sacrificed to the clamours for temporary cheap bread on the part of the other classes of the community. He thus expressed himself in the great debate which took place on the subject in 1828 : "The number of individuals, either in Parliament or out of it, who maintain that foreign corn should be altogether duty-free, is very small indeed. Some persons undoubtedly think that a small fixed duty ought to be imposed; and if such a fixed duty were imposed, it should certainly be a very small one; but all agree that protection of some sort or another is indispensable. This opinion is founded on the great burden of taxation upon the country generally, as well as the particular burdens on land; and on the fact that the labouring classes here are better fed, clothed, and lodged, than the people of the same class in other countries. It is admitted by those who are in favour of a fixed low duty, that their expectation and intentions are, that the poorer lands of this country which have been brought into cultivation by the application of great labour, and the expenditure of a large amount of capital, should be at once thrown out of cultivation; and even the richer lands would become comparatively unprofitable, in consequence of the application of their system. But this country has been brought to its present high state of cultivation, and consequent internal wealth, by the fostering protection which has invariably been given to agriculture, and which has induced gentlemen to lay out their capital in redeeming waste lands and bringing them into cultivation. The result of such a system would be to throw out of cultivation the land thus redeemed from waste, to reduce the extent of cultivation of the richer lands, and consequently to lessen the productive power of the country, and finally to throw us for subsistence and support on foreign nations. "I beg your lordships to reflect on the consequences which must result, if the Powers from whose dominions these resources are generally drawn, should think proper to lay a heavy tax on the export of such corn, or on its transit from one country to another. What would be the result of such a measure to this country-a measure too, which foreign states might, in certain circumstances, be perfectly justified in adopting? But supposing such moderation on the part of those states, that they should continue to allow us to draw our supplies from their dominions, yet you must recollect that this country would be constantly, under the proposed system of a fixed duty, placed in the precarious state in which it found itself in years of famine and scarcity, and would be exposed to the highest prices for wheat. The cost of production, for example, in Poland, would not be increased; but the prices would be regulated here, not by the cost of production there, but by the scarcity price of this country, and by the profits of all those concerned in the contemplated importation of corn. Under all these circumstances, a low fixed duty would not be productive of a diminution; on the contrary, it would in the end lead to an augmentation of price. But even if it were otherwise, would it be proper to adopt such a measure in reference to its effects in other respects? Look to Ireland, and consider what must be the inevitable results if agriculture be not encouraged in that country; a country which last year supplied Great Britain with 2,000,000 quarters of grain. What must be the effects of cutting off from that country nearly the only source of industry, the only manufacture, with one exception, which it possesses? "But I speak not with reference to Ireland alone, but with reference to this country. The gentlemen of this country have, by the extent of their capital and the labour they have employed upon their estates, raised the agriculture of the kingdom to its present prosperous condition; and nothing would be more unjust than to take from them that protection by which they have been enabled to bring cultivation to the state in which it now is, and to deprive them of those profits which are so justly their due, on account of the capital laid out by them. The merchant, the manufacturer, the poor, the whole public, are interested in the maintenance of the independent affluence of the nobility and gentry of the country; and the Government are interested in supporting their influence, on account of the assistance which has always been derived from them in every branch of internal government, and on account of the support they have afforded to Government under every circumstance. If it were in my power to make corn cheaper by diminishing the protection which the landed gentry have always received, I would not do it at the expense of Ireland, and of the evils which it must inflict upon the essential interests of this country." Lucid and forcible as these arguments are, they are by no means the strongest which can be advanced upon this all-important subject. Subsequent experience, and the more extensive statistical returns and researches of later times, have now established the vital facts-1. That the monetary system of the country, as established by the acts of 1819 and 1845, is dependent for its very existence upon the prevention of any considerable importation of foreign grain; and, 2. That the injury done to our manufacturing interests, by throwing any considerable portion of our territory out of grain cultivation, would be at least ten times greater than the good derived from the extension of the markets for our manufactures in foreign grain-growing states. The reason of the first is, that as the countries which supply us with grain have all adopted hostile tariffs against our manufactures, which experience shows are only made the more rigid the more we relax our commercial system, corn from abroad can be bought only with gold or silver; and thus a large importation of grain is immediately followed by a drain of the precious metals, a contraction of credit, and general shock to credit and commercial industry through the country. The dreadful and long-continued commercial distress in Great Britain, from 1839 to 1843, during four bad seasons, when the importation of grain was large, so fatal to a large part of the industry of the country, was chiefly owing to this cause. The reason of the second is to be found in the fact, that the nations who principally supply us with grainPrussia, Poland, and Russia-have loaded our manufactures with such heavy duties, and their rural population is in so indigent a state, that they do not consume, per head, as * Speech in Lords, March 21, 1828. Maxims and Opinions, 146, 148. many pence worth of our manufactures, as the British labourer consumes pounds.