“It was England which introduced landowning and landlords into Ireland as an expedient for ruling it. If we choose now to remove the landlords or divide their property with their tenants, we must do it from our own resources; we have no right to make the landlords pay for the vagaries of our own idolatries.”[93] FOOTNOTES: [89] See Appendix No. II, in which is a resumé of the unheeded warnings, drawn up in 1880, from the arguments brought against the Bill. Any one not blinded by party prejudices, who read those arguments, could not fail to see that the Bill must be a measure of confiscation; and the subsequent action of the Bill shows that the forebodings have been verified. [90] Froude, the historian, writing in 1880, says:--“The policy has been to make the property of the landlords worthless, and their possession so dangerous, that they would find their estates not worth keeping.” [91] ‘Political Economy’--Bastiat. [92] _Westminster Review_, October, 1883. [93] _Nineteenth Century_, September, 1880. CHAPTER XXV. DEAR CHEAP FOOD. Don’t you see, what a fallacy underlies your cry for cheap bread. Does the consumer eat nothing but bread? Is everything to be sacrificed to the consumer? Don’t you see that cheap bread is not all that is necessary to prosperity. Have not you seen that, during one year of greatest prosperity, the price of wheat rose to 58_s._ 8_d._ per quarter, far higher than it was in ten years, 1831-40, before the repeal of the Corn Laws, whilst during the present time of depression it is down to 41_s._ 5_d._, and that, in 1835, before the repeal of the Corn Laws, it was down to 39_s._ 4_d._[94] Cannot you see that cheap food is dear if the causes of its cheapness deprive the labourer of that employment which enables him to purchase it? Cannot you see that, although a healthy competition stimulates production, a crushing competition in the end causes the rise of prices by the lessening of production? Do you not know that, in the opinion of many political economists, dear food has been considered a cause of progress and prosperity to a nation, by stimulating its inhabitants to exertion and thrift,--notably so in the case of Holland? Do you not know that, in many countries, where food is cheap, the natives are degraded and wretched? Cannot you see that the revenue of the country must be raised in some manner, and if a tax be put on corn, it may be _taken off some other article_ of consumption, almost equally important? and therefore that, if the substitute be judiciously chosen, the tax on it comes back to the consumer in some shape or other? Do you not know that an import tax does not always fall on the consumer?[95]