are well apportioned, that our Human Laws be emblem of
God's Laws;"--and where is the apportionment? Two million shirtless or
ill-shirted workers sit enchanted in Workhouse Bastilles, five million
more (according to some) in Ugolino Hunger-cellars; and for remedy,
you say,--what say you?--"Raise _our_ rents!" I have not in my time
heard any stranger speech, not even on the Shores of the Dead Sea. You
continue addressing those poor shirt-spinners and over-producers in
really a _too_ triumphant manner!

"Will you bandy accusations, will you accuse _us_ of over-production?
We take the Heavens and the Earth to witness that we have produced
nothing at all. Not from us proceeds this frightful overplus of
shirts. In the wide domains of created Nature circulates no shirt or
thing of our producing. Certain fox-brushes nailed upon our
stable-door, the fruit of fair audacity at Melton Mowbray; these we
have produced, and they are openly nailed up there. He that accuses us
of producing, let him show himself, let him name what and when. We are
innocent of producing;--ye ungrateful, what mountains of things have
we not, on the contrary, had to 'consume' and make away with!
Mountains of those your heaped manufactures, wheresoever edible or
wearable, have they not disappeared before us, as if we had the talent
of ostriches, of cormorants, and a kind of divine faculty to eat? Ye
ungrateful!--and did you not grow under the shadow of our wings? Are
not your filthy mills built on these fields of ours; on this soil of
England, which belongs to--whom think you? And we shall not offer you
our own wheat at the price that pleases us, but that partly pleases
you? A precious notion! What would become of you, if we chose, at any
time, to decide on growing no wheat more?"

Yes, truly, _here_ is the ultimate rock-basis of all Corn-Laws;
whereon, at the bottom of much arguing, they rest, as securely as they
can: What would become of you, if we decided, some day, on growing no
more wheat at all? If we chose to grow only partridges henceforth, and
a modicum of wheat for our own uses? Cannot we do what we like with
our own?--Yes, indeed! For my share, if I could melt Gneiss Rock, and
create Law of Gravitation; if I could stride out to the Doggerbank,
some morning, and striking down my trident there into the mud-waves,
say, "Be land, be fields, meadows, mountains and fresh-rolling
streams!" by Heaven, I should incline to have the letting of _that_
lan