been over-fed in that time; and he now asserted, that if in the next five years our importation should amount to 3,000,000 quarters a year, it would not be more than sufficient for the rapid increase of our population, and would not throw a single British acre out of cultivation. He then answered in detail the arguments advanced by various speakers with respect to the injury inflicted on the silk-trade, the paper-hanging trade, and the zine and spelter trade, by the relaxation of protective duties. He upset all their assertions and arguments by the production of Custom-house and other public documents, proving that every one of these trades had derived the greatest benefits from the very measures which were said to have been so pernicious to them. He also accused Mr. Disraeli of having been guilty of the greatest unfairness in his "business speech,' as he had himself been pleased to call the speech which he had delilivered on Friday evening. He showed that Mr. Disraeli, in the comparison which he had drawn between the effects of protection and those of free trade, had never taken his comparison during an average of years, but had always made his contrast between the best year of protection, and the worst year of free trade. After stating that he could not congratulate the honourable Member on his first apappearance upon the stage as man of business," for he shone much more as a joker of jokes, and a fabricator of pleasant sarcasms, he proceeded to notice his question, Can you fight hostile tariffs by free-trade imports?" Now to that question he replied, first, that this measure had not been introduced with any reference to foreign nations, but with refer

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ence to the interests of the great mass of the community in the British Islands; and next, that Mr. Disraeli had grossly exaggerated the

repugnance of foreign countries, and especially that of France, to a liberal system of commercial policy. Having grappled with all the alleged facts of Mr. Disraeli, and having satisfied the House, he hoped, that in the statement of them all Mr. Disraeli had been inaccurate, he next proceeded to comment upon Mr. Disraeli's opinion that the House ought to give a preponderance to the agricultural interest. For one, he (Sir G. Clerk) repudiated it, both as a Member of Parliament and as an individual landowner. If the influence of the agricultural interest depended on the continuance of the Corn Laws, he for one should tremble for it. Mr. Disraeli's argument on that point was the most dangerous one that could be used, and had hitherto been always disclaimed by the landowners; for, translated into plain English, it meant nothing else than that the Corn Laws must be maintained to keep up the landlord's rents.

Mr. Beckett Denison began by adverting to a statement made by Mr. Ferrand, on a former evening, to the effect that Sir Robert Peel, when he did him the honour to ask him to second the Address, had deceived him as to the measure which he (Sir Robert Peel) intended to propose. Now Sir Robert Peel was the last man in the world to deceive any body; and in no way, either directly or indirectly, had he deceived him. When he (Mr. Beckett Denison) seconded the Address, he expected that Sir Robert Peel would propose a measure of the same character as those which he had proposed on several

occasions, in the last three years, and which had been so eminently successful; but he had not been prepared to expect that Sir Robert Peel would propose a total abolition of the Corn Laws after a period of three years, during which we were to have a diminished sliding scale, accompanied by certain compulsory propositions. He thought that, in propounding such a scheme, Sir Robert Peel had committed a mistake, which many now regretted, and which he hoped that Sir Robert Peel would never live to regret himself. Though he should oppose to the uttermost that scheme, he hoped that, if it were made law, it would promote the public interests in the way which Sir Robert Peel expected. If he (Mr. Beckett Denison) could be convinced that by this scheme the health, the comfort, the morality, and the happiness of the working classes would be promoted, he should instantly become a Corn Law repealer; but, until that conviction was produced in his mind, he must stand by the existing Corn Laws. He then called attention to the state of things for the last few years, for the purpose of showing that protection to agriculture had been of benefit to all classes in the country. Even if this measure for the repeal of that protection were right in itself, still the time for bringing it forward was most improperly chosen. Ministers had taken the country by surprise. They had placed 300 gentlemen in that House in the painful situation of voting either against a leader whom they wished to support, or against their consciences, and in some cases against their constituents, if they supported him. For himself, he had been selected by

