BLACK-MAIL FOB. THE LANDLORDS.

THERE has been some cavilling at our proposal to buy off the op- position to Corn-law Repeal, in the columns of the Globe and Non- conformist; to whom only this one, and very subordinate point of our recent papers on the Corn question, appears to have been attractive.

The Globe professes an opinion that the proposal throws "a new difficulty in the way of a repeal or revision of the Corn-laws," by increasing the enemies of such a measure. If such an offer were made, we are told, "every landlord great and small, every farmer large and small, would clamour against the injury that Corn-law revision would inflict, in the hope of obtaining a slice of the sop destined to stop the mouths of those who complained ; every tenant of an acre of kitchen-garden would grow loud in behalf of the agricultural interest ; every owner of a few sheep would raise a cry, great in proportion to the smallness of the wool, in defence of his property in the produce of the land; and the band of monopolists would become as strong in self-interested numbers as it is already in the undue influence of the few whose alleged rights are to be protected at the expense of nearly the whole community." Now the answer to this objection is, unfortunately, too easy : every one of the classes here enumerated with such a desperate effort at smartness is already in the field opposing Corn-law Repeal. Not one inactive antagonist remains to be awakened into hostility. Nor is the offer we proposed to make of a nature to postpone the settlement of the question by bringing additional claimants into the field. What we proposed was, to set apart a guarantee-fund out of which all landowners who could prove peculiar injury from the working of Corn-law Repeal might have that injury compensated. The repeal must have taken place before any Claim could be advanced ; consequently the Repeal could not be delayed by the investigation of claims. The proposed condition, that only those who could prone a loss resulting from Repeal should receive compensation—that the landlord should make allow- ance to his tenants, and that what he allowed to them should be admitted as an item of his claims—would reduce the number of parties to be dealt with, and render the winding-up of the business more simple and expeditious.

The writer in the Globe represents our proposal as calculated to "grind down the nearly famished people of today," in order that their descendants may enjoy "a remote and consequently uncertain benefit." * The Globe may be of opinion that the benefit from a * The Nonconformist, on the other hand, objects to our plan because it pro- poses "to purchase their [the landlords'] consent with funds to be ultimately wrung from the pockets of another generation." We leave the critics to settle the difference between them. The Nonconformist "wonders this extraordinarily feasible plan did not suggest itself to the Spectator until the Conservative was in power "—" it would have been far more efficacious two years since." Well, it was suggested by the Spectator more than two years since, The writer in repeal of the Corn-laws must be remote and uncertain : we are not. Our proposal contemplates getting rid of the Corn-laws at once ; this is for the benefit of the existing generation, not of their de-

scendants merely. Our proposal of a guarantee-fund to meet losses that can be shown to proceed directly from the adoption of a Repeal measure, proceeds upon a twofold calculation,—first, that it would be better to pay a good round sum once for all, than to continue paying year after year the heavy tax that the Corn-laws impose on

us ; second, that in fact, so few will suffer any loss from Corn-law Repeal that the sum really paid will be a mere trifle. With Mr.

WHITMORE and other practical agriculturists, we believe that no land

will be thrown out of cultivation by Corn-law Repeal. We believe that any reduction that may take place in the price of corn will be more

than made up for by the increased demand for other articles of agri- cultural produce. We believe some time must elapse before supplies of foreign grain for this market, sufficient to affect our agricul- turists materially, can be produced ; that the effects of repealing the Corn-laws must be gradual—affording time for landowners and farmers to meet the altered circumstances of the trade by a new

system of management. We believe, therefore, that there will be

little suffering on the part of the agriculturists, even in a transition- state ; and therefore we proposed the guarantee-fund as an econo- mical means of allaying their apprehensions, and removing their most powerful motive for refusing to permit the experiment to be made.

The Nonconformist (so far as we can discover its meaning) objects to our proposal because to adopt it would be quitting the

line of principle for expediency. Without raising the question what kind of principle that can be which is opposed to what is expedient for the public good, we admit that expediency is in the present case our guiding motive. We think it expedient to get rid of the Corn-laws with the least possible delay and at the least pos- sible expense. We prefer a plan which promises to remove the Corn-laws at once, to one which would slowly do away with the duty by taking off infinitesimal proportions at tedious intervals ; much more do we prefer such a plan to one that would saddle us

with a fixed duty of 8s. per quarter, which perhaps may be reduced, or perhaps taken off at some future time not specified. We believe that, if we take into account what the Corn-laws annually cost the

nation, what the agitation against the Corn-laws has already cost

those who are engaged in it, and what it is likely to cost them if they persevere in their present planless course, a guarantee-

fund—even though there should be deep drafts upon it--would be found a much cheaper way of getting rid of the evil we seek to remove. We avowedly made this concession to the landed interest, not as a right they could claim, but as the cheapest way

to get rid of their exaction. We are in their power. Thanks to the "landed preponderancy," in which the friends of the Globe so

much delight, the landowners can refuse to repeal the Corn-laws. A majority of 91 in the House of Commons, returned by a majority of the voters polled at the last election, and all but the whole of the House of Lords, is, in the present apathetic state of the public

mind, a power with which there is no shame in coming to terms. By the Corn-laws we are made to pay yearly black-mail to the landowners, and we would rather compromise by paying them something once and away. If we could help ourselves otherwise, we should prefer it ; but we cannot. It is in vain to think of "railing the seal from off their bond."

These are our reasons for remaining of opinion that it would be worth our while to propitiate the landowners, by allaying their apprehensions of possible loss through the operation of Corn-law Repeal, even by the offer of a guarantee-fund. We shall not say our proposal that it is the best yet suggested for facilitating a

settlement of the Corn-law question—it is the only one. Let those

who object to our plan propose one of their own : it is full time that they were setting to work. Speechifying is the mere flourish of trumpets before engaging : do they fancy that the Corn-laws are to fall before their bleating, as the walls of Jericho toppled down before the blast of the rams-horns?

One word of the terms in which our two journalist-censors have been pleased to speak of us, their fellow-labourer. Both of them impute bad motives,—certainly not the most becoming treatment of a suggestion that formed a part of as sincere earnest, though dis- passionate an advocacy of the cause they profess to have at heart, as has appeared. Even leaving out of view the decency of imput- ing unworthy motives, we think that impartial readers will scarcely approve of the vituperative epithets these journals have applied to

us. It is consoling, indeed, to find that the Nonconformist only thinks us an agent of the Devil—not the Devil himself. "Satan never tempts in propria persona," says this grave divine. The writer in the Globe is more profuse of his flippant abuse; which

costs nothing but character. He rings the changes upon what he calls our "philosophy of politics," " coxcombry," "apostacy," "dis- honourable distinction," and other cognate irrelevancies ; winding

up by declaring that we have become a mark for "contempt.' The last word is rather unhappily chosen : contempt is silent—it

does not pursue its object with the reiterated, bitter invective,

with which we continue to be honoured by Globe, Chronicle, and other mouthpieces of the same party,—invective which we only

notice for the purpose of intimating, that so far from being able to influence our onward course by one hair's breadth, it does not even tempt us to retaliate. •

the Nonconformist ought to remember, that though his attention may have only been recently directed to the question, it is not a new one : he had better read up his arrears in the literature of the Corn-law controversy, or he may expose his ignorEutee of its progress and real position in more important par. ticulart,