* It would be a poor consolation to the British manufacturers, when labouring under the paralysis of the home-market for manufactures, consequent on the ruin of a large part of our annual income derived from land, to tell them that though they had destroyed a million of agricultural labourers at home, who consumed £7 a-head worth of their manufactures, they had called into existence an equal number of serfs in Poland or the Ukraine, who consumed 7d. per head. On Roman Catholic Emancipation, before it was made a Government measure, the following decided opinion was expressed by the Duke in April 1828 : "There is no person in this house whose feelings and sentiments, after long consideration, are more decided than mine are with respect to the subject of the Roman Catholic claims; and I must say that, until I see a very great change in that question, I certainly shall continue to oppose it.”† The " very great change" here alluded to, as the only circumstance which could induce Wellington to alter his opinion on Catholic Emancipation, was its being taken up by Government as a Government question; and so he explained the matter when he came to support the Catholic Relief Bill as prime minister, in March 1829. The grounds of this change were thus stated by the noble Duke, which we shall give in his own words, without adding any comments of our own. Hitherto, at least, the result has done anything rather than support its expediency. "If I had been going to propose a measure which would introduce a predominant Catholic power into Parliament, I should then be doing that which is clearly inconsistent with the constitution. But I am not going to do any such thing: there are degrees of power, at least. Will any man venture to affirm that Catholic power does not at present exist, either here or in Ireland? I will address myself more particularly to noble lords who are so pointedly opposed to me, and I will ask them whether Roman Catholic -PORTER'S Parl. Tables, 1836. + Lords, April 28, 1828. Maxims and Opinions, 158. power was not introduced into Ireland by measures of their own? Did not some noble lords exert themselves to the very utmost to produce that power, which has now rendered a measure like that which I have announced to Parliament absolutely necessary? As such is the case, I implore noble lords to look at the situation of the country, and the state of society which it has produced? Whether it has been brought about by the existence of these disabilities, or by the Catholic Association, I shall not say; but this I will say, that no man who has looked at the state of things for the last two years, can proceed longer upon the old system, in the existing condition of Ireland, and of men's opinions on the subject, both in that country and this. My opinion is, that it is the wish of the majority of the people that this question should be settled one way or other. It is upon this principle that I and my colleagues have determined to bring it before Parliament."* The Duke's strenuous and uncompromising resistance to the Reform Bill is well known; as well as his celebrated question, "How, if this bill passes, is the King's government to be carried on?" Probably there has been no Administration since the completion of that great organic change which has not felt in their full bitterness the truth of these words. The future history of England, it is to be feared, will be little more than a commentary on their justice. Observe in what pregnant words Wellington, in the very outset, predicted its effects: "Throughout the whole empire, persons in the lowest condition of life, liable to, and even existing under, pernicious influences, are to have votes; or in other words, are to exercise political power. Persons in those stations do exercise political power already; but in a few places, in larger masses, preponderating over the other classes of society. What must we expect when these lower classes preponderate everywhere? We know what sort of representatives are returned by the places I have described: what are we to expect when the whole will be of the same description? We hear sometimes of radical reform; and the term applies to universal suffrage, annual parliaments, and their consequences. But I declare that, looking at these changes pervading every part of the representation, root and branchdestroying or changing everything which has existed, even to the relative numbers of the representatives from the three kingdoms, fixed by treaty, I should call this a radical reform, rather than a reform of any other description. I cannot but consider that the House of Commons returned by it will be a democratic assembly of the worst description; and that radical reform, vote by ballot, and all the evil consequences to be expected from the deliberations of such an assembly, must follow from its establishment. I entreat your lordships to pause before you agree to establish such a system in your country."+ May God in his mercy avert these anticipated evils from this country! But is there any man now bold enough to affirm that the Duke of Wellington in this instance is not to turn out in the end a true prophet? * Lords, Feb. 5, 1829. Maxims and Opinions, 155, 156. The intellectual character of Napoleon and Wellington are singularly in unison with the parts they were respectively called to play on the great theatre of the world. No man ever surpassed the French Emperor in the clearness of his ideas, or the stretch of his glance into the depths of futurity. But he was often misled by the vigour of his conceptions, and mistook the dazzling brilliancy of his own genius for the steady light of truth. With less ardour of imagination, less originality of thought, Wellington had incomparably more justness of judgment, and a far greater power of discriminating error from truth. The young and the ardent, who have life before them, will ever turn to the St Helena Memoirs for the views of a mind of the most profound and original cast, on the most important subjects of human thought. The mature and experienced, who have known its vicissitudes, and had experience of its errors, will rest with more confidence on the "Maxims and Opinions" of the Duke of Wellington, and marvel at the numerous instances in which his instinctive sagacity beheld the shadow of coming events amidst the clouds with which he was surrounded. No one ever read the speculations of the French Emperor without admiration at the originality of his ideas, and the originality of his conceptions; none can peruse the maxims of the English general without closing the book almost at every page to meditate on the wisdom and justice of his opinions. The genius of the former shared in the fire and animation of Homer's imagination; the mind of the latter exhibited the depth and solidity of Bacon's judgment. But it was in the prevailing moral principles by which they were regulated, that the distinctive character of their minds was most strikingly evinced. Singleness of heart was the characteristic of the British hero; a sense of duty his ruling principle. Ambition actuated the French conqueror; a thirst for glory was his invariable motive. The former proceeded on the belief that the means, if justifiable, would finally work out the end; the latter, on the maxim that the end would in every case justify the means. The one exhibited the most shining example of splendid talents, devoted to temporal ambition; the other, the noblest instance of moral influence directed to exalted purposes. The former thought only in peace of accumulating the resources of |