FORE:The Government and Parliament which, with so lavish a hand, had enabled the Continental monarchs to fight their battles, which had spent above two thousand millions of money in these wars, of which eight hundred millions remained as a perpetual debt, with the perpetual necessity of twenty-eight millions of taxation annually to discharge the interestthat burden on posterity which Napoleon had, with such satisfaction, at St. Helena, pronounced permanentthis same Government and Parliament, seeing the war concluded, were in great haste to stave off the effects of this burden from the landed aristocracy, the party which had incurred it, and to lay it upon the people. They saw that the ports of the world, once more open to us, would, in exchange for our manufactures, send us abundance of corn; and, that the rents might remain during peace at the enormous rate to which war prices had raised them, they must keep out this foreign corn. True, this exclusion of foreign corn must raise the cost of living to the vast labouring population to a ruinous degree, and threatened fearful convulsions from starving people in the manufacturing districts; but these considerations had no weight with the land-holding Government and its Parliamentary majority. In 1814 they were in haste to pass a Corn Law excluding all corn except at famine prices; but the lateness of the season, and an inundation of petitions against it, put it off for that Session. But in 1815 it was introduced again and carried by a large majority. By this all corn from abroad was excluded, except when the price was eighty shillings per quarter. By this law it was decreed that the people who fought the battles of the world, and who would bear the bulk of the weight of taxation created by these wars, were never, so long as this law continued, to eat corn at less than four pounds per quarter. This was, in fact, not only a prohibition of cheap bread, but a prohibition of the sale of the labours of the people to foreign nations to the same extent. It was an enactment to destroy the manufacturing interest for the imagined benefit of land-owners; and it was done on this plea, as stated by Mr. Western, one of the leading advocates of the Bill"That, if there is a small deficiency of supply, the price will rise in a ratio far beyond any proportion of such deficiency: the effect, indeed, is almost incalculable. So, likewise, in a surplus of supply beyond demand, the price will fall in a ratio exceeding almost tenfold the amount of such surplus." The avowed object, therefore, was to prevent the manufacturing population from reaping the benefit of that Continental peace which they had purchased at such a cost, and consequently to repress the growth of their trade to the same degree. Mr. Tooke, in his "History of Prices," confirms this view of the matter, asserting that "the price of corn in this country has risen from one hundred to two hundred per cent., and upwards, when the utmost computed deficiency of the crops has not been more than between one-sixth and one-third below an average, and when that deficiency has been relieved by foreign supplies." Mr. Western candidly showed that, to the farmer, years of deficiency were the most profitable, from this principle of enormous rise from a small cause; that if the produce of an acre of wheat in a good year is thirty-three bushels at six shillings, the amount realised would be only nine pounds eighteen shillings; but, if the produce were reduced by an unfavourable season one-sixth, and the price raised from six shillings to twelve shillings, the produce of twenty-seven and a half bushels would realise sixteen pounds ten shillings, the difference being profit!He found the Bedford clan ready, as usual, for office, but wanting to come in a whole legion; the poor weak Duke of Newcastle was equally prepared, shedding tears in his facile way, hugging and kissing people in his trouble, and wondering why his "dear old friend" had thus abandoned him. Pitt passed on, and chose Lord Camden as Lord Chancellor; Northington as President of the Council; Lord Granby as Commander-in-Chief; Shelburne and Conway as Secretaries of State; the Duke of Grafton as First Lord of the Treasury; Charles Townshend as Chancellor of the Exchequer; with Lord North, James Grenville, brother of Temple, Colonel Barr, and others, in secondary posts. Mr. Stewart Mackenzie, Bute's brother, was restored to his former office, but without any control over Scottish affairs. It was clear that Pitt had selected his colleagues without regard to party, but with an eye to the ability of the respective persons. It was a mode of acting particularly after the fancy of the king, who had always been, according to his own words to Pitt on the occasion, "zealously ready to give his aid towards destroying all party distinctions, and restoring that subordination to government, which can alone preserve that inestimable blessing, liberty, from degenerating into licentiousness." "I venture," said Burke, "to say, it did so happen that persons had a single office divided between them, who had never spoken to each other in their lives, until they found themselves, they knew not how, pigging together, heads and points, in the same truckle bed."
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