FREE TRADE

This speech was delivered in Covent Garden Theater, London, December 19, 1845. There was in progress a great agitation for the repeal of the Corn Laws. The Anti-Corn-Law League had held many mass meetings in London and throughout England in the chief commercial centers. Bright was the most prominent advocate of free trade. It was at one of the great London meetings, just after the resignation of Sir Robert Peel, that the following speech was delivered.

I. THE ODIOUS CORN LAWS

Within the last fifty years trade has done much for the people of England. Our population has greatly increased; our villages have become towns, and our small towns large cities. The contemned class of manufacturers and traders assumed another and a very different position, and the great proprietors of the soil now find that there are other men and interests to be consulted in this kingdom besides those of whom they have taken such great care through the legislation which they have controlled. In the varying fortunes of this contest we have already seen one feeble and attenuated administration overthrown, and now see another, which every man thought powerful and robust, prostrate in the dust. It is worth while that the people, and that statesmen, should regard this result, and learn from it a lesson. What was it that brought the Whig government down in 1841, and what was it that has brought down Sir Robert Peel now? Have not we good grounds for asserting that the Corn Law makes it impossible for any party longer to govern England during its continuance? No statesman dare now take office upon the understanding that he is to maintain the system which the Protectionists have asserted to be a fundamental principle in the Constitution of the kingdom.

We have heard that the Whig government left the country in great distress, and its financial affairs in much embarrassment. But no one has ever pointed out the particular acts of that government which made the revenue deficient. It was not the taking off of taxes injudiciously—it was not a more than ordinarily extravagant

expenditure of the public funds which produced that effect; but it was the collapse of the national industry—it was the failure of the sources whence flow the prosperity of our trade, a calamity which arose from deficient harvests, those deficient harvests being destructive to our trade and industry; because the Corn Law denied to us the power of repairing the mischief by means of foreign supplies. Great landed proprietors may fancy that trade is of small importance; but of this we are at present assured, that no government can maintain its popularity or keep up its power so long as we have deficient harvests and restrictions on the importation of foreign food.

Under such a state of things, how is social order to be preserved? When prices are high the revenue invariably declines, and higher taxes must be imposed; general discontent prevails, because there is general suffering; and the government, whatever be its party name, or however numerous may be its supporters in either House of Parliament, must, under these circumstances, first become unpopular and then finally become extinct. We are now brought to this conclusion, that the continuous government of this country by any administration is totally incompatible with the maintenance of the Corn Laws. Sir Robert Peel, by his sudden retirement from office, has given his testimony to the fact. But there are men who deny it; they say that they are glad the

organized hypocrisy" is at an end; that they are delighted that "the reign of humbug is over"; that they are astounded at the perfidy and treachery of the men whom they lifted into office. It is neither perfidy nor treachery of which they have to complain. Sir Robert Peel cannot, any more than other men, do impossibilities; and it is an impossibility to govern this country with the Corn Law in existence.

This contest has now been waged for seven years; it was a serious one when commenced, but it is a far more serious one now. Since the time when we first came to London to ask the attention of Parliament to the question of the Corn Law, two million human beings have been added to the population of the United Kingdom. The table is here as before; the food is spread in

about the same quantity as before; but two millions of fresh guests have arrived, and that circumstance makes the question a more serious one, both for the government and for us. These two millions are so many arguments for the Anti-Corn-Law League; so many emphatic condemnations of the policy of this iniquitous law. I see them now in my mind's eye ranged before me, old men and young children, all looking to the government for bread; some endeavoring to resist the stroke of famine, clamorous and turbulent, but still arguing with us; some dying mute and uncomplaining.Multitudes have died of hunger in the United Kingdom since we first asked the government to repeal the Corn Law, and although the great and powerful may not regard those who suffer mutely and die in silence, yet the recording angel will note down their patient endurance and the heavy guilt of those by whom they have been sacrificed.

