selves. If then there must be pressure, if then there must be distress which no legislative enactments can ward off or remedy, on what plea can Parliament demand a right to lay it all on the labouring population, manufacturing and agricultural, for the declared purpose of keeping it off of the landowners; for talking of the farmer, who is only market man to the landlord, as an attempt to justify corn laws, is a mere farce.

If Parliament then can do no good, let it at least undo the harm it has done, and do no more harm: that is, let every restriction be removed, let every man have a fair chance, and therefore have himself only to blame if he cannot get on. As to taxation—let no man in the kingdom be taxed!!! But let property alone, wherever it be found, pay its own assurance: Who could then complain of partial dealing? While it ought surely to be a great support and consolation to those making the changes which honesty thus demands should be made at all hazards, to know, as the statements just given fully prove, that the small allotment system offers, at least, a safety valve, rendering any sudden explosion of the miseries of want of profitable employment, and consequent scarcity of food, in a manner impossible, at least if rational steps be taken.

If we have (as officially stated*) in the United Kingdom, thirty millions of acres of waste land,

* See third report of Emigration Committee.

fifteen millions capable of improvement, besides all the great farms of farmers, who having already told down all their capital to landlords, find they can no longer pay their rent, surely neither agricultural labourers nor farmers, nor any other o those, the breadth of whose fingers is so alarming to the philanthropy of Sir James Graham,* need lie down and die, rather than cut up those large farms, and colonize‡ those waste lands; and so, even from the first, live comfortably; while such a system, superseding the present miserable one of pauperism, induced by the crushing of hope beneath the united weight of corn laws, enhanced currency, and consolidation of farms, must soon create a new home market for home manufactures, and so call into being new manufacturing towns; while these new towns must again afford new markets to the cultivator, till the lengthening vista of reciprocal benefits exceed the reach of human foresight!

While, had we ourselves, and could we by wise diplomacy, induce in other nations the liberality to extend this reciprocation of benefits to the whole of the human family, all mankind would surely find their banquet the more abundant, their labours the lighter, if each locality, producing that for which it possessed the greatest natural facilities, perfect freedom of interchange, brought

* Debates on Corn Laws, 1834.

† See Home Colonization.

a portion of the blessings of every clime and soil, home to the door of each individual, however humble, on the easiest, that is on the cheapest terms possible; in other words, unenhanced by taxation; by monopoly; by forced, therefore needlessly expensive production; by burnings and destroyings of forfeited goods; by excise restrictions on improvement; and by the locust-like devouring of the multitudes employed in doing all this mischief; and who, if not so misemployed, might have been occupied in producing, that is, creating out of the raw material, some comfort, or luxury, to be added to the general stock of the means of human well being.

CHAPTER XII.

A PROPERTY TAX CONSIDERED, OBJECTIONS REPLIED TO, ADVANTAGES STATED.

IT has, it is presumed, been clearly shown, that, independent of the public expenditure of fifty millions annually, or thereabouts, there are immense sums of from one hundred and fifty to two hundred millions, annually, literally thrown away in the monopoly or artificial prices, occasioned by protections and forced production, home and colonial. And that there are, also, considerable sums wasted in the working of the cumbrous, complicated, and mischievous machinery of indirect taxation. Now, viewing the wealth of the nation as one fund, it is manifest, that the aggregate of these losses must fall on that fund, and that it would therefore be highly advantageous for the nation, not only to abolish the whole system of dead losses and hindrances to the creation of wealth, connected with

monopoly, protection, and forced production, and to confine its whole out-lay to the fifty millions, or thereabouts, now paid into the Exchequer; but that there would be a further manifest advantage, in raising the sum necessary for the public expenditure, by a direct tax; as, by so doing, a considerably less sum than fifty millions would suffice.

So far, there seems to be no difficulty in deciding on the measures most conducive to the pecuniary well-being of the whole nation: it is when we separate the nation into classes, and come to inquire what class can or will ensure the payment of this direct tax to the Exchequer, that whatever difficulty there is, or seems to be, arises, could an inexpensively collected direct tax amounting to what might still be found necessary of the fifty millions be invented, which should spread itself over the whole community, it would surely be for the interest of the whole community, to pay altogether a sum considerably under fifty millions annually, rather than continue a system under which the whole community are out of pocket, altogether, at least, two hundred millions annually. The principle, however, of leaving labour, or that industry which as yet possesses nothing but the power of creating wealth ;-free to travel forward unencumbered, and laying the whole of the necessary burdens of the state on the already realized property, and the future creations of labour, as fast as they become realized property, has manifold advantages which