Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 71, No. 438, April 1852Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 71, No. 438, April 1852
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
Therefore it is the more necessary that, at the coming election, men
should distinctly understand what principle they virtually adopt in
voting for particular candidates. The most strenuous efforts will be
made to sink all other questions in that of the Corn Laws. We shall
again hear the rhetorical commonplaces about taxing the bread of the
people; and no doubt some ingenious gentlemen will illustrate their
arguments, by reference to a couple of fabricated loaves of grossly
unequal dimensions. For all this we are quite prepared. It has been the
policy of our opponents for years back, both in their speeches and in
their writings, to represent Free Trade as nothing more than the free
importation of corn. In this way they get rid of the ugly circumstance,
that many important branches of manufacture are still protected by large
duties, and owe their present existence in this country simply to the
retention of these. In this way, too, they try to persuade the other
classes of the community, who are suffering under the operation of a
cruel and unnational system, that they are compensated for diminished
profits by the reduced price of bread, and that what they lose in wages
they gain in the baker's account. A very favourite question of theirs is
this--"You say that your wages are low--admitted. That is owing to the
badness of the times, and circumstances over which we have no control;
but we ask you to consider what your situation would be now, had the
price of bread been kept up by an artificial Corn Law?" Of course, while
putting such questions, they take especial care to conceal the fact,
that the admitted "badness of the times" arises simply from the
pernicious operation of Free Trade in another quarter; and thus they
attempt to set the artisan against the agriculturist--to maintain the
discord of interests, instead of promoting their harmony.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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