re is a mutual benefit--when either deserts the home market,
and has recourse to a foreign one, the benefit is totally neutralized.
There is no greater fallacy than the proposition, that it is best to buy
in the cheapest and to sell in the dearest market. There is a
preliminary consideration to this--which is your best, your steadiest,
and your most unfailing customer? None knows better than the
manufacturer, that he depends, _ante omnia_, upon the home market. Is
not this the very interest which is now assailed and threatened with
ruin? There is not a man in this country, whatever be his condition, who
would escape without scaith a period of agricultural depression; and how
infinitely more dangerous is the prospect, when the period appears to be
without a limit! The longer we reflect upon this measure, the more are
we convinced of its wantonness, and of the dangerous nature of the
experiment upon every industrial class in this great and prospering
country.

There is one objection to the Ministerial scheme which, strange to say,
is open to both Protectionist and the Free-trader. The landowner has
reason to object to it both as an active and a passive measure--it
professes to leave him to his own resources, but it does not remove his
restrictions. Surely if the foreigner and the colonists are to be
permitted to compete on equal terms with him in the production of the
great necessary of life, his ingenuity ought to have free scope in other
things, more especially as he labours under the disadvantage of an
inferior soil and climate. Why may he not be allowed, if he pleases, to
attempt the culture of tobacco? The coarser kinds can be grown and
manufactured in many parts of England and Scotland, and if we are to
have free trade, why not carry out the principle to its fullest extent?
Why not allow us to grow hops duty free? Why not relieve us of the
malt-tax and of many other burdens? The answer is one familiar to
us--the revenue would suffer in consequence. No doubt it would, and so
it suffers from every commercial change. But these changes have now
gone so far, that--especially if you abolish this protective duty upon
corn--we are entitled to demand a return from the present cumbrous,
perplexing, and expensive mode of taxation, to the natural cheap and
simple one of poll or property-tax. At present no man knows what he is
paying towards the expense of government. He is reached in every way
indirectly through the articles he