The Corn Laws press upon England just in the same manner as
the discovery of the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope
pressed upon Venice and the other states whose welfare depended upon
the transit of the produce of India by land. But the navigation of
the Cape benefited all other European nations at the same time that
it pressed upon these particular states, by giving them all the
produce of India at cheaper rates than they would otherwise have got
it, and by opening the markets of India to the produce of all other
European nations. The Corn Laws benefit only one small section of the
people of England, while they weigh, like an incubus, upon the vital
energies of all the rest; and at the same time injure all other
nations by preventing their getting the produce of manufacturing
industry so cheap as they would otherwise get it. They have not,
therefore, the merit of benefiting other nations, at the same time
that they crush their own.[6]
For some twenty or thirty years of our rule, too many of the
collectors of our land revenue in what we call the Western
Provinces,[7] sought the 'bubble reputation' in an increase of
assessment upon the lands of their district every five years when the
settlement was renewed.
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