impracticability did not arise from the absolute strength of the Emancipation party, even with the addition of those who supported it among the Conservative ranks; for whenever the people were made aware that the Protestant institutions of the empire were seriously menaced, they had never failed to give decisive evidence, by their returns to Parliament, that the great majority of the nation was determined to uphold them.

This great change may, therefore, be regarded as the first cause which produced the Reform Bill. It was not by the great addition which it at once made to the Liberal members of Parliament by the junction of the Roman Catholics, that the mischief was done, so much as by the shake which was given to the Conservative party, and the opinion which was generally diffused through the nation, that the House of Commons no longer represented either its principles or its tenets. The warmest, the most sincere, and the most upright supporters of the constitution felt bitterly, and loudly complained, that a measure fraught with the most important consequences, and involving the dearest interests of the people, both in this world and the next, was forced upon the nation against the known opinion of a majority of its electors by a strange combination of parties, and an unparalleled exertion of the power of Government. Hence arose, in a most important and influential part of the nation, and where it had never before been heard in the rural, the thinking and religious classes of the state-the cry for Parliamentary reform. They felt that the Legislature, on a vital question, had departed from their principles, and they thought to reinstate themselves by an organic change in the constitution of Parliament, in the influence of which they seemed to have been unjustly deprived. The Whigs, Radicals, and Revolutionists at the same period loudly responded to the cry, from a desire to augment their own influence in Parliament, to oust the Tories from power, and to insert the point of the revolutionary wedge which was to tear the fabric of society in pieces. Thus by a strange and anomalous combination of circumstances, but the natural effect of the steadfast prosecution of its principles by one party, and of the signal dereliction of its principles by the other, the same cry for

organic change was raised by the most opposite classes in the state; and while the Whigs and Radicals loudly supported it in order to effect democratic ascendency, and increase the popular influence in the legislature, the UltraTories and conscientious Churchmen as loudly responded to it, from a sense of the necessity of staying the progress of religious change, and re-establishing in the legislature the principles of the Protestant constitution of the empire.

The cause which has now been stated was the main source of the cry for reform which pervaded the rural and serious thinking part of the community in 1830, and of the extraordinary number of members who were returned to Parliament in opposition to the Duke of Wellington's Government, at the election in August 1830. But powerful as this cause was, it may be doubted whether it would of itself have sufficed to have overturned the Conservative Government and old constitution of the empire, if it had not been at the same time attended by a similar desire for reform in the House of Commons, which arose in the commercial and manufacturing boroughs, from the ruinous effect of the free-trade principles in commerce and in shipping, which the Whigs and the political economists had succeeded in forcing upon the Government. Now that the facts of these vital points have been fully brought before the public by the searching accuracy of statistical inquiries, and that Mr Porter's Parliamentary tables have demonstrated the blasting influence of free-trade principles upon every branch of industry to which they were applied, it is not surprising that so profound and deepseated a feeling of indignation should have pervaded a large and influential portion of the mercantile community. The losses they had sustained, the sufferings they had undergone, from the influence of these erroneous principles, which had been adopted by so large a portion of the legislature on both sides of the House, were indescribable. change of currency in 1819, followed by the suppression of small notes in England by the bill of 1826, had not only spread bankruptcy to an unparalleled extent through all the manufacturing towns, but had lowered by at least a third, sometimes a half, the money value of property of every kind in the kingdom. Hundreds of master merchants and

The

manufacturers in every city in the empire had been rendered bankrupt, thousands of industrious artisans whom they employed reduced to poverty or the workhouse, in consequence of these prodigious monetary changes. Every man whose property was burdened with debt, whether in land or moveables, soon found that debt assume a menacing, sometimes a crushing magnitude; every person who lived by buying and selling that is, the whole trading and mercantile community-found their commodities constantly getting cheaper on their hands; and, instead of making money by buying goods and afterwards disposing of them, they, in too many instances, found themselves losers by the transaction.

