d that the Cobden pleas have a brief provisional
existence--they are good for the moment. Not at all. We repeat that,
as to economic pleas, none of any kind, good or bad, have been placed
on the record by any orator of that faction; whilst all other pleas,
keen and personal as they may appear, are wholly irrelevant to any
real point at issue. In illustration of what we say, one (and very
much the most searching) of Mr Cobden's questions to the farmers, was
this--"Was not the object," he demanded, "was not the very purpose of
all corn-laws alike--simply to keep up the price of grain? Well; had
the English corn-laws accomplished that object? Had they succeeded in
that purpose? Notoriously they had not; confessedly they had failed;
and every farmer in the corn districts would avouch that often he had
been brought to the brink of ruin by prices ruinously low." Now, we
pause not to ask, why, if the law already makes the prices of corn
ruinously low, any association can be needed to make it lower? What we
wish to fix attention upon, is this assumption of Mr Cobden's, many
times repeated, that the known object and office of our corn-law,
under all its modifications, has been to elevate the price of our
corn; to sustain it at a price to which naturally it could not have
ascended. Many sound speculators on this question we know to have been
seriously perplexed by this assertion of Mr Cobden's; and others, we
have heard, not generally disposed to view that gentleman's doctrines
with favour, who insist upon it, that, in mere candour, we must grant
this particular postulate. "Really," say they, "_that_ cannot be
refused him; the law _was_ for the purpose he assigns; its final cause
_was_, as he tells us, to keep up artificially the price of our
domestic corn-markets. So far he is right. But his error commences in
treating this design as an unfair one, and, secondly, in denying that
it has been successful. It _has_ succeeded; and it ought to have
succeeded. The protection sought for our agriculture was no more than
it merited; and that protection has been faithfully realized."

[28] A _hammil sconce_, or light of the hamlet, is the
picturesque expression in secluded parts of Lancashire
for the local wise man, or village counsellor.

We, however, vehemently deny Mr Cobden's postulate _in toto_. He is
wrong, not merely as others are wrong in the principle of refusing
this protection, not merely on the question of fact as