Carlisle Patriot 18 May 1844 Protection to Agriculture (1)

Protection to Agriculture (1)

Carlisle Patriot - 18 May 1844

PROTECTION TO AGRICULTURE. LABOUR AND THE CORN LAWS. - I wish to direct your attention to the period when wheat sold for 11s. 9d. the bushel, or 94s. the quarter; and I ask what was then the value of labour? It is a fact within my knowledge, that many of the working men could then earn 12s., 14s., and 16s. a-week; but now, although they work fourteen hours a-day, and even more they cannot earn more, than 5s. 6d. or 6s.! I do not mention this from any unkind feeling towards their employers. They are men of business, and have pursued it with industry and zeal, and have thus become the architects of their own fortunes; but I cannot conceal my pain at seeing men whom I formerly knew under such different circumstances, now compelled to ask charity - reduced to what is called "starvation point" - and many of them sinking into premature old age! And are we to be told that the remedy for this is to be found in a repeal of the Corn Laws? At the time I have alluded to, when the working classes received something like adequate wages, the price of wheat averaged 11s. 9d. the bushel. Now, when their wages are reduced to the lowest sum I have named as their present earnings, the price of wheat, notwithstanding the Corn Laws, is not more than 6s. 8d. the bushel, which is a mere fraction higher than it was two hundred years ago, and, therefore, I will not believe that the Corn Laws are to blame for all the misery I see around me, or that the landowner and tenant-farmer, in claiming that protection to which they are so well entitled, have formed an unholy alliance to defraud all classes of the community but their own! - Speech of G. H. HEAD, Esq. TAXATION - THE CHURCH AND THE CORN LAWS. - It is a common thing, too, to hear the advocates of free trade declaim against the landowners, and say that they, being the law-makers, have exempted themselves from taxation, and have laid the burdens upon the trade and commerce of the country - thus vitally affecting the labouring part of the population. But these men take care never to tell us how large a proportion of the taxation of the country is borne exclusively by the landed interest! I am justified in saying, that not less than fifteen or sixteen millions are paid annually in land-tax, tithes, county, poor, and highway rates. And there are other interests involved, to which all allusion is equally avoided by the free traders. A repeal of the Corn Laws would strike at the very root of the Established Church! Although I am not a member of that Establishment, and conscientiously dissent from some of its doctrines, yet I take a deep interest in all that relates to its welfare, so far as the religion and happiness of the people are concerned. But a repeal of the Corn Laws would strike at its very existence as an Establishment, because its revenue is not derived from the paving-stones of cities, or the swiftly-turning spindles of the manufacturers, but from the produce of the broad acres; and, therefore, any attempt to depreciate that produce must affect the revenue of the Church in a most important and vital manner. - Speech of G. H. HEAD, Esq.

 

< Prev		Next >