Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A Letter on the Corn Laws, to the Manchester Chamber of Commerce
But you have a hard battle to fight; and although I consider success, in the end, undoubted, if your cause be well conducted and steadily followed up, still, you ought not to neglect any means whereby your opponents can be won over, or the legislature convinced. New arguments on this long debated subject are not to be expected; but the deliberate record of the opinion of those who cannot be suspected of having their judgment biassed by pecuniary interests, and whose mind has long been turned to the subject, may not be without its use. For myself, I can with truth say, that time, reflection, and that cooler and calmer judgment, which retirement from the active scenes of public life produces, have only tended, still more strongly to impress my mind with a conviction of the extreme impolicy of the existing corn law, whether considered with reference to its immediate effect on the well being of the mass of the people, or to its ultimate result on the prosperity of the country. With regard to the first point, I shall merely say, that a law restricting the people of this country from purchasing their food in the cheapest market, and establishing a monopoly whereby the affluent are made more rich, and the needy more poor, is one dangerous at all times, but in the present state of the country, fraught with imminent peril to the peace of the community - the security of property - and the harmony and concord which is necessary to bind society together. But it is mainly to the ultimate result that I look with the greatest anxiety. In looking at the small comparative extent of Great Britain, and considering her wealth, her power, and the extent of her foreign possessions, it is impossible not to be convinced, that these great results have been obtained, and can alone be preserved, by her great commercial and manufacturing superiority.
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