Cobbett's views on economics and the freedom of the indi-
vidual are much at a discount just now, but the following remarks—to be found on the last page of a cheap reissue of the Rural Rides just published by Nelson and Sons (6d. net)— are worth noticing in connexion with the present Budget. The Lord Howick of the day, at the end of a speech, had declared that Reform "was only the means to an end, and that the end was cheap government." Here is Cobbett's comment :—
" Good ! stand to that, my Lord, and, as you are now married, pray let the country fellows and girls marry, too ; let us have cheap government, and I warrant you that there will be room for us all, and plenty for us to eat and drink. It is the drones, and not the bees, that are too numerous ; it is the vermin who live upon the taxes, and not those who work to raise them, that we want to get rid of. We are keeping fifty thousand tax-eaters to breed gentlemen and ladies for the industrious and laborious to keep. These are the opinions which I promulgate ; and whatever your flatterers may say to the contrary, and whatever feeisofical stuff Brougham and his rabble of writers may put forth, these opinions of mine will finally prevail."
With our £210,000,000 Budget we have certainly travelled a long way from " cheap government." Nevertheless, we cannot help believing that there will some day be a revolution in favour of it, and against adding to those whom Cobbett, with his somewhat broad taste in invective, calls "the vermin who live upon the taxes." To him the army of officials was the army of drones.
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