Hark ye, Mr. Oaf:—The farmers live splendidly, you say. And pray, would you have them hoard the money they get? Their fine clothes and furniture, do they make them themselves or for one another, and so keep the money among them? Or, do they employ these your darling manufacturers, and so scatter it again all over the nation?
The wool would produce me a better price, if it were suffered to go to foreign markets; but that, Messieurs the Public, your laws will not permit. It must be kept all at home, that our dear manufacturers may have it the cheaper. And then, having yourselves thus lessened our encouragement for raising sheep, you curse us for the scarcity of mutton!
I have heard my grandfather say, that the farmers submitted to the prohibition on the exportation of wool, being made to expect and believe, that when the manufacturer bought his wool cheaper, they should also have their cloth cheaper. But the deuce a bit. It has been growing dearer and dearer from that day to this. How so? Why, truly, the cloth is exported; and that keeps up the price.
Now if it be a good principle, that the exportation of a commodity is to be restrained, that so our people at home may have it the cheaper; stick to that principle, and go thorough stitch with it. Prohibit the exportation of your cloth, your leather, and shoes, your ironware, and your manufactures of all sorts, to make them, all cheaper at home. And cheap enough they will be, I will warrant you—till people leave off making them.
Some folks seem to think they ought never to be easy till England becomes another Lubberland, where it is fancied the streets are paved with penny-rolls, the houses tiled with pancakes, and chickens, ready roasted, cry, Come eat me.
I say, when you are sure you have got a good principle, stick to it, and carry it thorough.—I hear it is said, that though it was necessary and right for the m——y to advise a prohibition of the exportation of corn, yet it was contrary to law; and also, that though it was contrary to law for the mob to obstruct waggons, yet it was necessary and right.—Just the same thing to a tittle. Now they tell me, an act of indemnity ought to pass in favour of the m——y, to secure them from the consequences of having acted illegally.—If so, pass another in favour of the mob. Others say, some of the mob ought to be hanged, by way of example.—-If so,—but I say no more than I have said before, when you are sure that you have got a good principle, go through with it.
You say, poor labourers cannot afford to buy bread at a high price, unless they had higher wages.—Possibly.—But how shall we farmers be able to afford our labourers higher wages, if you will not allow us to get, when we might have it, a higher price for our corn?
By all that I can learn, we should at least have had a guinea a quarter more, if the exportation had been allowed. And this money England would have got from foreigners.
But, it seems, we farmers must take so much less, that the poor may have it so much cheaper.