fice must be made before we can manufacture railroad iron for ourselves. I see not how these ends can be obtained in a country like ours, which is, so to speak, cursed with great advantages for agriculture, emigration, and the segregation of the people from each other, without throwing over our manufacturing industry, at least for half a century longer, the broad shield of an effective protecting tariff. When we have enjoyed, as England has already enjoyed, the benefit of a strict protective policy for over a century, for the purpose of completing our education in manufactures, then we shall be ready to do what England at last has done,-to throw down all barriers, and to invite the world to compete with us in the application of industry and skill to any enterprise designed to satisfy the wants of man.

T

CHAPTER XI.

FREE TRADE.

BY RICHARD COBDEN, M. P.

AYLESBURY, January 9, 1853.

It gives me particular pleasure to follow a gentleman who

has addressed you in the capacity of a tenant-farmer, one who, to my knowledge, in his own business, by the growth of more corn, and raising more cattle, and employing more labor to a given area of soil, excels most of his neighbors― a man so well entitled to speak to you on the subject of the interests of the agriculturists of this country. We are met here under the denomination of a reform meeting—a parliamentary and financial reform meeting; but it will be known to every one present that the general impression, both here and abroad, is, that this is a meeting for the purpose, so far as I am concerned in the matter, of discussing the question of protection or free trade, especially with reference to tenant-farmers' interests in this matter. I remember speaking to an audience in this hall six years ago, and on that occasion going through the arguments necessary to show that the corn law was founded upon impolicy and injustice; I remember on that occasion maintaining the proposition that the corn law had not proved beneficial to any class of the community, and I ventured to say that the country would be more prosperous without the system of agricultural protection than it had been with it. Well, I am here now to maintain that by every test which can proclaim the prosperity

or adversity of a nation, we stand better now without the corn law than we did when we had it. [Cheers, and some cries of "No."] I am rather glad to see that there are some dissentients from that proposition; our opponents will not say that this is a packed meeting. We have got some protectionists here. And now, if you will only just keep that order which is necessary for any rational proceedings, I will endeavor to make you free traders before you leave.

I have said that, by every test which can decide the question of national prosperity or national adversity, we stand in a better position than we did when we had the corn law. What are the tests of a nation's prosperity? A declining or an improving revenue is one test. Well, our revenue is better than it was under a corn law. Our exports and our imports are better than they were under the corn law. Take the question of pauperism. I will not shrink even from the test of pauperism in the agricultural districts; I have the statistics of many of your unions in Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire, and I warn the protectionist orators, who are going about persuading themselves that they have a case in the matter of pauperism, that when Parliament meets, and Mr. Baines is enabled to bring forward the poorlaw statistics up to the last week (not going to the "blue books," and bringing forward the accounts of the previous year), I warn the protectionists that, with regard to the test of pauperism, even in the agricultural districts, it will be seen that things are more favorable now, with bread at a moderate price, than they were in 1847, when prices were to their hearts' content, and the loaf was nearly double the price it is now. Take the state of wages; that is a test of the condition of the people. What are the people earning now, compared with 1847, when the protectionists were so well satisfied with their high prices? Why, as a rule, throughout the country, there is more money earned now than there was then; and they are getting the comforts and

necessaries of life in many cases at two-thirds, and in some cases at less than that, of the prices of 1847. [A voice: "It is not so with the agricultural laborers."] I will come to them by-and-by. What I want you to agree with in the outset is that your laborers are not the nation; and if your agriculture be an exception to the rule, we must find out the reason why it is so; we will come to that by-and-by.

I remember quite well, when I came here to see you before, how my ears used to be dinned by the argument that if we had free trade in corn, the gold would all be drained out of this country, for that you could not bring in 5,000,000 quarters of grain without being drained of your gold; that the foreigner would not take anything else in exchange. Why, we have had between 30,000,000 and 40,000,000 quarters within these last four years, and the bank of England was never so encumbered with gold as it is now. I have spoken of wages, and I say that in every branch of industry the rate of wages has improved. You may say that agricul ture is an exception. We will come to that, but I do not make an exception in favor of any trade in your district; I do not make an exception in the case of the employment of women in your district, for I have made particular inquiry, and I find, even in the article of straw-plaiting, that families who could not earn 15s. in 1847, are now earning 25s. ["No," and some confusion.] I say families. I know we have some of the most extensive manufacturers in this hall. Then there is the lace trade, the pillow-lace trade, employing a great number of women in Buckinghamshire. [Renewed confusion, owing to a gentleman pressing his way towards the platform. A voice: "He is a reporter."] Well, we are delighted to see the gentlemen of the press; the more of them the better; what we say here will be read elsewhere, and we speak for that purpose. I was about saying, that even the wages of the pillow-lace makers have advanced, and they are getting their bread at two-thirds the former

price. Even the poor chair-makers of this and the adjoining county-a trade that has hardly known what it was to have a revival-are getting better. I repeat it, there is not an exception of any trade in which there is not an advantage gained by the moderate price of food that now prevails. ["Not the lace-makers?"] They are getting more employ.

ment.

But I want now to come to the question which interests you in this immediate neighborhood. If every other great interest of the State is thriving-and no one can deny it— how is it that agriculture is depressed? how is it that the interests of agriculture are found in antagonism with the interests of the rest of the community? Why, these people have been proceeding upon a false system, they have been upon an unsound basis; they have been reckoning upon Act of Parliament prices; they have made their calculations upon Act of Parliament prices, and now they find they are obliged, like other individuals, to be content with natural prices. What is the reason that agriculture cannot thrive as well as other trades? We find meetings called, purporting to be meetings of farmers, complaining of distress; and what is their remedy for that distress? Is it to go and talk like men of business to their landlords, and ask them for fresh terms of agreement, fresh arrangements, that they may have the raw material of their trade-the land-at the natural price, and free from those absurd restrictions that prevent their giving the natural value to it? No. Go to a meeting where there is a landlord in the chair, or a landagent-his better-half,-and you find them talking, but never as landlords and land-agents, but as farmers, and for farmAnd what do they say? Why, they say, "We must go to Parliament, and get an Act of Parliament to raise the price of corn, that you may be able to pay us your rents." That is what it amounts to.

ers.

Now, what ought to be the plan pursued by the landlord