-----------
Remains, L19,000,000

Thus it appears that out of thirty-four millions of clear rental left to
the owners of real property in England, no less than fifteen millions,
or nearly _a half_, is taken from them annually in the shape of direct
taxes which they cannot by any possibility avoid! How long would the
commercial or city industry of England stand direct taxes to the amount
of 46 per cent on their clear income? If that had been the state of
their finances, we should have had no clamour in 1831 for enlarged
representation, or in 1846 for the destruction, to their advantage, of
all the protection to other branches of industry. We should have had no
Anti-Corn Law League subscriptions of L100,000 to buy up all the venal
talent in the form of itinerant orators and pamphleteers in the country.
We should have had no conversions of conceding premiers by the weight of
external agitation. In social, not less than military warfare, the
longest purse carries the day; and the party which is the heaviest
burdened is sure to be in the end overthrown.

III. The abolition of the Corn Laws, partially at present, entirely at
the end of two years and a half, by the bill of 1846, not only has made
this enormous burden of 46 _per cent._ on their clear income _deductis
debitis_ a permanent load on the landowners, but it has rendered it a
hopeless one, because it has destroyed every means which they previously
might have possessed of indemnifying themselves for its weight, by
sharing its oppression with other classes. This is a matter of the very
highest importance, which will soon make itself felt, though, in
consequence of the nearly total failure of the potato crop in the west
of Great Britain and Ireland, it has not yet been so. The usual resource
of persons, who are burdened with heavy payments to government, is to
lay as much as they can of it on others, by enhancing as much as
possible the price of their produce. It is in this way that indirect
taxes fall in general on the consumer; and it is on this principle that,
in estimating the burdens exclusively affecting land, we have not
included the malt duty, because it is in great part at least paid by the
consumers of beer or porter. But, of course, if it becomes from any
cause impossible for the party burdened, in the first instance, to raise
the price of his produce, or if, on the contrary, he is compelled to
lower it, _the whole