all these immense advantages to be effected? stitution of inanimate for animate power.

By the sub"At present, the animate power employed in the commercial transportations of this great kingdom, is estimated to amount to two millions of horses. Each horse consumes as much food as is necessary for the support of eight men. Hence the conversion of its consumption to purposes of human existence would, if carried to this practical extent, amount to a quantity of food equal to support sixteen millions of people. Now, the suppression of the stage-horses upon our principal thoroughfares, and of the dray horses in the great commercial towns, may be calculated to economise a saving of food equivalent to the supply of the above number of human beings.

"The reduction of farm consumption, the bugbear of the project, will be met and compensated by a steady and proportionate demand from other quarters; whilst in the United Kingdom the 8,100,000 acres of land now required to feed the horses, together with the capital sunk in their purchase, will, when both applied to other and general purposes, amply compensate for the change. If instead of 20,000 horses, we keep 30,000 fat oxen, butcher meat will be always cheap to the operative classes, whilst the quantity of tallow will of course make candles cheap, and so many hides lower the price of leather. Or the same quantity of land may keep 30,000 cows, the milk of which will make both butter and cheese cheaper to the poor, as well as to the labouring manufacturer. The same thing may be said in favour of more sheep and woollen cloths.

"If, then, elemental locomotion can be made to supersede the expensive unproductive system of animate labour now in use, it will indubitably be for the vital interest of all classes of society, that the substitution should be realized speedily and extensively. That steam can be so applied, has been satisfactorily proved by the report of the committee of the House of Commons, in which it was expressed as an opinion, that the substitution of inanimate for animal power, in draught or common roads, is one of the most important improvements in the means of internal improvement ever introduced.""

It would be needless here to particularize the evidenceadduced before the committee, and I may only refer to what was said by Colonel Tourens, M.P.. "With re

spect," says he, "to the demand for labour, that demand consists of the quantity of food and raw materials which can be cheaply obtained; and, as by the supposition the displacing of horses will leave at liberty more food, and more material, the demand for labour will ultimately be greatly increased, instead of being diminished. If steamcarriages could ultimately be brought to such perfection as entirely to supersede draught horses on the common roads, (not including horses used for other commercial, and for agricultural purposes,) there would be food and demand for eight millions of persons. But when we take further into consideration, that lowering the expense of carriage would enable us to extend cultivation over soils which cannot now profitably be tilled, and would have the further effect of enabling us to apply, with a profit, additional portions of labour and capital to the soils already under tillage, I think it not unfair to conclude, that were elementary power on the common roads completely to supersede draught horses, the population, wealth, and power of Great Britain, would at least be doubled.

"In point of fact, superseding horses by mechanical power would have precisely the same effect in increasing the population and the wealth of England, as would be produced were we to increase the extent of the country, by adding thereto a new and fertile territory, equal in extent to all the land which now breeds all the horses employed upon common roads. Such addition to the extent of fertile territory in England, suddenly effected, would, in the first instance, lower the value of agricultural produce, and be injurious to the proprietors of the old portion of the territory; but no person would therefore contend, that if we could enlarge the island of Great Britain, by additional tracts of fertile land, the public interests would be injured by such enlargement. This would be monstrously absurd. It is not less absurd to object to the increase of food available for human beings, by substituting mechanical power for horses."

My readers may now, perhaps, be satisfied with what has been said on a topic which has in various shapes already excited a good deal of controversy, and which appears to have been strangely obscured by the elaborate essays of a certain description of political economists. In my humble opinion, it requires neither books nor intricate

disquisitions to elucidate those principles which govern the production and consumption of food by man. The very simple facts I have here chosen to bring undisguisedly forward, might, I think, convince every one who does not prefer the mystifications of theorists to plain sense and plain truth, that the doctrine as to the means of subeistence having a constant disposition to fall beneath the demand for food, rests on no sure foundation, is irrational in its character, and, in reality, amounts to a scandalous, though perhaps unintentional, libel on the beneficent designs of Providence.*

SECTION XVII.

THE CORN LAWS.

