nothing but of your [the farmers'] interests. Is it not, therefore, consistent with, our sincerity in this cause that we should come among you, and face to face talk over the matter, and so learn your real feelings on the subject—because, be it remembered, all are agreed now on the mischief that the Corn Laws do to all other classes, and, as I have already said, you [the farmers] alone are made the pretext and excuse for their continuance? Is it not reasonable and laudable in Mr. Cobden to come here to discuss the question with you, when there are so many things afloat to make one believe that you are not properly represented?—when people declare that the Corn Laws have done you so much good?—when, as he says, you and your landlords are all jumbled up together in a sort of family party, called the landed interest, and are said to be so prosperous on account of them?"
It appears from the evidence cited by Mr. Cobden and Mr. Villiers that the capital of the tenantry had been disappearing in the preceding ten, twelve, or fifteen years; that many of the farmers had become insolvent, the wages of labourers being paid out of the farmers' capital. Mr. John Houghton, a land agent on property in Lincoln, Bucks, Middlesex, Surrey, Sussex, Northampton and Suffolk, said:—
"When I have been paying workmen in provincial towns they have said, 'You have all the money of the place for rents, and the tenants cannot pay us.'"[1]
- ↑ Villiers's Free Trade Speeches, vol. ii., pp. 55, 56.
