The repeal of the Corn Laws may give a new lift to England; it may greatly increase the foreign demand for the produce of its manufacturing industry; it may invite back a large portion of those who now spend their incomes in foreign countries, and prevent from going abroad to reside a vast number who would otherwise go.  These laws must soon be repealed, or England must reduce one or other of its great establishments—­the National Debt, the Church, the Army, or the Navy.  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.  The more the assessment was increased, the greater was the praise bestowed upon the collector by the revenue boards, or the revenue secretary to Government, in the name of the Governor-General of India.[8] These collectors found an easy mode of acquiring this reputation—­they left the settlements to their native officers, and shut their ears to all complaints of grievances, till they had reduced all the landholders of their districts to one common level of beggary, without stock, character, or credit; and transferred a great portion of their estates to the native officers of their own courts through the medium of the auction sales that took place for the arrears, or pretended arrears, of revenue.  A better feeling has for some years past prevailed, and collectors have sought their reputation in a real knowledge of their duties, and real good feeling towards the farmers and cultivators of their districts.  For this better tone of feeling the Western Provinces are, I believe, chiefly indebted to Mr. R. M. Bird, of the Revenue Board, one of the most able public officers now in India.  A settlement for twenty years is now in progress that will leave the farmers at least 35 per cent. upon the gross collections from the immediate cultivators of the soil; that is, the amount of the revenue demandable by Government from the estate will be that less than what the farmer will, and would, under any circumstances, levy from the cultivators in his detailed settlement.[9]