from the Opposition benches). With these considerations before his eyes,—with that knowledge of what had happened,-and with the anticipations, derived from that experience, of what was to come from a further development of the like legislation, was he justified in risking the welfare of the people on the issue of a struggle entered into in the hope of maintaining agricultural protection? He considered that he was best discharging his duty, and best defending his own consistency, in doing only what he believed best-by voting with the Government; and he trusted that from the final settlement of the question now about to take place, the whole empire and the whole world would derive advantage (cheers).

MR. F. SCOTT described the stunning effect produced on his mind by the sudden desertion of all his former principles and pledges by Sir R. Peel, and the pain and reluctance with which he now came forward to give the most decided opposition to his new commercial plans. He would not ransack Hansard to point out the inconsistency between the past and present speeches of Sir R. Peel and his colleagues; he would confine himself to contrasting the various and contradictory statements which they had made in their speeches during the last three weeks, in order to show the shifts to which men were driven when they brought forward measures for which there was no sound justification. The Hon. Gentleman then amused the House by reading a curious series of contradictions which he had detected in the speeches of Sir R. Peel, Sir J. Graham, and Mr. S. Herbert, delivered between the 26th of January, and the 9th of February, 1846. Those contradictions were proofs of the difficulties in which great men were plunged when they abandoned principle, and entered upon a crooked and devious course of policy. He called upon the House to consider what the feelings of the party with which he was connected must be towards Sir R. Peel, by reflecting upon the terror and alarm which had seized a friend of his, who having tried an action in the provinces, and having then argued the merits of it in Westminster Hall, and having afterwards removed it to the court of last resort the House of Lords-found that his leading counselthe very man who had supported his claims in every previous stage of the cause-had not only thrown up his brief, but had actually taken one from his adversary. His friend had then applied to the King's counsel, and to the junior counsel, whom he had formerly employed, in the hope that they would have no scruple to undertake the cause. But no- -they refused-for they said that it was their duty to follow their leader. Noticing the assertion that this project was wide and bold and comprehensive, he expressed a doubt whether it would be as wise as it was wide, as politic as it was bold, as successful as it was comprehensive. He considered that it would be "a heavy blow and severe discouragement" to agriculture--that it would diminish our command over the necessaries of life-that it would drive bullion out of the country for the purchase of grain-that it would increase grievously the fluctuations of its price-and that it would diminish the supply of food for our labouring population. Whilst he was proceeding in his denunciations of the measure

SIR R. PEEL asked Mr. SCOTT for whom was he retained ?
MR. F. SCOTT (apparently bursting with indignation)-For whom

am I retained? Who am I counsel for ? I am counsel for no man, no party, and no sect. I was proud to follow the party of the constitution when the Right Hon. Baronet hoisted the banner of it; but now that he fights under a different flag, I am left to myself, and must act according to the dictates of my own conscience and my own judgment. The Hon. Gentleman after apologizing for the warmth into which he had been betrayed, delivered a long invective against free trade, which he described as sense in the abstract and nonsense in the reality, and as a fantastic cobweb sparkling like a dewdrop in the sun. With our taxation it was impossible. With our debt of £800,000,000, we had no more right to call upon this country to enter into competition with countries comparatively untaxed than we had to ask a man with a hundredweight on his back to enter into the lists with an opponent perfectly unencumbered. Besides, the appearance of the political atmosphere in the East, and still more in the West, was not such as to encourage us to make at present the rash and perilous experiment which was now recommended-an experiment which, he contended, would produce the loss of Canada, and all our other colonies. He concluded with a long and declamatory philippic against Her Majesty's Ministers, who, with free trade on their lips but not in their hearts, were now venturing upon a grinding, bone-crushing experiment, which would consign not only all the agricultural labourers, but all the other industrious artizans of the kingdom also, to one unsparing and undiscriminating ruin.

