century and a half pressing upon it, afforded a necessary protection to the British agricultural labourer. For no one can deny that the producers of corn are, like all others, subject to taxation; and all taxation, whether direct or indirect, must be added to the price of the fruits of labour. This was just what the corn laws effected. The consumer paid for the taxation when he purchased the article; and in no branch of industry or trade is another rule recognised. There is a natural price, and an artificial price. The natural price of corn is that for which it can be grown in this country, deducting labour and the grower’s profit, but without any burdens of taxation at all. The artificial price is that which is charged for the produce to the consumer, when the taxation falling upon the land, for state purposes, is added to the natural price. By the repeal of the corn laws, the consumer escaped this taxation, and the whole burden was thrown on the producer and the labourer, who, in consequence of superior natural advantages possessed by the foreigner, can be undersold by him even at the natural price, and who yet are called upon to bear the whole of the artificial cost. Such a scheme as this—one so manifestly unjust, not only to the agriculturists, but to the manufacturers and the shopkeepers, whose whole dependence was on the home consumers—would never have been carried into execution, had its inevitable results been honestly laid before the public. But there was no honesty in these men. They were fighting a desperate game, without regard to the general interest of the country, so that they could be the individual gainers; and they fought it, as gamblers will do, unscrupulously, falsely, and dishonestly. They durst not have hinted that the immediate effect of the repeal of the corn laws would be a large and permanent depreciation of the value of agricultural produce. Had they done so, the tradesmen and retail dealers whom they chiefly aimed to dupe—because the electoral influence of that class is immensely large—would at once have seen, that, by limiting the general power of their customers to purchase, they were, in fact, depriving themselves of so much of their former profit. Shopkeepers and tradesmen do not live by the export trade: they maintain themselves and their families by distributing the products of labour among the community; and their gains, as well as those of the artisan, are measured by the amount of custom which they receive. Any legislative change, therefore, which could have the effect of diminishing that custom in a serious degree, would necessarily be most detrimental to the interests of this class—a proposition so clear, that no effort of political jesuitry could disguise it. The corn-law repealers knew this, and accordingly they rested their case on different grounds. They maintained that the abolition of the duties on corn would not, and could not, have the effect of curtailing the means or the revenue of the producer.