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A RICK BURNER'S LOGIC.
let them once be safely housed, might, in less than six months, bring down the price of corn lower than it would be under a perfectly free trade. Would the farmers be consoled by the landlords telling them to wait a year or two and all would be well again? Not they; for the landlords would by no means reduce the rents, according to the low price of corn, in the same way that they had raised the rents according to the high price of the article four or five years back. He relied much upon what the next six months would do to teach farmers the delusion that had been practised on them:
"He believed the farmers were everywhere beginning to entertain the strongest possible doubts as to this so-called protection. (Hear, hear.) In the agricultural districts, supposing the present crops to be gut in, the farmers would be selling their wheat in their own country markets at from 403. to 45s., and there would be a universal cry amongst them of unparalleled distress; and not unnaturally, for they would have to pay rents calculated on 645. prices, out of from 40s, to 15s. And all this because they had trusted to a law which, no doubt, could for a time cause a high scarcity price for corn, but which could not, in the nature of things, maintain that high price for any permanency. * * * * He had no doubt that with respect to the question of free trade there would be a great progress made in the right direction during the next six months in the agricultural districts, but they could not expect that their cause could make greater progress than the nature of things would permit. He was sorry to see that the false doctrines of the monopolists had a greater influence on some than was desirable. Amongst others upon whom those doctrines kad produced their results was a man in Suffolk, named James Lankester, who had doubtless read in the Morning Post the peculiar doctrines of the monopolists respecting cheap corn. He was a man who could read, but could not write; just the sort of man to be influenced by the doctrines of the Morning Post; and having read in that paper that wages rose as corn rose, and that abundance of corn made the price of corn low, and, consequently, made Wages low, he drew a very natural deduction. The man was evidently naturally of a logical mind, but it was evident that he devoted himself to the study of the Morning Post, and the result of that study was, that he took it into his head to carry out practically those doctrines which had been laid down in that eminent public journal. (A laugh.) It was stated by the Morning Post that wages depended upon the price of corn,
