had turned out the most foolish, inasmuch as returns showed our habitual dependence on foreigners for the bread we eat; and, while the Corn Law was unequivocally injurious to commerce, the interest of the farmer and the agricultural labourer in it had been shown to be an utter fallacy.
3. Not only were the farmers in continual distress under this Corn Law, but the agricultural labouring population were lower in the scale of civilization than almost any other class of human beings. On this fact, incendiary fires shed an awful light.
4.The allegations of land being thrown out of cultivation, and labourers out of employment, were disproved by the minute calculations of such men as Earl Ducie, who, combining science with practice, showed that land would pay rent, and therefore be cultivated, under any pressure from foreign competition. While they were talking about the danger of displacing agricultural labour, no less than 360,000 agricultural labourers had passed into and been absorbed in the manufacturing districts.
5. The people of this country were admitted to toil too long and to have too little to eat; they were better off with a good than with a bad harvest; yet there was no difference in principle whether food was rendered scarce by a bad harvest, or by limiting the supply from other countries.
6. A copious exhibition of statistics showed that abundance or scarcity in the supply of the essential food of the people had an intimate connexion between the increase or diminution of pauperism, crime, poor rates, disease, emigration, deficient nourishment, typhus fever. War prices and rent being the parents of want, disease, crime, and death.
7. The united cry of the more enlightened agriculturists was—Improvement: yet, if there were truth in protection principles, improvement ought to be as injurious as importation. Nor, while protection remained, would importation.
