ABSTRACT
Assessed on the ground of corn being 56s. a quarter. I know an instance where a party occupying his own land was rated at a certain amount, viz., at the valuation of corn being 56s. a quarter, while, in fact, it was selling at 47s.; and, upon his asking why he had been so rated, he was told that the assessors had taken that mode of valuation in consequence of what the Prime Minister had stated was to be the price of corn. (' Hear, hear,' and 'Oh, oh.') Hon. gentlemen may cry 'Oh, oh,' but I will bring forward that very case, and prove what I have stated concerning it. What I wish in going into committee is, to convince the farmers of Great Britain that this house has not the power to regulate or sustain the price of their commodities. The right hon. baronet opposite (Sir E. Peel) has confessed that he cannot regulate the wages of labour or the profits of trade. Now, the farmers are dependent for their prices upon the wages of the labourer, and the profits of the trader and manufacturer; and if the government cannot regulate these-if it cannot guarantee a certain amount of wages to the one, or a fixed profit to the other-how can it regulate the price of agricultural produce ? The first point to which 1 should wish to make this committee instrumental is, to fix in the minds of the farmers the fact that this house exaggerates its power to sustain or enhance prices by direct acts of legislation. (Hear.) The farmer's interest is that of the whole community, and is not a partial interest (loud cheers), and you cannot touch him more sensitively than when you injure the manufacturers, his customers. (Cheers.) I do not deny that you may regulate prices for a while-for a while you have regulated them by forcing an artificial scarcity; but this is a principle which carries with it the seeds of self-destruction, for you are thereby undermining the prosperity of those consumers upon whom permanent welfare depends. A war against nature must always end in the discomfiture of those who wage it. (Hear, hear.) You may by your restrictive enactments increase pauperism, and destroy trade ; you may banish capital, and check or expatriate your population; but is this, I will ask, a policy which can possibly work consistently with the interests of the farmers ? (Hear, hear.) These are the fundamental principles which I wish to bring out, and with this primary view it is that I ask for a committee at your hands."
