admit foreign corn into our ports, on payment of a fixed duty of eight shillings per quarter; thus giving the British community an opportunity of purchasing the necessaries of life on moderate terms, and at the same time opening great highways for the passage of British manufactures, hitherto blocked up. This proposal is met by two objections, both of which cannot be true, but each of which may be, and we think is, untrue. First it is said that if foreign corn be admitted on payment of a duty of eight shillings a quarter, the agriculturists will be ruined, as it will be impossible to compete with the cheap corn of the continent with so paltry a protection, and that the land of England will go out of cultivation. The second assertion is, that after all, the diminution in the price of bread will be very small; that the working people will never feel the benefit of the reduction.

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We know that the farmers are at any time frightened out of their senses by the cry of ruin;' but setting aside the fact, so boldly and manfully proclaimed in the House of Peers by Earl Fitzwilliam, that the corn question is a landlord's question' altogether, it is capable of distinct proof that the admission of foreign corn into this country would not ruin the agriculturists; would throw no land, really fit for the plough, out of cultivation, and would not bring down the price of corn below 50s. or 54s. per quarter. Mr. M'Culloch, in a very interesting and satisfactory publication on the corn laws, which has just proceeded from his pen, says, 'It is impossible to purchase in any foreign port any considerable quantity of wheat, of the average quality of that produced in Britain, for less than 35s. per quarter; and adding to this 10s. for the expense of importation, 8s. for duty, and 3s. for profit, it is clear that such wheat 'cannot be sold in England under 56s. a quarter; which is only 11 less than the average price of English wheat during the 'ten years ending with 1840! If' adds Mr. M'Culloch, the

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the enhancement of prices of the existing system to amount to the following startling sums every year:

Grain of all kinds

Meat

Butter and cheese

Timber

Tallow

£21,860,928

10,583,333

4,246,666

7,600,000

500,000

Total £44,790,927

'agriculturists be not satisfied with an arrangement of this sort, 'it is difficult to divine what would satisfy them.' Prices would, in our opinion, range from 50s. to 56s. per quarter; and yet the monopolists are not satisfied, but are moving heaven and earth, using all means fair and foul to rouse the county constituencies in defence of their monopolies, raising a cry of ruin to the 'farmers!' Let it not be lost sight of either, that the average of the present fluctuating scale amounts to but 5s. 9d. per quarter. Sir Robert Peel, in his speech on the corn laws, in 1840, boasted that under the existing system the duty charged only ' amounted to 5s. 5d. per quarter-the amount of duty on the 'staff of life, as it was termed, he repeated did not exceed that 'sum of 5s. 5d.'

But here the Tories turn round upon us and say, Then if this be true, bread can be very little cheaper-the working classes will not be the better for the change, while the agriculturists will be the worse for it. But let us remind them that the price of corn could then never run up to 70s. per quarter, as it now can. The fixed duty, even at the high amount named by the government, would ensure moderate and steady prices, and afford a guarantee against high prices such as are now common. This would be a great advantage to the community; and at the same time, a fixed duty would enable foreigners to speculate with some degree of certainty in our markets: at present, by the operation of the sliding scale, all is uncertainty and distrust.*

The corn-law advocates have in truth placed themselves on the horns of a dilemma. If foreign corn cannot be brought into England at a very low price, we have an argument in favor of the safety of the government measure as far as regards agriculturists: on the other hand, if corn can be brought in at a very low price, the fact proves the injustice of the monopoly, and exhibits more glaringly the enormous extent of that tax upon bread, which while it yields nothing to the exchequer, presses heavily upon the people.

The electors of the United Kingdom have now an opportunity of striking a death-blow at those MONOPOLIES which have hitherto been maintained by and for the exclusive advantage of

Among the reasons which have influenced the American Chamber of Commerce at Liverpool to assist in advocating a revision of the import duties, is the following; the sliding scale of duty on wheat and flour places countries so distant as the United States on an unequal footing with those less remote ; because, whenever grain is admissible at a low duty, the demand is so rapidly supplied from the continent of Europe, that the duty is generally at a prohibitory rate before supplies from the United States can reach this

country.

an aristocracy, which would if possible, concentrate in its own body all the wealth, power, and political influence of the whole country. The government measure is worthy the acceptance of the nation, and we urge upon the people, promptly, manfully, and energetically, to rise up in its defence. The dearest interests of the nation are at stake; the existence of the commerce of England depends upon the issue. Who then will hang back or remain inactive at this crisis? Who will not lend a hand in planting and keeping up the flag of free-trade? Who will not render his aid in extending and securing from decline our commerce,-in alleviating the heartrending miseries of the working classes, and in preventing the infliction of fresh burdens upon a people already staggering under the pressure of taxation? In every part of the kingdom the financial measures, on which the queen now asks the opinion of the people, have been received with an enthusiasm which must convince ministers that there is but one road to public confidence and popularity, and that is a straight forward and bold declaration of great principles of progression, and unwavering adherence to CIVIL, to RELIGIOUS, and

to COMMERCIAL FREEDOM.

We regard the measure on which the British people are now required to give judgment as a practical application of the principles of the Reform Bill,-a carrying out in its legitimate direction of the ameliorating spirit of which that noble Act— for noble it was notwithstanding its imperfections—was the forerunner and pledge. The whole system of our taxation has been founded on a principle of favoritism-the favoritism of the wealthy few as contrasted with the middle and lower classes. It needs revision in all its parts, and we take the ministerial budget not simply for what it is in itself, but more especially for what it promises. Let the principles involved in this measure be once recognized, and the way to other financial reforms will be laid open. An interested oligarchy may well make battle on the present proposition, for they know their craft to be in danger. They struggle as for life, and will move all their forces in the hope of successfully resisting the ministers, who have at length roused themselves from their lethargy, thrown aside the sympathies of their class, and nobly identified themselves with the nations which they govern. Mr. Hindley, in his thoroughly English speech, which we have placed at the head of this article, and which we are glad to see printed in a cheap form, has successfully exposed the inequitable division of the public burdens among the several classes of the community.

It is well known to the house, that in the year 1833, the late Mr. Cobbet exposed to the house and the country the injustice occasioned by the existing stamp duties. That injustice was admitted by the

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