mately your modes of feeling and thinking upon these subjects; some again fancy, that the rise of the manufacturing and commercial classes has had, and will have a tendency to interfere with, and encroach upon your pleasures and recreations, while others, more seriously, and still more mistakenly, imagine that the dense population which is engendered by thriving trade, is inconsistent with that order in the government and content in the people, which, according to them, are the peculiar characteristics of an agricultural or pastoral population. Whether this last opinion still maintains its ground, I know not; but I know that it is one that has been entertained and promulgated in very high quarters among you; and I am quite certain that this, and other opinions and feelings, operate strongly towards diverting your attention from the interest that we have, as a body, in the activity of every workshop' and counting-house in Birmingham and Liverpool.

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Shall I, therefore, be taking too great a liberty in stating one or two facts, relative to the course of some parts of the internal corn

trade, which may serve to display, in the clearest light, the interest that the owners of landed property have in augmenting the numbers and the comforts of their manufacturing fellow subjects. I confine myself to facts within my own observation.

The clothing districts of the West Riding of Yorkshire export their manufactures by the rivers Aire and Calder, and, while that navigation transmits the produce of their industry to other parts of Great Britain, and to foreign countries, it furnishes their inhabitants with corn imported from the East Riding and the Northern parts of Lincolnshire. The annual average quantity of corn which thus, ascends the Aire and Calder, for the supply of the clothing districts, amounts to 842,000 quarters, whilst 100,000 quarters are sent up the river Dun for the consumption of Sheffield and its 'populous neighbourhood. These 942,000 quarters, about half of which is estimated to consist of wheat, cannot be produced by the cultivation of much less than the same number of acres, `a surface equal in extent to the county of Sussex.

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Now, to put an extreme case; suppose some convulsion of nature were to annihilate Leeds and Sheffield, with their appendant towns and villages, it is obvious, that the 942,000 acres, appropriated to their maintenance, must be thrown out of cultivation. Consequent upon the abandonment of these lands, would be the diminution of the rent of the contiguous lands, then of lands somewhat more remote, and, ultimately, of land generally. But if such would be the result of the destruction of this market for agricultural produce, it follows, that measures, which tend to restrict it, either by diminishing the number, or by abridging the comforts of the people, have a corresponding tendency to diminish the demand for agricultural produce, and, ultimately, to injure the proprietors of land. That some temporary advantage may accrue to the landowner from an artificial enhancement of the price of corn, I am far from denying; though, for reasons already stated, I believe, that even this advantage is much less than is generally imagined; but that his solid and permanent

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prosperity must depend upon the ease, comfort, and prosperity of the industrious classes of

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the community, is a proposition, which, it appears to me, that no man can doubt, who has taken even a cursory view of the progress of this nation. Compare the advances of agriculture in England, during the earlier part of the eighteenth century, when it was fostered by the bounty on the export of corn, with those which it made in the succeeding period, when the bounty had virtually ceased, and when the corn trade was practically free; and the result will proclaim the vast superiority of the encouragement afforded by a thriving commerce, and an encreasing population, over that which can be afforded by legislative protection of the least objectionable kind. But let me entreat you to carry the comparison a step further. Compare the methods by which our ancestors encouraged tillage, with those adopted by the present generation; they, indeed, gave a bounty on the export of corn, and thereby attracted to agriculture capital, which, without that attraction, would have

been otherwise employed; but they did not enhance the price of corn; they did not, by enhancing the price of corn, retard the progress of manufacturing industry; on the contrary, they made corn cheaper*-they made it abundant-they produced an artificial abundance; your device has been to create an artificial scarcity; but I fear I have used an expression, which may savour somewhat of harshness. I assure you, I have no wish to do so; but the misfortune of the question is, that, in whatever way you deal with it, the system resolves itself into one for creating an artificial scarcity. Your object is to maintain agriculture; your mode of maintaining agriculture is to raise the price of corn; your mode of raising the price is to restrict the supply of corn; you contrive, or endeavour to contrive that there shall be in the market

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Some apology is due for advancing an opinion adverse to that of Adam Smith; but, as an argument on the ques tion would be misplaced here, I must confine myself to the expression of my regret, as being obliged to dissent, in this particular, from that great authority.