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district of England when a postman approached a cottage in which a woman lived, handed her a letter, and demanded a shilling for postage. The woman took the letter, examined it carefully, declared that she could not pay the sum asked for, and returned the document to the postman. Coleridge now stepped forward and paid the money, although the woman objected to his doing so. The postman departed, the letter was opened, and found to contain a blank sheet! The woman then explained that it was from her brother; and that the arrival of the letter was merely a sign agreed upon by which she might know that he was well.

Rowland Hill, with whose name the penny post is inseparably associated, saw that there was something wrong in a system which produced results like these. He held that the fee should be greatly reduced; and he also maintained that it would be of incalculable benefit to trade if the postage were the same for all distances. After the usual amount of opposition, the scheme was carried, and has since received even greater extensions by the adoption of halfpenny postal cards and the introduction of the parcels post.

Repeal of the Corn Laws: Free Trade.-A still greater reform now calls for notice here-the change in the Corn Laws, and the adoption of the principle of Free Trade by the English government.

As a country becomes more crowded, grain tends to rise in price, because it becomes more and more difficult to get the quantity required for the wants of the population. The rise does good at first to the farmers; but this causes so many people to try to get farms that rents go up, and thus the proprietors of land get the whole benefit of the increase in the price of food. Now there

is one way in which the rise in price can be prevented, and that is by large importations of foreign corn from countries which are thinly peopled, where land is cheap and only the most fertile soils cultivated. If such supplies continue, the price of corn falls, the farmers get less profits, and they soon pay very much less rents. Thus the proprietors are not so wealthy, but bread is cheaper. It is now universally agreed that it is better to let corn come freely into a country, but it was not thought so then; and a law had been passed that wheat must be 80shillings a quarter before it could be admitted duty free.

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During the early years of the reign of Victoria, the people of this country became slowly convinced that the Corn Laws must be abolished. This conviction was greatly due to a body called the Anti

COBDEN.

Corn-Law League," which had its headquarters at Manchester, and from that city sent forth lecturers and speakers to all parts of the kingdom. Some of the more eminent members of the League got into Parliament, and their presence there was naturally of much benefit to their cause.

Of these men, Richard Cobden and John Bright were the most remarkable. Of Cobden, it has been said, that he persuaded by convincing. He was transparently sincere, and the light of an earnest spirit shone through

his speeches. He had travelled and observed much, and he was ever ready to drive home a statement by some apt illustration or happy phrase. Bright was more of an orator than his fellow-worker. There was senti

ment and imagination as well as argument in his speeches, and his voice had tones of scorn, pathos, humour, and passion in it that powerfully affected his hearers. Both men were very outspoken and direct, and even their bitterest opponents felt that they had no selfish or personal ends to serve in what they did.

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At last Sir Robert Peel,10 who had come into office pledged to support the Corn Laws, first acknowledged that he was a Free Trader in theory, and then confessed that he had been persuaded by Cobden's arguments that the Corn Laws ought to be abolished. A measure to this effect was

accordingly introduced by the minister himself, and became law in 1846, amid the heartfelt joy of the masses of the people, but in spite of the determined opposition of Peel's former supporters.

The policy of free trade-that is, of allowing all kinds of goods to come freely into the country-was now applied to a number of other articles. The sugar duties; were equalised, and the navigation laws were abolished. The result has been that, as we take the goods: of other nations freely, they find it of real advantage to trade with us, and that Britain has become more and

more the

commercial

centre of the world.

The

greater part of the carrying trade of the globe has also passed into our hands from the same cause, and London is now the exchange of all nations.

The Irish Famine of 1845.-This national disaster did much to force the question of free trade in corn to a final issue. In Ireland a state of things had arisen in which the great mass of the peasantry had as their only food the potato. The evil of this system was made terribly apparent in the autumn of 1845, when it was found that the crop which had been so wholly depended upon was a complete failure. It was evident to all that suffering would fall upon the miserable people, and that the tax upon grain could only serve to increase the already intolerable burden of want and wretchedness. The reality was worse than the saddest anticipation!

Famine, and the diseases which followed in its wake, seized hold of a great part of Ireland. Men died everywhere—in remote huts, on the mountains, on roads along which they were painfully crawling in search of relief, in the streets of towns which they had reached in vain. As shopkeepers came to open their shop-doors in the morning they found corpses stiff and stark on the doorstep. In some places, coroners "declared it impossible to keep on holding inquests, and the parochial authorities at last declined to put the ratepayers to the expense of coffins for the too frequent dead."

As if famine was not enough, unheard-of diseases came -famine-fever, a terrible kind of dysentery," and other maladies, killed multitudes. The landlords in many places were ruined. They let their once stately abodes to be used as poorhouses. The whole structure of Irish society collapsed. The country was drained by emigra

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