Skipton it was entirely devoted to the raising of sheep and cattle for the Manchester market. The Craven farmer was in fact a purchaser of corn as much as the manufacturers of Manchester, Burnley, and Blackburn were. Having thus obtained the ear of an audience, most of whom expected to hear the Corn Law defended, I went on to show that its repeal was not so much to make bread cheap, but that employment might be given, which would enable the now starving multitudes to purchase not only bread, but milk, butter, cheese, beef, and mutton, the produce upon which farmers had the best profit. I was listened to throughout with great attention, by an audience which seemed pleased to hear the question discussed without any mixture of political bitterness. When I had finished, a person from the crowd asked why the manufacturers asked for protection to themselves, when they refused it to the famers? I replied that the farmer really had no protection, for if a permanent rise of prices could be effected it was followed by a rise of rents. The manufacturers required no protection, and the Anti-Corn-Law League and the Manchester Chamber of Commerce had declared that they wanted none, and that if they could have corn in exchange for their goods, the landlords and farmers might buy goods wherever they pleased. Another person asked if the landowners should not have protection to the amount of the taxes which fell on them exclusively? I denied that any fell on them exclusively, except the land tax, for which landowners had an ample equivalent in their exemption from taxes on the transmission of property, on auction duties, on farm horses, and on the insurance of agricultural produce. A third question was, "Did not the manufacturers wish to have cheap corn, in order to reduce wages?" To which I replied, that if they did, they took a strange way for labour, to effect their object, for the increased demand consequent on the opening of new markets, would necessarily raise wages.
