e raises, unless, indeed, the
reduction of the price of the food which he consumes himself be taken
as an equivalent. Very likely this is what is meant. If so, it partakes
of the nature of a principle, and must hold good in other instances.
Apply it to the manufacturer; tell him that, by reducing the cost of his
cottons one-half, he will be amply compensated, because in that event
his shirts will cost him only a half of the present prices, and his wife
and children can be sumptuously clothed for a moiety. His immediate
answer would be this: "By no means. I an manufacturing not for myself
but for others. I deal on a large scale. I supply a thousand customers;
and the profit I derive from that is infinitely greater than the saving
I could effect by the reduced price of the articles which I must consume
at home." The first view is clearly untenable. We may, therefore,
conclude at all events that some direct loss must, under the operation
of the new scheme, fall upon the agricultural classes; and it is of some
moment to know how this loss is to be supplied. For we take the opening
statement of Sir Robert Peel as we find it; and he tells us that _both_
classes, the agriculturists and the manufacturers, are "to make
sacrifices." Now, in these three words lies the germ of a most
important--nay paramount--consideration, which we would fain have
explained to us before we go any further. For, according to our ideas of
words, a sacrifice means a loss, which, except in the case of deliberate
destruction, implies a corresponding gain to a third party. Let us,
then, try to discover who is to be the gainer. Is it the state--that is,
the British public revenue? No--most distinctly not; for while, on the
one side, the corn duties are abolished, on the other the tariff is
relaxed. Is the sacrifice to be a mutual one--that is, is the
agriculturist to be compensated by cheaper _home_ manufactures, and the
manufacturer to be compensated by cheaper _home-grown bread_? No--the
benefit to either class springs from no such source. _The duties on the
one side are to be abolished, and on the other side relaxed, in order
that the agriculturist may get cheap foreign manufactures, and the
manufacturer cheap foreign grain._ If there is to be a sacrifice upon
both sides, as was most clearly enunciated, it must just amount to this,
that the interchange between the classes at home is to be closed, and
the foreign markets opened as the great sources of sup