his constituents to oppose two of the most popular men in the kingdom-Lord Morpeth and Lord Milton-on the sole ground of his advocacy of the principle of protection to agriculture; and he felt himself as much bound to redeem the promises which he had given to his constituents, as if he had given them a bond to that effect. If he were to vote in 1846 for the abolition of the Corn Laws, without having heard one single satisfactory reason urged for it, even by Sir Robert Peel himself, how could he justify to himself the opposition which he had headed against those two noble Lords, whose names he had mentioned, in 1841 ? He could not say that he had changed his mind on the subject, for if he had, he should have felt himself bound in honour to resign his seat, and would have disposed in that way of all the speeches which he had made in defence of protection. In conclusion, he warned Lord Morpeth against believing that his return for the West Riding was a proof that the opinions of the electors of that district were changed on the subject of the Corn Laws, and by advertising him that at the next general election the extent of the change would, probably, be brought to a test.

Mr. Villiers believed that the farmers of England were a loyal set of men, as the last speaker represented them to be; but he was almost surprised at it after the temptations to which they had been exposed by the violent and inflammatory language of their landlords against Her Majesty's Government. He called attention to the different manner in which this law was originally passed, and in which it was now proposed to repeal it. The law was passed through the House

as quickly as law could be; but the proposition for the repeal of it had been delayed, unprecedently, for more than three weeks, by a fierce party opposed to the public good. That delay, too, had been persevered in after they had received full information of the mischief inflicted on commerce and manufactures by the protracted length to which they had spun out this discussion, for which nobody cared a straw, except so far as regarded its result. He expressed his joy and satisfaction at the concession made to wisdom, truth, and justice, in the proposals and avowals of Her Majesty's Government. That concession, he was bound to say, had not been made by the members of that Government at any sacrifice of private honour or of public principle, but had been extorted from them by a conviction of the great danger in which the country was placed from an apprehended deficiency in the supply of food. He knew that this measure was not complete; and he had been asked whether he would recommend it as such to his constituents. Before that question was put to him, he had placed on record the opinions of his constituents, who, in a petition, had declared that they gladly received this measure as a great instalment of the debt due to them. Even if it were more imperfect than it actually was, the country would be of opinion that there was a sufficient apology for Sir Robert Peel's not proposing a more perfect measure, in the fierce opposition of the noisy party on the Protection benches. Mr. Villiers then commented on several of the speeches made by the Protectionists in that House and elsewhere, and more particularly on a speech made by Lord VOL. LXXXVIII.

Stanley some years ago, in Lancashire, when he admitted that the Corn Laws raised rents, and raised the price of food, but did not raise the rate of wages. Such was the

system for which the landowners of England were fighting; and that was the system which rendered the prosperous farmer" so rare a bird, that he ought to be stuffed and sent as a curiosity to the British Museum," and the labourer so demoralized, that his wretched condition had passed into a by-word. Yes; the complaint of the agriculturists was low prices, and their object in supporting the Corn Laws was high prices. In bringing forward this measure, the Government was protecting the agriculturists from themselves, and he hoped that they would have good sense enough to see that, and to consent to the abolition of a law which was an evidence of their past selfishness and present shame.

Mr. Cobden complained, that extraneous matter had been introduced into this discussion to a greater extent than it had ever been introduced previously into any Corn Law debate. The two main topics on which it had turned were the conduct of Ministers, and the propriety of an appeal to the country. The people of England believed that the discussion on the first topic was a quarrel got up for no other purpose than to evade the real question, and to conceal from public notice that there was no justification for the Corn Laws. assured the party opposite that the more they covered the Ministers with obloquy and odium the more would the people of England sympathize with them. In point of fact, they were making the Ministers the most po[F]

