Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, No. 362, December 1845Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, No. 362, December 1845
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
No evil is unmixed with good. The murmurs of the alarmists at home,
unfounded as we believe them to be, have brought out, more clearly
than we could have hoped for, the state of foreign feeling with regard
to British enterprise, and the prospects of future supply upon which
this country must depend, should the sliding-scale be abrogated and
all import duties abolished. The most infatuated Leaguer will hardly
deny, that if the corn-law had ceased to exist three years ago, and a
great part of our poorer soils had in consequence been removed from
tillage, our present position with regard to food must have been
infinitely worse. In fact, we should then have presented the unhappy
spectacle of a great industrial community incapable of rearing food
for its population at home, and solely dependent for a supply on
foreign states; and that, too, in a year when the harvests throughout
Europe, and even in America, have suffered. And here, by the way,
before going further, let us remark, that the advocates of the League
never seem to have contemplated, at all events they have never
grappled with, the notorious fact, that the effects of most
unpropitious seasons are felt far beyond the confines of the British
isles. This year, indeed, we were the last to suffer; and the memory
of the youngest of us, who has attained the age of reason, will
furnish him with examples of far severer seasons than that which has
just gone by. What, then, is to be done, should the proportion of the
land in tillage be reduced below the mark which, in an average year,
could supply our population with food--if, at the same time, a famine
were to occur abroad, and deprive the continental agriculturists of
their surplus store of corn? The answer is a short one--_Our people
must necessarily_ STARVE. The manufacturers would be the first to feel
the appalling misery of their situation, and the men whom they would
have to thank for the severest and most lingering death, are the
chosen apostles of the League!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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