demonstrated it from M'Culloch. But I have not yet done with this argument. M'Culloch says that if it were not for the corn laws, which close British ports against foreign grain, it could be imported into England even at a lower rate than I have estimated. He says, "Hitherto owing to the fluctuating and capricious nature of our demand (for foreign grain,) it has proved of little advantage to the (foreign) cultivator, and but little corn has been raised in the expectation of finding its way to England. But it would be quite another thing were our ports always open. The supply of the English markets would then be an object of the utmost importance to the Polish agriculturists, who, there can be no doubt, would both extend and improve their tillage." Every man must see the force of this argument, unless "Libertas" prove an exception.

But even M'Culloch entirely overlooks another important consideration connected most intimately with the subject. His calculations are made on the supposition that this foreign grain would be purchased with gold and silver, whereas if the English ports were always open, it would be essentially a barter-trade, and the profit upon the English goods exchanged for corn would unquestionably cover the entire expense of transporting it to England from any part of Europe or America; so that, any amount of foreign grain required could be delivered in London for the same price it bore in the market where it was purchas

ed. And another grand result would be experienced in England in consequence. Millions of operatives and labourers, who are now starving because they are idle, and idle because the manufacturers cannot employ them;-for other nations have declared over and over again, that they cannot purchase English goods because England will not take corn in exchange,—would then find a market for their labour, and with its avails could satisfy their hunger, and provide themselves the necessaries of life. That deep commercial gloom which has settled like a deathpall upon England, and prostrated her manufactures, and which is to be chiefly attributed to the baleful effects of the restrictive and protective system, would all be chased away by the beams of returning prosperity.

If then all these considerations should be brought into the estimate, no doubt could possibly remain in the mind of a man who can weigh such arguments, that the awful burden of MORE THAN THREE HUNDRED MILLIONS OF DOLLARS is borne by the British people as an annual tax to augment the overgrown wealth of the landholders. Thus are the interests of the nation sacrificed to the avarice of 30,000 selfish men. God alone can tell how many tears have flowed, and how many pangs of hunger been endured to uphold this murderous system! And when to this gigantic tax are added the enormous duties levied by the government upon sugar, tea, coffee, meat of every

7

description, and indeed all the necessaries of life, which have been referred to in the preceding chapter, the picture will appear still more appalling.

I have thus gone somewhat minutely into this question, to afford an illustration of the shallow and base deception this Tory partizan has attempted to play off upon an intelligent people. And in his remarks on the Corn Laws, we have a fair sample of his arguments and statistics all through his book. Well may Englishmen exclaim, "From all such Vindicators of our Fame, 'Good Lord, deliver us.""

Who will doubt either his integrity or his accuracy in other matters, when he has made only the slight miscalculation of two hundred and seventy-seven millions of dollars a year, on the single article of a bread tax?

I now turn to one of his calculations which is relieved from the sadness of these reflexions about a starving people, and has therefore afforded me some amusement. In hunting up the items which constitute "the heavy burdens of the working man in America," he has stumbled upon one which has, at least, the charm of novelty. He says "the price of coals is from double to five times greater in the United States than in Great Britain," and that "the price of coals seriously af fects the working classes" among us, and something more wonderful still, "coal is indispensable for every family."

Is it possible that the author may have written his book in England, and published it before he had been in this country long enough to know, that not one family in the United States in an hundred, ever use coal? Has he never heard that in America hundreds of millions of cords of wood are every year burnt up to get rid of it? That fuel, so far from being a tax upon the people, is one great source of their wealth? Has no one ever told him that in over three quarters of the territory embraced in the Union, men may have their wood for nothing, if they will clear it from the land?

Does he not know that the chief consumption of coal in the United States is by steam engines and manufactories, and that only a small proportion of even these use it? That no amount of restriction upon coal can possibly affect any portion of the community, except comparatively a few families in the large cities? That there are 30 tons of coal consumed in England where there is one consumed in the United States? Above all, since he speaks of its being "from double to five times as dear in America as in England," did he never learn that the average retail price of Lehi coal (the best) from 1828 (when the entire consumption of Anthracite coal in the United States was only 77,516 tons) to 1838, delivered in Philadelphia, was only $6 66 per ton of 2240 lbs.

and this too in an unbroken state. And does he not know that the wholesale price of coal

furnished to the Greenwich Hospital in London for thirty years, from 1835 to 1838, (which is the latest estimate M'Colloch gives) was $9 31 a ton, or two dollars and sixty-five cents a ton dearer than the price of the same article in Philadelphia ! (See Com. Dic. vol. 1. p. 336—vol. 2. p. 352, Amer. Ed.) I know that in most parts of Great Britain coal is somewhat cheaper now than it is in the United States, chiefly in consequence of the slave colliers working with their wives and children in the terrible gloom of the coal mines for the wages of serfs; and also because a part of the heavy duties formerly imposed upon it, have been removed. But it is still taxed, and the suffering weaver of Spitalfields, who is unable to take advantage of the market, or purchase in large quantities, even now pays more for coal than the poor man of New-York. The hand-loom Commission state, that in the winter of 1838, the silk weavers of Spitalfields paid 2s. 2d., or 53 cents per cwt. for coals, or $11 97 per ton! Say the Commission, "The distress which thence ensued, at a time when the thermometer fell to zero, and three-fourths of the looms were idle, it would be impossible to describe! A woman, the wife of a silk weaver, relating the sufferings of her family, said to me, 'often, Sir, and often, were we obliged, when half starving, to go without a pennyworth of bread, and buy a pennyworth of coals, or take the children over to the neighbours to borrow a warm at their fire, or put them early to bed shivering and