TO A FRIEND.
Harcourt House, August 30, 1847.
An answer is come out to my address to my constituents at King’s Lynn, and to my speech in answer to Peel’s manifesto. Pray read it. At first I thought I could swear to its being * * * *, I now think I can swear to its being * * * *; the servility to Peel, and the official red-tape style would equally do for either; but the no-popery page, I think, fixes it on * * * *.
I think it wretchedly weak, and have written some notes on the margin, showing up the principal points. The nine months’ famine of 1846-47, as contrasted with Peel’s famine, shows a difference of between £6,000,000 and £7,000,000; that is to say, on the balance in the nine months 1845-46, Ireland exported about three millions’ worth of breadstuffs, and not a soul died of famine. In the nine months 1846-47, she imported three millions’ sterling worth of bread-stuffs, which insufficed to prevent one million—or say half a million—of the people from dying of starvation.
At present I have seen no notice of the pamphlet in any of the newspapers: if it is either * * * *‘s, or * * * *‘s, or * * * *‘s we shall see it reviewed in ‘Times,’ ‘Chronicle,’ and ‘Spectator.’
The Bank of England has raised the interest on * * * *‘s mortgage one-third per cent., making an additional annual charge of £1,500 a year to him. I am very sorry for him, but I know nothing so likely to rouse the landed aristocracy from their apathy, and to weaken their idolatry of Peel so much as this warning note of the joint operation of his free trade and restrictive currency laws.
TO A FRIEND.
Harcourt House, September 2, 1847.
I think it is * * * *. The trickster, I observe, has carefully reduced the pounds of cotton to cwts., in the hopes of concealing a great fraud to which he has condescended; taking, in the Whig year of 1841, the home consumption of cotton, whilst in Peel’s year he gives entire importation as the home consumption, representing both as home consumption.
In Peel’s year, 1846, officially we have only the gross importation; but in the Whig year, 1841, the entire importation and the home consumption are given separately: the importation exceeding the home consumption by fifty million pounds. Burn’s ‘Glance,’ however, gives the importation and home consumption for both years; unfortunately, however, not in lbs. or cwts., but in bags. * * * *‘s fraud, however, is not the less apparent.