Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/64

This page has been validated.
56
Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.

like fallacies, which are formidable less from their native strength than from the multiplicity of shapes in which they appear, seems to us to have peculiar advantages, we shall make room for the exposure of some of the most potent among these instruments of deception.

The reviewer then devotes more than half-a-dozen pages to extracts from the "Catechism on the Corn Laws." It will be unnecessary to reproduce any of these extracts here, as they have been now for many years before the public. The reviewer concludes with observing that the "Catechism" had attracted the attention of Lord King, who had fought the battle of Free Trade in the House of Lords, and recommends it as a speculation worthy the attention of a bookseller to make a collection of all that Lord King has said on this subject in Parliament since it began to be dis-


    an uncommon talent for explaining whatever he understands."

    Colonel Thompson refers to this controversy in a letter published in the sixth volume of his "Exercises," p. 368, in which he mentions "the dispute whether rent forms part of the price of corn;" and says:—

    "The main point of dispute with Mr. Ricardo and his followers is whether rent makes price, or price makes rent; and though attempts have been made to ridicule the distinction as one of words only, it diverges into marked hostility on the subject of tithes."