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way back to the pockets of the people, and are consequently inoppressive. The fact is, they are taken from the community at large, and put into the pockets of a selected portion of it; or, resuming the former simile, (trite as it is,) the dew rises from the earth, and collects into clouds, which drop their fattening showers on some few elevated and favored spots, but leave the parched-up surface of the plains in hopeless sterility.

Overwhelming as we hold the national debt to be, and cruelly oppressive as are the taxes annually raised to discharge its interest, it is still more frightful when considered in a constitutional point of view than when regarded merely as a pecuniary incumbrance. The influence that has been added to the crown, by the disposal of those immense funds which the taxes of this country throw into the hands of government, is an evil of enormous magnitude; disturbing the equipoise of the constitutional powers at the expence of the popular interest, which is sacrificed to that of the monarchical and aristocratical branches. Within the last forty years, the interest of the debt has increased from six millions sterling to very nearly fifty millions: during five years of the war, from 1811 to 1815, both inclusive, the average annual expenditure of the united kingdom exceeded one hundred and twenty-two millions and a half; and, during the last three of those years, it exceeded one hundred and thirty-two millions per annum. Now the operation of this augmented debt, besides exhausting the resources of the country and overstraining its indus try, was to place an increased number of persons in a situation of dependence on government, and to draw money more within the influence of its patronage. Such is the habit of profusion, also, which has grown out of the vast expenditure of the war, that in the eighth year of peace we have scarcely reduced its annual amount below the frightful sum of seventy millions. When government has only a moderate revenue, the people are not trained to look for their subsistence from the public purse. To adopt the language of Mr. Brougham in a recent debate, " they are more habituated to rely on the labor of their hands, and to seek in honest industry and skilful arts a creditable means of livelihood. But the vicious habit of dependence on the government is now sustained by that irresistible influence which operates on society through the channels of the army, navy, auditorships, writerships, cadetships, &c. containing employments of every size and every kind, not too insignificant to be below the pursuit of the greatest families, or too inaccessible not to corrupt the most moderate. Thus are men accustomed to a vicious and dependent habit, not known in poorer and more frugal governBb 4

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ments; and particularly are the higher classes tainted with this vice of looking to the court and its interests for the means of support."

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Political economists, however, merely as such, do not regard these questions in a constitutional point of view; all that concerns them is that unknown term, National Wealth. This is the philosopher's stone, of which they are in search: but we seek something else, and are concerned about something more; viz. national character, and feel an interest in effacing from it the sordid and degrading lineaments which have been traced by the fingers of corruption. Daily witnes sing the prostitution of high birth and splendid talents to the shrine of Mammon,

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"The least erected spirit that fell

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we are tempted to exclaim, also in the words of Milton,

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That riches grow in Hell; that soil may bestra
Deserve the precious bane.” * -

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We have frequently expressed dissent from a doctrine assiduously inculcated in certain quarters, and sanctioned, we are concerned to see, by Mr. Ricardo; namely, that the disa of

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An inimitable satire on this subject occurs in the Utopia Sir Thomas More, who afforded in his own example a rare and excellent illustration of the sentiments expressed in his writings. The good people of Utopia had a wonderful contumely of gold, and adopted a very ingenious and effectual method of repressing an inclination to possess it. "To remedy all this," says Hythlodæus," they have found out a means which, as it is agreeable to all their other laws and customs, so is it from ours, where gold is so much set by and so diligently kept, very far discrepant and repugnant: and therefore uncredible but only to them that be wise. For whereas, they eat and drink in earthen and glass vessels which, indeed, be curiously and properly made, and yet be of very small value of gold and silver they make chamber-pots and other vessels that serve for most vile uses; not only in their common halls but in every man's private house. Furthermore, whosoever for any offence be infamed, by their ears hang rings of gold; upon their fingers they wear rings of gold; and about their neck chains of gold; and in conclusion, their heads be tied with gold. Thus, by all means possible they procure to have gold and silver among them in reproach and infamy. And these metals which other nations do as grievously and sorrowfully forego, as in a manner, their own lives if they should altogether at once be taken from the Utopians, no man there would think that he had lost the worth of one farthing." B. ii. ch. 6. Ralph Robinson's Translation.2

tress

tress of the agriculturists arises from over-production; and that, notwithstanding an increase of our population from eleven to fourteen millions within ten years, there has been (in defiance of Mr. Malthus) an increase of production so far exceeding that amount, that mouths are not to be found in sufficient number to consume the excess, If we could feel disposed to mirth on so grave an occasion, abundant food for it could be found in recollecting that the self-same ministers of the Crown who now hold this language, and who in conformity with its proposed to Parliament, not three months ago, to supply a million sterling to buy up and granary the superabundant corn of the country,that these identical personages within two short years were projecting, almost without a figure of speech, to drain the Pontine marshes and " bring Birnham wood to Dunsinane;"- that is, to cultivate the bare and forbidding Dartmoor, and actually voted money to export an imaginary redundancy of the labouring population to our colonies in North America and the Cape of Good Hope! - a population whose mouths are now wanted; it seems, at home, to consume an oppressive redundancy of produce! Mr. Ricardo seems a little startled at his own doctrine, but evades the difficulty thus:

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No one has said that abundance is injurious to a country, but that it frequently is so to the producers of the abundant commodity if what they raised was all destined for their own consumption, abundance never could be hurtful to them: but if quence of the plenty of corn, the quantity with which they go to market to furnish themselves with other things is very much reduced in value, they are deprived of the means of obtaining their usual enjoyments: they have, in fact, an abundance of a commodity of little exchangeable value.'

