But we must not suffer ourselves to be led away from the point which we were discussing. What we wish to enforce is the fact, that at present there are no fixed principles whatever to regulate the taxation of the kingdom; and we have brought forward the case of the agriculturists, not being able to find one more important or strictly apposite as a remarkable illustration of this. Taxation remains the same, notwithstanding the operation of a law which has produced a violent and permanent change in the value of agricultural produce. Now, if produce is accepted as the real thing to be taxed--and you can truly tax nothing else, since all taxes must be paid from produce--can this be just and equitable? Certainly not, if your former mode of taxation was likewise just and equitable. The agriculturist who was secured by law against unlimited foreign competition, might calculate on selling his hundred quarters of wheat for £280, on an average of years, and could therefore pay his taxes. You change the law, bring down the value of his wheat to £200, and yet charge him the same as before. How can his possibly be otherwise than a losing trade? Then mark what follows. We have said that no kind of produce whatever can be remunerative unless the consumer of it repays the grower the full cost of production, along with the grower's profit, and _the whole of the direct and incidental taxation to which it is liable_. In the case of corn this cannot be, because you now admit to the British market grain which is exempt from all taxes, and grown at far less cost than here, and the competition so engendered drags down the price of British corn far below the remunerative point, consequently the consumer does not pay the charges and costs of production, (taxes inclusive,) and the farmer goes to the wall. Such is the plain and inevitable course of things; and those who sneer at the tales of agricultural distress will do well to examine the matter dispassionately for themselves, and see if it can be otherwise. Very possibly it may never have occurred to them--for it does not seem to have occurred to our statesmen--that the indirect taxation of the country is at least as great an element in the cost of produce as that which is direct. Nevertheless it is so. The beer which the labourer drinks, the tobacco which he smokes, the tea and sugar used by his wife and family, the soap which washes their clothes, and many other articles, all pay toll to Government, and all contribute to the cost of the grain. And if the grain when brought to market will not pay its cost, there is an end not only of British agriculture, but of the best part of the revenue which at the present time is levied from the customs and excise!