LETTERS ON POLITICS 595

all. I introduce this proviso, because no man can say whether different modes of agriculture or various commercial accidents may not, in spite of the change in corn laws, maintain the value of land. But if any harm is done, this will be the harm, and the whole question at issue is whether the landed proprietor is to run the risk of losing some certain percentage of an income, or whether the lower orders are to maintain that income out of their mouths. What ultimate effect the depreciation of the value of land may have on the disposition of capital, and indirectly on the interests of the lower classes, or how far the lower classes may wisely be listened to, when with threats and tumult they demand the surrender to them of a portion of the property of the higher, are other questions altogether; questions which it was the business of Parliament to have discussed before they altered the law, and of which they avoided the discussion because the greater number of the Protectionists dared not avow the true nature of the question.

§ 4. But I do not care to enter into this intricate inquiry, for I would desire to see the bread tax abolished on a broader principle than any connected either with agricultural or manufacturing interests. The entire system of import and export duties appears to me one of the most amazing and exquisite absurdities which mankind have ever invented or suffered from. I can understand a child’s refusing to take medicine unless it is given him in sweetmeat; but I cannot understand a man’s refusing to pay necessary taxes unless they are laid upon him in the form of customhouse dues (not, one should have thought, a particularly agreeable mode of concealment). We all know that we must pay a certain sum in order to have a government and army; that is to say, to have peace, liberty, or security for a single hour; but we are too cowardly to take this sum simply out of our pockets, and have done with it; we like better to have it cunningly filched from us in duties on tea and sugar, and to have the chance of smuggling a

[Version 0.04: March 2008]