righteously earned one or both, fail of obtaining either? Could such a "disposition of things" have obtained, if the principle of good-will to all or equal justice were the compass of the legislator? While, if we look but at expediency, is that legislature wise, which, by its enactments, changes the sober, calculating merchant, looking forward with reasonable hope to his yearly balance, into the miserable frantic gambler, gazing with breathless suspense on the throw of the dice, on which depends whether he shall possess a mountain of gold, or put a pistol to his head ?

We call our gambling houses hells, and we designate them rightly! Are we justified, then, in rendering our counting-houses the same? Should it be possible for a man to devote the energies of his life, to the honest endeavour to provide for his family by his industry, and earn a broken heart, instead of a fortune?

With the perfectly fair competition, and gradual self-accommodation of supply to demand, afforded by such freedom of trade as equal justice would dictate, such a result would be impossible! Industry, though but an humble foot passenger, is always sure to gain her journey's end, before her setting sun goes down, if monopoly, driving his car of Juggernaut, is not suffered to infest her path, and crush her patient limbs beneath his destroying chariot wheels.

If public statements, uncontradicted, are deserv

ing of any credit, the merchants themselves are they who declare, that the struggle of monopoly, with monopoly, has changed commerce into a desperate species of gambling, at which fortunes are made, only by lucky hits, and at the expense of the ruin of thousands. And that the countless obstructions, along the force-directed course of every channel of trade are such, that a man, without an overwhelming capital, might almost as well attempt to navigate the falls of the Niagara, as embark in busi

ness.

What language does all this speak? Does it not tell us, with all the force of truths borne out by facts, that the interests, rightly understood, of the capitalists, nay, even of the monopolists themselves, calls as loudly as that of every other class of the community, for the adoption (as the standard measure of all our dealings) of the unerring principle of good-will to all, unerring, because necessarily including equal justice; that good-will not being to all, which sanctions injustice to any.

CHAPTER V.

THE BREAD MONOPOLY.

All protection means robbing somebody else."-Corn Catechism.

THE most ruinous of all our monopolies, and therefore that which calls the first and the loudest for abolition, is that unjust enhancement of the price of grain, occasioned by the operation of the corn laws.

This monopoly is defined by the Times' newspaper: "An extension of the pension list, to the whole of the landed aristocracy of Great Britain !"

Many a proud cheek, of those accustomed to believe themselves the independent nobles and gentry of the land, will burn with indignant blushes, on viewing the subject in this light. Yet, the definition is, it is to be feared, but too just. The sole difference is, that such pensions, instead of being paid out of the Treasury, are advanced to the landlord by the farmer, who is repaid again by the consumer, and thus a tax is levied on the

whole community, not for the purposes of defraying public expenditure, but for the private emolument of the landowners.

Let, however, a better feeling than pride arise in the breasts of landlords and their families, on reflecting, that the pensions they are thus supposed to be justly ashamed of receiving, are, the greater portion of them, made up of deductions from the justly earned comforts of many millions of hard working day labourers, and their wives, and children. And let no one deceive the uninformed, by telling them, with a cold sneer, that the labourer is compensated by receiving higher wages than he would get were the corn laws abolished. This is a dangerous, insidious falsehood, invented to lull honesty and compassion to sleep, while hard-hearted selfishness is abroad, robbing the

poor.

Lord Fitzwilliam's Tables furnish an indisputable refutation of this popular fallacy. They show, on the averages of half a century, that the surplus of the labourer's wages, after providing himself with bread, has always been least, when grain was highest, and that, to use his Lordship's own words, "the boasted period of agricultural prosperity, was to the labourer, whether agricultural or manufacturing, a season of distress."

"The high price of provisions," says Adam Smith, during these ten years past, has not been accompanied by any sensible rise in the

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money price of labour." He goes on to show that, on the contrary, the wages of labour generally fall in dear years, and rise in cheap years. While, speaking of America, he says: "Labour is there so well rewarded, that a numerous family of children is a source of opulence to parents." This is, of course, because in America labour is scarce. But, if the price of food alone regulated wages, how could money wages be much higher, yet food much cheaper in America than in England, as is the case, and real wages therefore higher still.

But the reward of labour is ample in America, because, in America, the labour market is not overstocked by want of employment. Cheap food, it is true, from whatever cause it proceeds, puts it in the labourer's power to accept lower wages, down, if he please, to the new starving point; but, will he do so, if the self same cause which gives cheap food, gives full employment to labour, and therefore enables the labourer to demand, and obtain higher wages? Were food, therefore, made cheap by the abolition of corn laws and all other monopolies, the opening of trade, which would be the immediate consequence of such a measure, by doubling and trebling the demand for our manufactured goods, would give full employment at the same time with cheap food, to all our labouring classes, so that labourers being no longer compelled to underbid each other, in an overstocked labour market, labour would, at all times, obtain