Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 416, June 1850Various
General
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 416, June 1850
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
producers, alone were made to feel the burden, and that property
and capital were wholly exempt. (Hear, hear.) The Free-traders,
when proposing their ruinous measures, appear to have made a grand
discovery, and assert, that we have no right to tax the food of
the people. But did it ever enter their brains that on the wheat
produced by the British farmer he paid a large tax in the shape of
the superior wages paid to the labourers as compared with those of
the labourers of the foreigner, to meet the taxes that are imposed
on them upon the necessaries of life? That in fact the proportion of
labour in a quarter of wheat (which he would assert to be two-thirds)
was taxed to the enormous extent of 33 per cent? (Hear, hear, hear.)
Again, was not the wheat produced by the British farmer taxed by the
poor rates, the highway rates, &c.? and the heavy rents which he
paid as compared with the foreign farmer, (such rents as were not
heard of in any other country in the world,) was it not on account
of the heavy taxes the landlords had to pay? If these things never
entered the brains of her Majesty's Ministers, they were no men of
business. (Hear, hear.) If they did enter into their brains, then
their conduct was most knavish, most scandalous; for thereby they
compelled the farmers of England to compete on most unequal terms
with the foreigner. (Hear, hear.) The aristocracy of this country,
he regretted to say, had not as a body done their duty in this
matter. (Hear, hear.) Had the farmers of England had the aristocracy
and the clergy of the country with them, they might easily have
resisted the iniquitous measures of the Free-traders, and they would
not have been in their present deplorable condition. (Cheers.) But
now let them look for a remedy. Let them from that day call forth
those men who had hitherto been blind and apathetic as regarded
their own best interests, as well as those of their own immediate
dependents. Let them call upon the landed gentry and the clergy
throughout the country to do their duty. (Hear, hear.) He thought
he might say with confidence, if they responded to that call, that
the agricultural interest had nothing to fear. If nothing else would
rouse the aristocracy of the country to a proper attention to their
vital interests, as well as those of their common country, surely the
insolent language of Mr Cobden at Leeds was enough to rouse them from
their lethargy. But if they still refused to do their duty, he would
call upon them, in the language of Milton, to
"Awake! arise! or be for ever fallen."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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