for our working classes, who are being victimized en masse, as the "vile body," on which a heartless “experiment” is to be tried. Unhappily, Madam, your enemies and theirs are in possession: and difficult indeed will it be to dislodge them, when you consider that, with the many, "whatever is, is right": while your friends shew so little ability and discipline, that there is neither vigour nor unity in their attacks. Their faces indeed wear all the same blank aspect; but their hands point such various ways, that I had as lief rummage a watchmaker's shop for the true time o' day, as canvass a whole army of such loiterers, for an honest cure for our grievous and urgent disasters. Not one of them has power enough to right you. Not one does you the justice to state your case broadly and boldly to the country. A duty on foreign corn is the only possible remedy; and to this we must go back at once or be lost.* PROTECTION. Sir, you have said all. Day by day should this truth be impressed upon the People, that " cheap bread" not only is a delusion, but was intended to be so; and that the League, like the Devil, was "a liar from the beginning." But, in the present state of Parties, what is to bring about a change of policy? * For an Aristocrat's present opinion on this point, see pages 71 to 76, of "a Letter to the Electors of Westminster, from a Protectionist. Third edition. Hearne, 1848." ARISTOCRAT. Alas! Madam, the sufferings of the people. Nothing less will restore men to their senses, as long as the hired tongue-pads of the League have Whigs and Peelites to look to for countenance and support. Were Parliament to be dissolved tomorrow, I have not the least doubt but the Country would return a majority favourable to the restoration of your fair and legitimate rights; but, to be candid with you, I should dread to see you rely even upon that majority, if such men as Lord John Russell and Sir Robert Peel still sulkily stood aloof. Ah! Madam, it was indeed an evil day for England, when her public men, from the vanity of proving themselves proficients in a new science, narrowed their minds, and sank the statesman in the political economist. As long as political economy was subservient to political science, the statesman, less attentive to the theory of the production of wealth, than to the laws which affect its distribution, pursued his high career unfettered, and regarded as his paramount object the happiness of the people committed to his charge. But from the time that Adam Smith treated political economy as a distinct branch of the science of legislation, he degraded it, correctly indeed, to the mere theory of the increase of wealth; a subject, which the purest minds turned from in disgust, which the highest intellects would not condescend to study, and which feeling hearts could not bring themselves even to understand. How interesting is that anecdote of Fox in Butler's charming Reminiscences! PROTECTION. I cannot say I remember it. ARISTOCRAT. It runs thus, Madam. "It was the good fortune of the Reminiscent, to have the honour of spending a day tête-à-tête with Mr. Fox at St. Ann's Hill. The Reminiscent mentioned what certainly was of no consequence, that he had never read Adam Smith's celebrated work on the Wealth of Nations.' 'To tell you the truth,' said Mr. Fox, 'nor I either. There is something in all these subjects which passes my comprehension; something so wide, that I could never embrace them myself, or find any one who did.'" PROTECTION. Ah! I have a great regard for the memory of Fox. I would pardon ten times his profligacy, could I discover in the cold-blooded theorists of the present day but one of the generous emotions that animated his heroic heart. But now-a-days every petit suffisant, who has slang enough at command, sets to work to traduce the labouring classes, and plumes himself on every penny he can pilfer from the poor. ARISTOCRAT. There is, Madam, but too much justice in your remarks. The disciples of the great founder of "the industrial system," men-better known for shrewdness of intellect, than for glow of heart, or elevation of sentiment-disdaining the narrow limits to which Adam Smith had consigned them, gradually encroached on the province of the statesman; till at length, under their auspices, the handmaid usurped the station of the mistress; and Political Economy, at this hour, arrogates to itself all the dignity of the Science of Legislation. PROTECTION. But how do you account for the influence on the public mind which these modern writers on political economy have so constantly contrived to maintain? ARISTOCRAT. Why, in the first place, the obscurity of their style has been of singular assistance to them. (Protection smiles). Yes, Madam, I assure you, it serves, by disgusting their readers, to induce them to take for granted what they find it impossible to understand. Quintilian lays it down, that a writer's obscurity is usually in proportion to his incapacity; yet I could name more than one book, with whose respectable readers the ignotum pro magnifico has established its reputation. The author of the admirable "Philosophy of Rhetoric" justly observes that," with inattentive readers, a pretty numerous class, darkness frequently passes for depth. To be perspicuous, on the contrary, and to be superficial, are regarded by them as synonymous. But it is not, surely, to these absurd notions that our language ought to be adapted." I hope not. Whenever I cannot understand an English author, I take it for granted that, at that particular passage, he failed in understanding himself; and I really believe, that transparent lucidity on the one hand, and impenetrable obscurity on the other, have gone far to make, under the reigning dynasty of Boobies, Voltaire "superficial," and Bentham "profound." PROTECTION. And, as all the Economists are Free Traders, has not that simple word free, so near to the heart of every Briton, had its influence too! ARISTOCRAT. Unquestionably, Madam; and yet, in the entire history of popular delusions, never was there an instance so gross, as this acquiescence in the impudent assumption of the title of Free Trade, by that bare-faced impostor Free Importation. What is Free Trade? The entire absence of all prohibition or restriction upon the importation or exportation |