We have had a succession of skirmishes; we now approach the final conflict. It may be worth while to inquire who and what are the combatants in this great battle. Looking in the columns of the newspapers, and attending, as I have attended, hundreds of meetings held to support the principles of free trade, we must conclude, that on the face of it the struggle is that of the many against the few. It is a struggle between the numbers, wealth, comforts of the middle and industrious classes, and the wealth, the union, and sordidness of a large section of the aristocracy of this empire; and we have to decide in this great struggle whether, in this land in which we live, we will longer bear the wicked legislation to which we have been subjected, or whether we will make one effort to right the vessel, to keep her in her true course, and if possible to bring her safely to a secure haven. Our object can only be that we should have good and impartial government for everybody. As the whole people, we can by no possibility have the smallest interest in any partial or unjust legislation; we do not wish to sacrifice any right of the richest or most powerful class, but we are resolved that that class shall not sacrifice the rights of a whole people.

We have had landlord rule longer, far longer than the life of the oldest man in this vast assembly, and I would ask you to look at the results of that rule, and then decide whether it be not necessary to interpose some check to the extravagance of such legislation. Abroad, the history of our country is the history of war and rapine; at home, of debt, taxes, and rapine too. In all the greatest contests in which we have been engaged we have found that the ruling class have taken all the honors, while the people have taken all the scars. No sooner was the country freed from the horrible contest which was so long carried on with the powers of Europe, than this law, by their partial legislation, was enacted-far more hostile to British interests than any combination of foreign powers has ever proved; they pray daily that in their legislation they may discard all private ends and partial affections, and after prayers they sit down to make a law for the purpose of extorting from all the consumers of food a higher price than it is worth, that the extra price may find its way into the pockets of the proprietors of land, these proprietors being the very men by whom this infamous law is sustained.

II. PROTECTION A SOURCE OF PAUPERISM

Mr. Bright accuses the hereditary classes of great inequality of legislation. They "deal leniently with high gaming," and enact laws for the preservation of wild animals for their own sport in shooting. They pull down small houses on their estates that the number of population may be thinned. These poor people are driven to the cities for subsistence or to America for refuge. It is class legislation and favoritism not to be tolerated by a free people.

You have seen in the papers, within the last fortnight, that the foul and frightful crime of incendiarism has again appeared. It always shows itself when we have had for some short time a high price of bread. The Corn Law is as great a robbery of the man who follows the plow as it is of him who minds the loom, with this difference, that the man who follows the plow is, of the two, nearest the earth, and it takes less power to press him into it.

Now what is the condition of this agricultural laborer, for whom they tell us protection is necessary? He lives in a parish whose owner, it may be, has deeply mortgaged it. The estate is let to farmers without capital whose land grows almost as much rushes as wheat. The bad cultivation of the land provides scarcely any employment for the laborers, who become more and more numerous in the parish; the competition which there is amongst these laborers for the little employment to be had, bringing down the wages to the very lowest point at which their lives can be kept in them. They are heart-broken, spirit-broken, despairing men. They have been accustomed to this from their youth, and they see nothing in the future which affords a single ray of hope.

If there be one view of this question which stimulates me to harder work in this case than another, it is the fearful sufferings which I know to exist amongst the rural laborers in almost every part of this kingdom. How can they be men under the circumstances in which they live? During the period of their growing up to manhood, they are employed at odd jobs about the farm or the farmyard, for wages which are merely those of little children in Lancashire. Every man who marries is considered an enemy to the parish; every child who is born into the world, instead of being a subject of rejoicing to its parents and the community, is considered as an intruder come to compete for the little work and the small quantity of food which is left to the population. And then comes toil, year after year, long years of labor, with little remuneration.

But the crowning offense of the system of legislation under which we have been living is, that a law has been enacted in which it is altogether unavoidable that these industrious and deserving men should be brought down to so helpless and despairing a condition. By withdrawing the stimulus of competition, the law prevents the good cultivation of the land of our country, and therefore diminishes the supply of food which we might derive from it. It prevents, at the same time, the importation of foreign food from abroad, and it also prevents the growth of supplies abroad, so that when we are forced to go there for them they are not to be found.