“Now mind, I do not say that the manufacturers ought not to be permitted to get food from abroad; but I say—and what man in his senses does not say, that in whatever degree this cotton body is supplied with food from abroad, it must and will dispense with food from our own lands.... “I would fain then see the two-legged animal who is quadruped enough still to contend that the interests of the landlords and those of the cotton-lords are inseparable. They are directly opposed to each other; and opposed to each other they must be as long as this debt shall last. “It will be curious enough to observe how ‘the manufacturing mind’ will work upon ‘the agricultural mind.’ These two minds will now come into direct contact with each other. It will be the business of the cotton mind to convince the landlords that bringing in foreign corn will not make their English corn sell cheaper; or, failing in this, to convince them that wheat at 4s. a bushel will, ‘in the long run,’ be better for the landlords than wheat at 8s. a bushel. A very long run, I believe, indeed! In short, it is a question of rents or no rents. With the present debt and taxes, and with wheat at 4s. a bushel, there can be no rents; so that, when the cotton mind comes forward to get a repeal of the Corn Bill, it comes in fact to pray that there shall no longer be rents in England. “The cotton-lords, and indeed all the lords of the loom and anvil, are bestirring themselves, and collecting all their forces for a desperate assault upon the jolterheads (the landlords) who cry aloud for national faith. I wish them success. I will not absolutely join them; but I wish them success; because that success would destroy the _whole system_ (the system of paper-money, national debt, and oppressive taxation) root and branch. The Corn Bill, the Small-Note Bill, the laying out of public money in Ireland, the lending of money occasionally to manufacturers and merchants, the Bank advancing money upon big estates—all these shifts and tricks just keep the thing agoing; but come a war, or repeal the Corn Bill, and you will soon see what is to become of the system. Everything seems strained to its utmost: and when that is the case, something must soon give way.”