yet in his own too temperate language, says: "The mere circumstance of our being the most extensive proprietors, is no argument for bestowing upon us any peculiar protection. It is probably the cause of our having obtained it; but, may it not have been conceded to our influence, rather than to our arguments?"

We have, on the Christian grounds of humanity and equal justice, emancipated the Negro Slave, restored to him his natural right, a property in his own labour. Speaking on this subject to his constituents, Mr. Spring Rice said, truly: "Justice is a question, not of degree, but of principle.-If but a feather press on the brow of a brother, unjustly, we are bound to remove the weight."*

Shall we be less just to our brethren at home? When, then, and from whom, did the landowners of England purchase a property in half the labour of all our labouring classes, and to whom did they pay the purchase money? Did the labourer himself effect the sale? Did the labourer himself receive the price? Certainly not! Who else then could sell or give away his, the labourer's title, to that of which he holds his grant from God?

* It is hoped that Mr. Spring Rice, and all others who, on this principle, voted for the restoration of the Negro to his natural rights, will give the labouring population of their own country the benefit of the same principle, when next the question of the Corn Laws comes before Parliament.

If landowners have pawned to themselves the limbs of the labourer; who is bound to redeem a pledge made by themselves, to themselves? Can' that have the force of an agreement to which there never was but one party? Is appropriation title? Can the idle man, without the consent of the labouring man, without valuable consideration given or received, take a property in the limbs' the labouring man was born with? the only possession we bring into the world with us, the only posses→ sion we carry back to the grave, as though it' were to proclaim to mankind, that man, made in the image of his Maker, is sacred property, which tyranny cannot appropriate !

If landowners, then, in their buying and selling among each other, have purchased from each other property to which no title can be found, property to which he who made the sale, having no title, could give no title, they must be the losers. If landowners in hoping to benefit themselves, though, at the expense of the rest of the community, have unwittingly injured themselves also, and further, during their period of self-delusion, have incurred obligations among each other, calculated to aggravate their self-incurred embarrassments, we may, on the principle of good-will to all, be sorry for them, but equal justice, flowing from the same good-will to all, forbids that we should rob labour of its reward to relieve them.

The sole, the sacred claim of industry, a pro

perty in its own labour, is contained in a bond on which God himself has given judgment-it must be paid first, and in full, though the nation were a bankrupt, and all its other creditors received a dividend of one fraction in the pound.*

None, however, need be losers: grant to industry, on the principle of equal justice flowing from good-will to all, the blessings of free trade, free markets in which to sell, and free markets in which to buy, in other words, full employment and cheap food; and, as shall be shown more fully in a future chapter,† industry will quickly become property; come up to the point at which it is proposed that taxation should be laid on, and thence carry forward, without difficulty, a much heavier burden than that which now lays it prostrate in the dust, and crushes out its very existence.

* No allusion to funded property is intended: the debts and credits spoken of are here figurative expressions, and mean the privileges of the various contending interests.

+ Chapter XII.

CHAPTER VI.

ON THE UNNATURAL CO-OPERATION OF CORN LAWS WITH AN ENHANCED CURRENCY, BY WHICH THE BLESSING OF DEAR MONEY, WHICH OUGHT ΤΟ HAVE BROUGHT WITH IT AS ITS NATURAL COMPANIONS, CHEAP NECESSARIES, WAS CHANGED INTO A DOUBLING, AND, IN SOME INSTANCES, A FOURFOLD DEEPENING OF THE CURSE OF DEAR FOOD!!

BUT when, in addition to the oppressions on industry already enumerated, dear food, as is the case in Great Britain, is, by act of Parliament, forcibly maintained in an unnatural co-existence in the home market with dear money, the complication of misery produced, by halving the price of the products of labour, and doubling the cost of maintainance at one and the same time, is, beyond all calculation, devastating in its effects, both on individual, and on national prosperity. When it became necessary to restrict an undue paper currency to a level with which, however, rents had previously risen,

and by so doing, double the value of money, had landowners been guided by the principle of goodwill to all, or equal justice, they would have lowered their rents, and required all creditors to lower their demands in proportion, which they then could have done without being losers. But landowners did not so lower their rents; consequently, rents, the national debt, pensions, salaries, and taxes, for paying them with, in short, every fixed charge which therefore could not adjust itself in a free market to the changed currency, became doubled, while it was soon found that tenants could not pay the same money rent, in money thus doubled in value, on which landlords, having the law, as well as the land, in their own hands, brought dormant corn laws into operation, that their tenants, by getting double price for their corn, might be able to pay them double rent. They thus, not only intercepted the blessing which dear money, accompanied by honest arrangements, might have brought to the community, but turned it into an additional hardship on the industrious classes, and, for a time, an unjust accession of wealth to themselves. natural effect of making money dear, operating singly in a free market, must of course have been to have made all things else cheap, necessarily including food and raw material. Dear money, therefore, operating singly, must have accelerated the national prosperity of a country like Great Britain, that, to prosper, must be enabled to compete in the

The