CHAPTER VIL

THE CORN LAWS.

It will perhaps not be inconvenient if I here pause in 2}
narrative, to introduce a short parenthesis setting forth wh!
actually were the nature and working of the Corn Laws #
this time. Their destruction was the one finished triump’
with which Cobden’s name is associated. The wider do
trines which he tried to impress upon men still await tH*
seal of general acceptance; butitisa tolerably safe prophecy
that no English statesman will ever revive a tax up®
bread.

Cobden was much too careful a student of the facts of
question to fall into the error of the declaimers on his 0%"
side, who assumed that none but the owners of the soil hal
ever claimed protection by law for their industry. In the
first number of the little organ which was issued by tb
Association,' he wrote a paper on the modern history of he
Corn Laws, which began by plainly admitting, what it would
have been childish to deny, that down to 1820 manufacture™
probably enjoyed as ample a share of legislative protectio®
as the growers of corn. Huskisson’s legislation from 1824
to 1825 reduced the tariff of duties upon almost every article
of foreign manufacture. This stamped that date, in Col”
den’s words, as the era of a commercial revolution, mor?
important in its effects upon society, and pregnant with

| April 16, 1889.