ABSTRACT
In its first article after the announcement of the government’s Repeal measures, Blackwood’s declared that it could ‘see no substantial reason for departing from our deliberate views’ in abandoning its long-standing support for agricultural protection.
The magazine distinguished between ‘conversion’ and ‘conviction’ and felt that conceding the one without the other was no better than ‘hypocrisy’. Discussing the ‘compact’ between leaders and followers, it argued that both sides were subject to the same rules, and that a violation by either should be punished in equal measure: ‘Is the leader, who is presumed to have the mature mind, and more prophetic eye, entitled to a larger indulgence?’
It acknowledged that Peel was at liberty to change his mind on the convictions he had held throughout his lifetime, but it criticised that ‘blinding and coercing system’ which expected obedience from his followers. Such a system was likely to ‘sap the foundations of public confidence, in the integrity as well as the skill of those who are at the helm of the government’.
Blackwood’s reminded its readers of the double burden which the agricultural interest sustained in Britain. First, it raised its produce ‘in a more variable climate, and a soil less naturally productive, than many which exist abroad’. Second, it shouldered ‘the enormous taxation of the country’, in servicing the national debt and the financial demands of the government. The article complained that the country was heavily and variously taxed by way of its consumer goods, assessed, land, and income taxes, and saw no reason why the failure of the potato crop in Ireland should justify the abolition of protection to corn. The article concluded that ‘we cannot in common justice be asked to surrender a permanent interest, merely because a temporary exigency, caused by no fault of ours, has arisen elsewhere’.
