" And God said, Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon tho face of all the earth, and every tree in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed ; to you it shall be for meat."— Gen. i. 29.
" Tho bread of the needy is his life ; he that defraudeth him thereof is a man of blood.''—Eccles.xxxiv. 21.
" The heaven, even the heavens are the Lord's ; but the earth hath he given to the children of men." —Ps. cxv. 16.
" Moreover the profit of the earth is for all ; the king himself is served by the field."—Eccl. v. 9.
"He that withholdeth the corn, the people shall curse him."—Prov. xi. 26. I
______________
" The unlimited, unrestrained freedom of tho corn trade, as it is the only effectual preventative of the miseries of a famine, so it is the best palliative of tho inconveniences of a dearth."—Adam Smith.
" Wherever commerce is known to be always free, and the merchant absolute master of tho commodity, as in Holland, there will always be a reasonable supply of corn."—Benjamin Franklin.
" Of all things, an indiscreet tampering with the trade of provisions is the most dangerous. My opinion is against an overdoing of any sort of administration, and more especially against the most momentous of all meddling on the part of authority, the meddling with the subsistence of the people."—Edmd. Burke.
" In England, all other particular interests are overborne and crushed by a great particular interest, named, in the aggregate, the agricultural interest." —Jeremy Bentham.
" All classes, except the landlord, will be injured by the increase in the price of corn."—David Ricardo.
" Those countries which have depended the most upon foreign countries for their supply of corn have enjoyed beyond all other countries the advantages of a steady and invariable market for grain."—James Mill, Author of the History of British India.
" For the sake of its moral benefit, we know of no achievement more urgently desirable than that of a free corn trade. There is not a more fertile topic of clamour and burning discontent all over the land; and were it but effectually set at rest, we are aware of nothing which might serve more to sweeten the breath of British society."—Doctor Chalmers.
" The larger the surface from which a country draws its supplies of food, the less likely is it to be injuriously affected by the varieties in the harvests."—J. R. M'Culloch.
" We cannot persuade ourselves that this law will ever contribute to produce plenty, cheapness, or steadiness of price. So long, as it operates at all, its effects must be the opposite of these. Monopoly is the parent of scarcity, of dearness, and of uncertainty. To cut off any of the sources of supply can only tend to lessen its abundance ; to close against ourselves the cheapest markets for any commodity must enhance the price at which we purchase it; and to confine the consumer of corn to the produce of his own country is to refuse to ourselves that provision which Providence itself has made for equalizing to man the variations of climate and the seasons."—Protest by Lord Grenville, signed by ten Peers.
" It is my unalterable conviction that we cannot uphold the corn laws, now in existence, together with the present taxation, and at the same time increase national prosperity, and preserve public contentment. —Mr, Huskisson's Speech, House of Commons, March 26, 1830.
" Food is the last thing upon which I would attempt to place any protection.—James Deacon Hume.
" I consider that the taxation imposed upon the country by our duty upon corn, and the provision duties and prohibitions, are far greater, probably much more than double the amount of taxation paid to the treasury."—Evidence of J. M'Gregor, Esq., Joint Secretary of the Board of Trade.
" All protection means robbing somebody else."— Colonel Thompson.
" The corn law is an extension of the pension list to the whole of the landed aristocracy of Great Britain,—London Times.
" To propose to enrich a nation by forcing a permanent scarcity of corn, and abstracting the natural course of trade, is indeed at variance with common sense."—Sir James Graham's Pamphlet. " Free Trade in Corn the real interest of the landlord and the true policy of the state."
"All that has been advanced on this point is a mere excuse for keeping up high rents."—Speech of Mr. Baring, now Lord Ashburton, against the Corn Bill in 1816.
" No better mode of cheating a nation could be devised than the corn laws."—Lord Morpeth.
" Your advice has been to create an artificial scarcity."—Earl Fitzwilliam's Address to the Landowners.
" The honourable member for Kilkenny attributes the derangement of the currency and the high rate of interest altogether to the bank. But the present state of the corn laws is at the root of the question." Mr. Chancellor Rués retiring Address.
"If there is a class of persons whoso opinions on this question are entitled to deference and respect, they are undoubtedly political economists, men who have made the sources of national wealth the principle subject of their inquiry; and where shall we find one, from Adam Smith to the present time, who has not reprobated the interference of the legislature with the price of corn."—Rev. Robert Hall.
" If the moral and religious bearings of this question were rightly understood, the room would have have been filled with the clergy and religious dissenting ministers of London. It is impossible that they could resist such a call upon them, for they could not but feel that the objects of the society were founded in justice and humanity, and tended to the welfare of their fellow-men."—Doctor Pye Smith's Speech at the late meeting of the Metropolitan Corn Law Association.
" Let the British Parliament no longer display their hypocritical compassion by dealing the bread, by means of poor laws, to those whom they have first made hungry by means of corn laws."—Rev. Thomas Spencer.
Colonial Times 26 October 1841, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article8752131
No comments:
Post a Comment