“. . . . . I can have no opinion about the Corn Laws, having no concern in them, which might make me overcome an habitual or natural inaptitude for such complicated questions. But with regard to the general question of Free Trade, I incline to think that the old principle, upon which companies of the various trades were formed for the purpose of not allowing more craftsmen or traders of one calling in one place than the business would support, was founded in good common sense. And as a corollary, that if some more effectual step is not put to the erection of new cotton mills, &c., than individual prudence is ever likely to afford, at some time or other the steam-engine will blow up this whole fabric of society. Three years ago I was assured that at the rate of increase then going on in Manchester, that place would, in ten years, double its manufacturing population. When we hear of the prosperity of those districts, it means that they are manufacturing more goods than the world can afford a market for, and the ebb is then as certain as the flow; and in some neap tide, Radicalism, Rebellion, and Ruin will rush in through the breach which hunger has made.
“You have had more than your share of this
world’s business. I doubt whether any other man who has worked so hardly
has worked so continuously and so long. Our occupations withdraw us all
| Ætat. 51. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 251 |
“Long and intimate conversance with Romish and sectarian history, with all the varieties of hypocritical villany and religious madness, has given me the fullest conviction of the certainty and importance of these truths, from the perversion and distortion of which these evils and abuses have grown. There is not a spark of fanaticism left in my composition: whatever there was of it in youth, spent itself harmlessly in political romance. I am more in danger, therefore, of having too little of theopathy than too much,—of having my religious faith more in the understanding than in the heart. In the understanding I am sure it is; I hope it is in both. This good in myself my ecclesiastical pursuits have certainly effected. And if I live to finish the whole of my plans, I shall do better service to the Church of England than I could ever have done as one of its ministers, had I kept to the course which it was intended that I should pursue. There is some satisfaction in thinking thus. God bless you!