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We are not convinced by this explanation. In the first place, we doubt the fact of this superabundance; and next admitting it for the sake of argument, we deny the conse quence attributed to its existence. Agricultural distress arises from the disproportion between the price of the products of the soil and the cost of producing them; and this disproportion must be caused by excess of produce or insufficiency of consumption. The first is not the case, because it is an inevitable consequence of the superabundant supply of any commodity in universal demand, to encourage and extend its consumption by diminishing its price: the evil works its own cure, because this diminution of price is compensated by the excess of the commodity which creates it, and the increased

consumption which follows it. The disproportion, then, arises from inadequate consumption occasioned by the want

of

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of means, in an immense and dreadful proportion of the community who live by parochial assessment in England, and are dying of famine for the want of even this niggardly help in Ireland. Mr. Turner has replied to Mr. Ricardo's explanation, for we can call it nothing else, in another manner, but very satisfactorily:

It is quite true, that if, with a given portion of labour, ten hats are produced, when only eight are required, the superabundance of hats may, and probably would, be injurious to the maker. But why would this be so? Because, for these ten hats he would not be able to obtain a similar portion of the labour of the agriculturist or any other producer. But if from improvement in the machinery he made ten hats, with the same portion of labour that he before made eight, then the consumption of hats would be increased; and though they were sold at a reduced price, he would still gain for the ten hats a proportion of the labour of others equal to his own labour expended in the making of them. In abundant harvests it is not the labour of man, but the bounty of Providence which gives the increase; the labour is the same, whether the return be ten or forty bushels per acre: and any political causes, which prevent this abundance being a blessing, and a great blessing to those to whom it is given, do convert the bounty of Providence into a curse.'

It is notorious, however, that the distress is general throughout the kingdom; and does it arise from a superabundance of all the products of human labor as well as of the earth? The fall in the price of iron, cotton, wool, beef, and butter, has been as great as in the price of corn, and consequently there must have been a simultaneous increase in the produce of all soils, and in the fruits of all the employments of labor and machinery. Is there, indeed, a ruinous repletion of food and raiment, when the unnatural and painful sight is daily before our eyes of laborers, hungry and in rags, loitering about with folded arms? and when the poor rates, in the country at least, are scarcely diminished, even nominally, and, with reference to the restored currency, are actually increased?

If we have before considered the doctrine as not only absurd and paradoxical but ungrateful and impious, which attributes our distress to the abundance that, in his unmerited mercy, it has pleased Providence to bestow, how much reason have we to be fortified in our dissent when we behold, in unhappy Ireland, the frightful reality of famine, with despair and pestilence in its train. Shall we again be derided with the doctrine of over-production, when human beings are daily sinking into death under positive starvation; when hundreds and thousands are protracting a miserable existence from day

to

to day by the precarious supply of nettle-tops, limpets, and weeds gathered from the rocks and the sea-shore? How is it, then, that the same newspapers which are daily renewing a pathetic appeal to the public for additional contributions of

*This is no exaggerated statement. From the late Report to the Dublin Mansion-house Committee by Messrs. H. Grattan and D. Latouche, it appears that not fewer than 92,800 persons were in June last suffering the most urgent distress in the county of Cork alone; and from the returns laid before the Central Committee (City of Cork) on the 11th of June, that the number of persons in actual want had amounted to 150,000. From Mayo, the accounts delivered by the Rev. H. Peaseley state that on June 15th there were 9,750 individuals in the three parishes; that, in addition to want of food, spotted fevers and dysenteries had broken out; and that several poor creatures lay all night in the church-yard, unable to move from pain and hunger, eating raw meal and potatoes. From Ennis, (Clare) the account states that a man, his wife, and nine children had all perished for want of food. Reports forwarded June 19th, from the parishes of Aughamore and Knock stated that the cresses, nettles, and wild herbs in the fields being consumed, the people were in a state of complete destitution. From Bingham Castle, June 21. the account transmitted to the Mansion-house was that "thousands have for weeks past subsisted upon sea-weed, wild vegetable substances, and rotten fish, which has brought on typhus and dysentery: if we have not speedy relief, the living will scarcely be able to bury the dead: two days ago, four men could not be collected to bury a poor creature that died of want of food; they are swelling and getting black in the face, and no medical assistance nearer than Ballina or Castlebar." From Galway, June 25. it was announced, "the melancholy state of our starving poor is daily encreasing 14,000 weekly applicants.' From Clifton, June 21. " fifteen persons have died in the parish of Ballynakill within these two days, and several in the parishes of Ballindoon and Moines, all for want of food: four times that number are afflicted with fever and are past recovery, and the rites of the church have been administered to them by their clergy." Similar accounts arrived from Sligo, Tipperary, and many other parts of the kingdom. Shall our ears again be shocked with the impious complaint of over-production, of superabundance, when thousands of our fellow-subjects are suffering all the horrors of famine? It is unnecessary to add that the published circular of the Committee at the City of London Tavern, dated June 20. 1822, confirms the truth of

these heart-rending scenes; and we could fill page after page with similar relations from unquestionable authority. The work of death is going on! Its progress may be stopped by the unbounded benevolence of the British public, but it will only be arrested for a time, unless some system is adopted for the permanent and productive employment of this miserable people.

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