The system of restricting the supply of food would exhibit as many sins under the head of Production as of Distribution. To make an ever-increasing population depend on graduating soils for its support, is at once to enact that either a certain number shall die outright of hunger, or that a much larger number shall be half-fed; and that, in either, case, waste of capital must be made in proportion to the inferiority of our newly-cultivated soils compared with those which might yield us their produce from abroad. From this waste arises another and equally destructive species of waste in the preparation of our manufactured articles. Wages are higher than they need be to purchase the same necessaries; therefore our manufactured articles are higher priced than they need be; therefore they have not a fair chance in foreign markets; and therefore our ill-fed manufacturing population is wronged. Such are some of the evils of a restricted trade in corn, considered under the head of Production. As for the distribution of this prime necessary of life,—the circumstance of its being loaded with an artificial cost suggests the deplorable scenes and narratives of suffering which may be verified in every street of all our cities. No arrangement can be more utterly unprincipled than that by which a necessary of life, of which the richest can scarcely consume more than the poorest, is made needlessly expensive. We may linger in vain to find a comparison to illustrate the iniquity. It is the worst possible instance of legislative injustice; and when it is considered that this injustice is perpetrated for the benefit of a particular class, which class is brought by it to the verge of ruin, and that the injury spreads to every other class in turn, it will be seen that no words can describe its folly. Add to this our provisions for diverting labour from its natural channels, and for making it stagnate in one spot, and it will appear as if we had yet to learn the rights of labour and the uses of capital, or as if we openly defied the one, and abused the other. It is not so, however. The folly came before the iniquity; and, in cases of false legislation, the folly, originating in ignorance, must be long perceived and pointed out,—i.e. must become iniquity,—before it can be remedied. But the remedy is secured from the moment that the denunciation goes abroad. We have passed through the necessary stages, and the issue is at hand. Our grandfathers legislated about corn on false principles, through ignorance; our fathers clung to these false principles in a less innocent state of doubt. We have perpetuated them wickedly, knowing their disastrous results; and a voice is going up through all the land which will almost immediately compel their relinquishment.