594 LETTERS ON POLITICS

classes, Roman Catholics,¹ and of our lower classes, infidels. Yet the first principles of taxation, election, and education, are, I believe, so clear and simple that he who runs may read them. Give me room for a few words on all three.

§ 2. Taxation, and primarily Bread Tax. There is much that is wonderful in the proceedings of the English House of Commons, but nothing more wonderful than the way in which they have blinded each other and the people to the real value of the struggle just past (and unhappily now likely to be revived), by putting forward the Farmers as if they were the persons whom the abolition of bread tax would injure, and for whose protection it was therefore to be retained.² The farmers have nothing whatever to do with it. The landlords are the persons who must eventually suffer, if any one suffers, and the whole question is whether landed property in England is to lose part of its value, or whether that value is to be maintained by making the poor pay more for their bread. Let the question be once reduced to these simple terms and we know how to deal with it, but the cunning introduction of the farmers, as a body much to be pitied, has absurdly complicated the inquiry, and rendered the advocacy of Protectionist principles possible for a much longer time than it could otherwise have been. That men now actually engaged in farming operations may be ruined by the change in the laws, is exceedingly probable;-all changes however beneficial to the public, are likely to ruin some innocent persons: but this temporary effect is no more to be considered than the ruin of hotel-keepers in certain towns by the introduction of railroads.

§ 3. The farming interest in the long run will not be in the least affected by the abolition of bread tax, but the rental of landed property will be, if any injury be done at

¹ [For the conversions among his own friends or contemporaries, which suggested this generalisation, see Vol. XI. p. 259.]

² [The reference is to Disraeli’s motion for a Committee of Inquiry into Agricultural Distress in connexion with the abolition of the Corn Laws: see above, p. lxxix.]

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