ABSTRACT
Convinced that the Mechanics are the only body of men in this country sufficiently independent to oppose, with any chance of success, the host of corruptionists who are feeding on our labour, and, at the same time, limiting the market for our productions; trusting also that we shall speedily be joined by every wise and good mechanic in the empire, and supported by the yet undebased portion of the middle class of our countrymen, if any such there be, we, the Sheffield Mechanics’ Anti-Bread-Tax Society, declare that, in a fully-peopled country, it is an act of national suicide to restrict the exchange of manufactured goods for corn; because, where there is a law which restricts the necessaries and comforts of life, profits and wages, are demonstrably measured by the restriction. That the present Corn Law is destructive of everything which is valuable to us as men.