AMONG the many grievances which are expected to be redressed in the Reformed Parliament, are the laws that regulate the importation of foreign corn. That these laws, which a corrupt aristocracy have unconstitutionally enacted, in order to oppress the people of Britain, are grievous, no one who has the least pretensions to sound reason and common-sense will attempt to deny, when once the circumstances under which these oppressive and monopolizing statutes were instituted, are laid open to his view.t

• Written for the British Peasantry,-extracted from Chambers' Edinburgh Journal.

It is not a difficult problem to ascertain the annual burden imposed on the community by the corn-tax. It appears from the resolutions submitted to the House of Commons, session 1830, by Lord Milton, that the average price of wheat in this country, in

The circumstances then, under which these laws were imposed, are shortly these: The people of Britain, whom these laws were intended particularly to affect, were in a state of complete non-representation. In a House of Commons, said to be a true representation of the population, intelligence, and property of the empire, and which was composed of 658 members, there were not above five or six who may be said to have represented in reality the genuine interests of the community. In that mock representative senate were assembled nearly three hundred corrupt nominees, of one hundred and forty-four peers, a class of men who had no right to interfere, nor concern themselves in the election of the peoples' representatives, this at once stamps their proceedings with illegality. A number, also, were put in by the government boroughs, which amounted to fourteen, not to speak of those who were put in by boroughmongering commoners, and close town councils, the whole, in fact, forming a majority corrupt enough to pass any measure, however atrocious, which might be proposed to them, by a corrupt and tyrannical government, urged on by an unprincipled and greedy portion of the Aristocracy.

But this was not all. In addition to the unconstitutional circumstances detailed above, almost every one of the boroughmonger's nominees were hirelings,, and that too of the basest description. They pandered away the rights of the community to an unprincipled government, and rapacious aristocratical faction; for be it remembered, that in proportion to the value of the vote which was given, was the boroughmongering voter rewarded. Pensions, sinecures, places in the customs and excise, and places of profit under the government, were poured in li

the year ending February 1830, had been 64s. 2d. per quarter. The average price on the Continent and in America, during the same period, had been 46s. 3d. per quarter. Now, if there were no restrictions on the importation of corn, the price in Britain would be nearly the same as in Poland or in the United States; but in consequence of the boroughmongers' tax, the price is about 20s. per quarter higher: so that, if the annual consumption of corn by the community be forty-eight millions of quarters, they pay exactly so many pounds additional, in order to swell the rents of the land-owners.

beral profusion into the laps of the constitution-mongers. It was no wonder, then, that the nominees of the Aristocracy came up with such readiness and alacrity to enable them to pass the most iniquitous measures, and that they did so, the oppressive and execrable corn laws are an instance notorious as noon-day.

These were the circumstances under which these commerce-destroying statutes were legislated, circumstances which will at once justify the result which a reforming parliament will, at the last, be compelled to come to respecting them, namely, their total abolition.

The design for which these oppressive laws were instituted are the following:-The Aristocracy being aware that from the extended commerce of this country, that the merchants and manufacturers, in order to find an out-let for their manufactured goods, which they could not do in this country, would take the produce of other countries of which they stood in need, in return, so as to cause more demand, and give constant employment to the people. The Aristocracy knowing this, and seeing that this beneficial system would tend to decrease their revenues, resolved to interdict the merchants and manufacturers. this base purpose, therefore, a purpose which reflects upon them everlasting odium, they passed, or caused to be passed, by means of an unconstitutional and corrupt legislature, the restrictive corn laws, imposing certain high duties upon foreign grain when imported into Great Britain.*

For

The following are the duties imposed by the Corn Laws:Wheat 16s. 5d. a quarter to ls. according as the price rises from 61s. to 70s a quarter.

Barley 13s. 10d. a quarter to 1s. according as the price rises from 32s. to 40s. a quarter.

Oats 10s. 9d. a quarter to ls. according as the price rises from 24s. to 31s. a quarter.

Beef, lamb, mutton, pork, sheep, and swine are prohibited to be imported, by 6 Geo. IV. c. 117.

While the land-owners have been strenuously exerting themselves to close, hermetically, if possible, the home market against foreign agricultural produce, they have, with admirable consistency of policy, been, at the same time, endeavouring to throw it wide open for the admission of foreign manufactures. This places their