The reciprocity and free-trade system introduced by Mr Huskisson in 1823, and which for the next ten years was so perseveringly carried out by every subsequent Administration, caused at the same time unparalleled distress to the shipping interest of Great Britain, and, beyond all question, had the effect of reducing one-half the value of all the property held in the form of shipping by the British merchants. The merchants who were affected by this pressure at once became sensible of its existence, and made loud and repeated complaints to Parliament of the utter ruin to which they had been exposed from the effects of the reciprocity system. They were always, however, met by the statement, on the part of the President of the Board of Trade, that the shipping of the empire, upon the whole, was increasing rather than diminishing; that the wisdom of the policy of Government was decisively demonstrated by the results, and that their distresses were owing to over-trading, or some other causes, for which Government was not responsible. It may safely be affirmed, that for ten long years, during which the shipowners were suffering the most acute distress, this plausible delusion prevented their complaints from meeting with attention, and led to their petitions being continually dismissed without any redress from the legislature. But no efforts of Government, however powerful, no delusion of the legislature, however long continued, can in a free country permanently shut out the light of truth. The very efforts which the theorists make to demonstrate the truth of their prin

ciples, lead to the detection of their fallacy. In an evil hour for the Liberal Administration, Mr Porter commenced the classification of the exports and shipping of Great Britain with all the different countries of the world; and these distinguishing and classified returns are now complete since the year 1820. The publication of these returns has settled the question as to the ruinous effects of the reciprocity system upon our shipping interests. They have demonstrated, beyond the possibility of misconception, that the shipping of the Baltic powers, with whom we have concluded these reciprocity treaties, has, ever since their date, continually and rapidly increased upon the British shipowners, insomuch that their tonnage with us is now four or five times greater than it was when the reciprocity system began, while ours with them has declined in general to a fourth part of what it was when the system commenced. In short, it has now been completely proved that the complaints of the shipowners were, in every particular, well founded, and that the British flag has been rapidly and almost entirely ousted from the trade of all the northern powers of Europe; while the steady progress of our shipping, upon the whole, has been shown to be solely owing to the extraordinary and rapid growth of our colonial trade, which is our own alone, and the benefits of which the reciprocity mania has not hitherto compelled us to share with distant or hostile states.

The same classified Parliamentary returns of Mr Porter have, in like manner, completely demonstrated the fallacy of the free-trade mania in merchandise, and proved the truth of the common complaint, that the free-trade system had essentially injured many of the most important branches of industry in the country. Everybody knows that this freetrade system was established by Mr Huskisson in 1823, 1824, and 1825; and that, in pursuance of it, a very great reduction was made in the duties on French silks, French wines, French clocks, kid gloves, and a great variety of other articles of European manufacture. The dealers in these articles in this country immediately suffered, and suffered severely, by the competition to which they were exposed, and the great reduction in the price of their produce which in consequence ensued; and they petitioned

Parliament again and again, in the most urgent terms, to investigate their complaints, and grant them protection. against the ruinous decline of prices which the competition. of foreigners, employing workmen at one-third of the British wages, had produced. They were constantly met by the statement, that their grievances were entirely imaginary, or were imputable only to themselves; that our exports, on the whole, were rapidly increasing, and that commerce never was in a more flourishing condition. It may be imagined what bitter feelings this reception of their complaints produced among persons who, during the heyday of the reciprocity and free-trade mania, and in consequence of its necessary effects, felt themselves slipping down from an affluent station into the Gazette, the hospital, or the workhouse; and undoubtedly great part of the chaos of unanimity in favour of Reform which characterised the country in 1831 and 1832, after about ten years' experience of the free-trade system, is to be ascribed to the ruinous effects which that system produced upon a large part of the industry of the country, and the cold-blooded indifference with which the statement of that suffering was received by the speculative politicians who had caused it.

The unbounded confidence, however, which its authors have placed in the free-trade principles, have now gone far to unmask it. It was an evil day for the free-trade advocates, when Mr Porter began the classification of the trading to the different countries, and showed where it was that it was increasing, and where it was that it was stationary or declining. It is now proved by the admission of the great free-trade advocate, Mr Porter himself, that our trade with the countries of Europe, with the greater part of whom we had concluded reciprocity treaties, is stationary or declining, and that "our exports to these quarters of the globe are actually less at this moment, on an average of the last three years, than they were in the three years which succeeded the termination of the war." *

The same returns prove that it is the extraordinary increase of our exports to our own colonies, particularly Canada, Australia, and the East Indies, and other distant countries of the globe, with whom we had concluded no * Porter's Progress of the Nation, ii. p. 101.