ATTEMPT TO CONTINUE ACCIDENTAL MONOPOLY. 73

their other sons; neither those who by exporting cloth enabled the ministers to maintain armies abroad, nor those whose industry was shown in importuning the ministers for appointments, perceived that they were creating a great body of genteel encumbrancers or annuitants, and a formidable mass of hungry cottagers to be maintained by legal almsgiving.

When Parliament was assembled at the beginning of the year 1815, it was thought the first duty of the legislators to secure society against the lessening of rent and their device for averting this calamity was a new law forbidding the importation of corn until it reached a very high price. They were prepared to endure a low price if it was the result of good harvests; in this case they would submit to it as a dispensation of Divine Providence, not an obvious blessing, but a chastisement.

They were not ready to submit to the cheapening of food by letting in the overflow from the food harvests of France or Russia; perhaps it was the same Providence that afflicted the French or the Russians with plenty; but this dispensation was to be barred at the ports of Britain. That monopoly with which the war had blest them they would not part with in peace. It had encouraged some to reclaim by drainage the fen lands of Lincolnshire, and thereby to increase permanently the wealth of the country; for the reclaimed lands were nearly as suitable for wheat tillage as the valley of the Danube. It had tempted others to sow seed in cold clay, on steep hillsides, in wet moors, and in the fringe of the Grampians where every field had

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THE GREAT CORN LAW.

to be laboriously rid of boulders; and here too, the result was not unsatisfactory, if wheat was grown merely as a necessary sequel in the rotation of crops. It had concurred with the action of small bankers, who stretched credit by help of local currency, to stimulating a feverish speculation in land. It had enabled a few squires to race with merchants in the pursuit of gain. On the whole it seemed an institution to be preserved by patriots.1

In 1814 the remonstrances of the manufacturers had averted the enactment of a law for keeping out foreign corn. But when Bonaparte was at Elba and Wellington at Vienna, the landholders took courage. They passed with overwhelming majorities that corn law which is the best known of their many corn laws. They ruled that foreign wheat generally should be kept out of British markets until the price of British wheat rose to 80s. a quarter, or 10s. a bushel: only wheat grown in the North American colonies might

1 'I know no part of Scotland so much, and so visibly, improved within thirty years as Aberdeenshire. At that time the country between Keith and Stonehaven was little else than a hopeless region of stones and moss. There were places of many miles where literally there was nothing but large grey stones of from half a ton to ten tons weight to be seen. A stranger to the character of the people would have supposed that despair would have held back their hands from even attempting to remove them. However, they began, and year after year have been going on making dykes and drains, and filling up holes with these materials, till at last they have created a country, which, when the rain happens to cease and the sun to shine is really very endurable.'-Lord Cockburn's 'Memorials,' vol. i. p. 172. (A.D. 1838).

A certain 'land jobber' petitioned Parliament to annul his bargains when he had invested 150,000l. on purchases of land which the fall of prices compelled him to sell at a loss; a caricature, but not a monstrous deduction from the habitual interference of the legislature with the commerce of landholders.

OPPOSITION TO THE CORN LAW.

75

be admitted when the price at home was 678. a quarter. This was a moderate protection of the monopoly; it was an abatement of high claims, for those who dreaded cheapness asserted that 968. or 1358. would be the just figure.1

This enactment was supported by a show of reasoning, but its supporters scoffed at the methodical reasoners under the name of 'political economists.' They sneered at Adam Smith, whose doctrines about the rationale of business had been imbibed thirty years ago by their own master and idol, Mr. Pitt. They could not pretend to think lightly of their foremost opponent, Mr. Alexander Baring, for he was the dealer in money whom the Government consulted at every step in all operations of finance. Nor did they treat with want of personal respect their second adversary Mr. Horner, a genuine philosopher who, though in private letters he called the country gentlemen plunderers and anarchists, gave no offence in parliamentary debate and spoke with the earnestness of deep conviction. The two defenders of cheap food were thanked by the citizens of London in their council: but the towns did not clamour loudly enough; perhaps this particular enactment was seen to be futile.2

In the House of Lords the cause of common sense

There were corresponding figures for other kinds of grain: oats, the cheapest of the cereals, were fixed at 268. for foreign, and 228. for colonial produce.

2 The word used by Mr. Horner was Jacobins: a term freely applied by the men of that age to all political combatants who in any way agreed with the authors of the French Revolution.

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was pleaded by ten men headed by Lord Grenville, an accomplished statesman, who had been at an early age raised by his cousin, Mr. Pitt, to a very high office, and had been since Mr. Pitt's death the leader of a few considerable persons who stood between the Whigs and the Tories. The protest written by him and signed by nine others may be read with interest as a summary of what was then said against the policy of restriction on the importation of food, yet it is inadequate. There was need of bitter disappointment for the squires, of a synoptical treatise for the readers, of courage and passion amongst young traders in the towns, and of debaters who would unweariedly hammer at the minds of Parliament men, till prejudice should bend and selfishness give way. It took thirty years to bring it home to the conscience of British rulers, that the argument for the corn law was but a canticle of superstition.

VI.

A REFLECTIVE mind may well be slow to fasten upon an explanation of the distress which came in the train of peace on England alone.

When some region has been trampled by armies, peace begins at once to let fall thereon the industry which repairs the losses. The process of healing begins at once. Suffering is still perceptible, but it is the suffering of a convalescent. How was it that

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a country not invaded, a land in which no year of the long war passed without the building of factories, the enlargement of mines, the reclaiming of waste, the construction of piers, canals, roads and bridges, the invention of something new in sciences applied to arts, was troubled and even streaked with blood, in consequence of the great disarming? The war had diverted from reproductive industry a huge bulk of capital, that is to say, of that wealth which was reserved for the maintenance of labourers to be employed in fresh enterprises. But the war had never been so exhausting as to paralyse reproductive industry; and the peace of course drew back capital to its regular channel. Foreigners who had invested savings in English Government funds took advantage of the peace to sell with profit the stock they held, and took these gains back to the Continent. They were believed to carry off three millions of pounds. The nation's industrial career was not in the least danger of a check. Every sea, every harbour, was open to her ships. Her power of putting things in their places, which is the simplest expression for useful physical labour, was increasing every year by the opening of her coal pits; within two years of Waterloo the coal-owners, headed by an earl, were rewarding with a splendid gift of silver the inventor of the 'Davy lamp,' which was to save more bodies of strong men than the blunders of generals had sent to death. Against her artificers thus furnished with motive force, there was in Europe and North America no serious rivalry; Alsace, Zurich, and Massachusetts were not yet in the field of compe