Indirect taxes, however, are so much part and parcel of the ruinous system of monopoly, or rather are so thoroughly interwoven with it, that the whole of their complicated mischiefs must stand or fall together; which renders it unnecessary to dwell longer upon any of them under this separate head. Let us, now, therefore, proceed to the consideration of a better system.

CHAPTER IX.

THE REMEDY.

"If bounties, monopolies, etc. are as improper as I have endeavoured to prove them to be, the sooner they cease the better.” Adam Smith.

“Beside a multitude of establishments, half job, half monopoly, such as corporations enjoying exclusive privileges, holding lands, levying taxes, administering charities, and bestowing offices.* * * It works well! George Canning used to exclaim; countless plunderers respond, it works well!"—England and America.

"Every such regulation introduces some degree of real disorder into the Constitution of the State."-Adam Smith.

THAT good-will, be it remembered, which necesReforms, sarily includes equal justice, is to all! then, not only to be just, and therefore beneficial, but not to be unjust, and therefore injurious, should be universal in their operation, and simultaneous in their application.

The only plausible arguments, ever urged against any portion of reform, are founded on a portion not being the whole, that is, on the supposed continuance of some evil, which the evil proposed to be removed had served to bolster or prop. But remove, at once, all that isunsound, la y at once a new foundation, on the solid ground of honesty, or equal justice, and the clumsy and unsightly props hitherto in use, will be no longer necessary. At present, each monopolist is but repaid by the unjust gains of his own monopoly, a part of what he loses by the unjust gains of other monopolists; therefore, if an attempt be made to do away with his own especial share of the general injustice, he omplains loudly of impending ruin. Whereas,

the whole generation of evils were banished ogether, each monopolist, by being no longer obbed by others, would be rendered indeendent of the compensation he had hitherto deived from his own licence to rob others; while he redemption of the dead losses on forced proluction, and wasteful collection, would thus be a lear gain to the whole nation.

Let, then, all protections, restrictions, exclusions, tc., in short, all and every of the various parts and limbs of that great trampler on natural rights, that great destroyer of national prosperity, the many headed monster, monopoly, perish at one blow! and, at the same time, the whole of the present cumbrous, wasteful, and intricate machinery

of indirect taxation, so favourable to every species of corrupt jobbing, fraud, peculation, and oppression, and requiring a host of non-productive consumers for its mismanagement, be done away with, and a legislative engine, of the simplest possible construction, which a few hands can guide, be substituted in its room.

Of course, we shall have just the same ignorant outcry, which takes place in a factory, when improved machinery is introduced. What is to be done with all the people thrown out of employment? What employment? But let us wave this unpleasant question, and suppose the employment has been hitherto useful. Has not the nation as good a right to increase the productiveness of its capital, by the introduction of the non-consuming productive power of improved machinery, as any master of a single factory? The persons whose dis-services are thus no longer required, must even, like the poor operatives of the said factory, seek employment wherever they can find it; and be thankful that it was not in the days of dear food and restricted trade, when employment was not to be had, that they were turned adrift.

Now, the system of universal free trade and free institutions, demanded by that equal justice which flows from good-will to all includes, not only a total and immediate repeal of the corn laws, and of all restrictions on the importation of live cattle, salt meat, butter, cheese, and all other first neces

saries and raw materials; and a commutation of every other tax, direct and indirect, for one or more well considered direct tax; but, also the discontinuance of every species of monopoly, protection, custom, duty, bounty, public or private corporation privilege, or partial interference of any kind, whether indulgence or restriction, having any tendency whatsoever, to render the earning of honest bread more difficult to any individual member of the community, or to make any article of consumption dearer to any consumer, than, without such partial dealing, would have been the case; every such interference of artificial laws with natural rights, acting as an unequal tax on some part of the community, and every bar to the honest acquisition of property being tantamount to the taking away of property already acquired.

To enumerate all the beneficial effects of the system proposed, would fill volumes; the notice of a few of them, however, may suffice to recommend its adoption.

:

First An unlimited extension of the foreign market for our manufactured goods, which would give immediate and full employment to our whole manufacturing population, and also to such agricultural labourers as, if not absorbed by an extensive adoption of the small allotment system, might be thrown idle by our ceasing to grow corn on inferior soils.

Second: A reduction of the price of food and raw