Great Britain -- Description and travel; Great Britain -- Rural conditions
This makes a strange alteration in the thing! And everybody must see,
that the Bank of England, and the country bankers; that all, in short,
are preparing for the first of May. It is clear that there must be a
farther diminution of the paper-money. It is hard to say the precise
degree of effect that this will have upon prices; but that it must bring
them down is clear; and, for my own part, I am fully persuaded, that
they will come down to the standard of prices in France, be those prices
what they may. This, indeed, was acknowledged by Mr. Huskisson in the
Agricultural Report of 1821. That two countries so near together, both
having gold as a currency or standard, should differ very widely from
each other, in the prices of farm-produce, is next to impossible; and
therefore, when our legal tender shall be completely done away, to the
prices of France you must come; and those prices cannot, I think, in the
present state of Europe, much exceed three or four shillings a bushel
for good wheat.
You know, as well as I do, that it is impossible, with the present taxes
and rates and tithes, to pay any rent at all with prices upon that
scale. Let loan-jobbers, stock-jobbers, Jews, and the whole tribe of
tax-eaters say what they will, you know that it is impossible, as you
also know it would be cruelly unjust to wring from the labourer the
means of paying rent, while those taxes and tithes remain. Something
must be taken off. The labourers' wages have already been reduced as low
as possible. All public pay and salaries ought to be reduced; and the
tithes also ought to be reduced, as they might be to a great amount
without any injury to religion. The interest of the debt ought to be
largely reduced; but, as none of the others can, with any show of
justice, take place, without a reduction of the tithes, and as I am for
confining myself to one object at present, I will give you as a Toast,
leaving you to drink it or not, as you please, _A large Reduction of
Tithes_.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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