He

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Sir Robert Peel should visit the manufacturing districts, his march through them would be one continued triumph. Sir J. Graham, as Home Secretary, had not made himself very popular; but the magnificent contribution which he had recently made to the good cause of free trade, and still more the nightly martyrdom to which he had recently been consigned, had made him an object of popular sympathy in Manchester and Liverpool. But," said the Protectionists, "we wish to appeal to the constituencies of the country, and, if their verdict be against us, we will give up our opposition to this measure. Why, if their opinions were just, they ought not to relinquish their opposition on that ground; but nobody knew better than he did that they had no chance of obtaining a majority at the next election. Three months ago he had said that the advocates of free trade had no chance of obtaining that majority; but now that the Protectionists were a broken party, and had lost all the talent and in

telligence which formerly directed their tactics, the case was altered, and it was they who had now no chance of success in an appeal to the constituencies. He would even suppose that a dissolution took place, and that the Protectionists should be in a majority, would they even then have public opinion in their favour? We have at present on the side of free trade the eighteen metropolitan members, and at the next election we should have the two members for the county of Middlesex. Those twenty members would represent 2,000,000 of men, the most intelligent and hard-working men

opinion? If they said that it was not, did they think that the metropolis would be contented with being estimated as nothing in public opinion? Besides that, did they imagine that they would find in their ranks the representatives of Edinburgh, Dublin, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, and Liverpool? Let them take any borough with above 20,000 inhabitants, and they would not have a single representative for such boroughs. They would have, of course, their representatives for their pocket boroughs and their nomination counties, and with them he would suppose that they had a majority of thirty. With the representatives of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and of South Lancashire, and Middlesex and London, and Edinburgh and Dublin, pitted against them, what would be their position? They would shrink aghast from it, and there would be more desertions than ever from their party. There would be no safety for the country without such desertions. The member for Ripon, Stamford, Woodstock, Marlborough, and such places, would only hold their seats on sufferance, and, if they refused to yield to moral force, would be put into a new schedule A. by some great popular movement. "But," rejoin the Protectionists, we have the majority of the population on our side. They had never heard him speak in raptures of the talent and judgment of the working classes. But he would dare the party opposite to call a public meeting of the working classes in any part of the kingdom on the subject of the Corn Laws. They were pluming themselves at present on the re

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sult of the late county elections. Did they recollect that the county representation, under the 501. clause, was not the old constitution of England? Fifty years ago requisitions were not got up by the tenants-at-will, but by freeholders. The League intended to fight the modern innovation of the 50l. clause with the 40s. freehold, an institution in use five centuries ago. Had the opposite party ever reflected that half the money in the Savings Banks, if invested in small freeholds would produce a better interest, and would swamp the 501. tenants-at-will, who had no independent suffrages? If the contest should unfortunately be protracted any longer, the free-trade party will meet monopoly in that way, and in that way will overcome it. He had now given them some idea of the position in which monopoly was placed in the country. The mischief of it might be averted if they would take these facts home with them, and would study them for their own advantage at leisure. So much had been said on the merits of the question, that there was no occasion for him to dwell on that topic. Though he had not heard, he had read all the speeches made in that discussion; and when he saw all the fallacies, which he had been knocking on the head for the last seven years, again brought forward as arguments, he could not help thinking what fun it would occasion for the working men in fustian jackets in the north of England. Since the Government measure had been propounded, he had inquired whether land had suffered any depreciation in value; and he had ascertained this very remarkable fact, that though silk was unsaleable, land was selling and letting at higher prices

than ever. The house might affect the value of cotton, silk, and woollen manufactures; but there was a love for land inherent in the human race, and especially in the minds of Englishmen ; and it was monstrous to suppose that the value of land could be diminished, whilst a process was going forward which must inevitably increase the number of customers for its produce, and augment the number of shoulders which had to bear its burdens. He, therefore, called upon the Protectionists to consider whether they could not do something better than prolong these angry conflicts with the advocates of free trade, and tax each other for the separate benefit of their respective classes. There was honour and fame to be gained in the adjustment of the question. Our nation was the aristocracy of the human kind. We had given the world the example of a free press of a representative government

of civil and religious libertyand we were now going, he trusted, to give them an example more glorious than all, that of making industry free-of giving it the advantage of every clime and latitude under heaven, and of enabling our population to buy in the cheapest and to sell in the dearest market. The honourable member concluded amid long-continued cheers by giving his support to the measures of Government.

Lord Geo. Bentinck condemned the proposition of the Government as vicious in principle, and likely to be deeply injurious, not only to agriculture, but to all the great interests of the country. Certainly it could not be carried in what he emphatically called a Protection Parliament without a loss of ho

nour to public men. The alleged