MR. WARD said that the Hon. Member who had just addressed the House was a speaker whom it was very difficult to follow. He was difficult only in one sense,-and the difficulty arose chiefly from the variety of topics which his speech embraced. The Hon. Gentleman announced himself as counsel for the whole British Empire, but the course of his speech seemed to carry him all over the world. The speech just delivered was filled with complaints of the measures of the last three years, and up to the last three months the Hon. Member himself had supported every one of those measures. Then he told the House that the matter of free trade was a question of degree, and almost in the same breath he informed them that it struck a blow at the heart of the constitution. Looking, then, at the way in which one part of the Hon. Member's speech answered another, it might well be inquired what gave him a right to take offence when asked for which party he was retained; and what right had he to apply the remark to Ministers, that public men had great difficulties to encounter when they took a devious course? Surely for a long time past the present Ministers of the Crown had been taking a most direct course. No one who had sat opposite to the Right Hon. Baronet and had seen the progress he had made in the adoption of the principles of his opponents, could have doubted that he must in the end have come to the same conclusions with them; and those who supported him in the year 1842, had no right to turn round upon and to condemn him for results which they had rendered irresistible. What did they do in 1842? They were a great party, they had an unassailable majority in that House (cheers), they had the game in their own hands, there had been an appeal to the country on the question of protection to native industry (hear, hear), they

had beaten their opponents. What was the first step taken? Concession was made; with all the responsibilities of power the Right Hon. Baronet yielded to what he now called the force of reason and of truth, as he only now yielded because it was reason and it was truth. After the admission of the principle, the only question was one of degree-where they should stop. In dealing with the tariff, how did the Hon. Gentlemen deal with those interests with which they had been connected in 1841, with which they had so recently entered into a holy alliance? They sacrificed them. Now, Hon. Gentlemen opposite found themseves placed in a position of denouncing as absolute treachery to their party the step taken by the Government, which was the inevitable result of Hon. Gentlemen's own former opinions; and the champions and advocates of protection now were forced to admit that they only differed from the Right Hon. Baronet because he went further than they wished. The Hon. Gentleman who last spoke admitted that legislation must be progressive, that the laws of this country were not immutable, but that he would rather have changes introduced at the desire of the landlords than on the demand of the people. Now, the country had waited quite long enough for the landlord's desire, it was time to listen to the demands of the people (hear). The Hon. Gentleman complained that a tax upon grain was liable to be confounded with a bread tax; but he did not show how it was possible to separate them. The Hon. Gentleman told them also that protection was not required for the interests of agriculture in the part of Scotland with which he was connected; he talked of the disadvantages of hilly roads, and of the want of markets and manure, and though he talked of the demoralizing effects of the Ministerial measures, yet he had told them that cultivation could still be profitably carried on. He must next go back to the speech of the Hon. and gallant Member for Liverpool (Sir H. Douglas) who, he regretted to find, had left the House; though he must have expected that some remarks would have been made upon what he had stated. The Hon. and gallant Gentleman was peculiarly happy in his position, for he said that he had nothing to regret and nothing to retract since he came into Parliament. Few members in that House could make such an admission (hear, hear). The Hon. and gallant Gentleman wished for protection to all; he would give protection to all; and he would give it to labour because it was exposed to the competition of capital at home. He confessed that he was surprised to hear an Hon. Member for Liverpool complain of the competition between English labour and English capital, and ask Parliament to protect labour against capital. Then the Hon. Member said that reciprocity was hopeless; that it was all very well to talk about free trade here, but that we could not communicate it to other countries. We had tried negotiations, and we had failed; was it not then advisable to try the effect of example? (hear, hear) Had not our trade with France quintupled, notwithstanding the most rigorous and severe restrictions imposed upon our imports? Then, it was asked, what would become of our colonies, and what would be the effect on British interests in India? The Hon. and gallant Member forgot that the people were supplied with cottons from this country better

and cheaper than they could be procured elsewhere; and yet he said that this measure would be the ruin of England. He asked also how the people on the banks of the Ganges could enter into competition with those of other favoured countries. What did the people of the Brazils inherit by way of advantage over those who inhabited the same clime and had the assistance of British science and British capital? (hear, hear). He (Mr. Ward) had always thought it had been assumed during the discussions on the Slavery Emancipation Bill that free labour was better and cheaper than slave labour; how was it, then, that India could not enter into competition with any other country? The Hon. and gallant Gentleman then appealed to the opinions of Mr. Huskisson. No man entertained a greater respect for the name of Mr. Huskisson, no man had a warmer appreciation of the great services he had rendered to his country, than himself; but Mr. Huskisson was obliged during his long career often to make sacrifices to party requirements; and if an appeal were made to the opinions of Mr. Huskisson in 1825, it would be right that an appeal should also be made to his opinions towards the close of his career, when he was free from the trammels of party, and ventured to speak his real sentiments. What did he say towards the close? On the 25th of March, 1830, two years after his sliding scale had been in operation, and he had seen its defects, he said, "It was his unalterable conviction that we could not uphold the Corn Laws now in existence together with the taxation, and increase the national prosperity, or preserve public contentment. That these laws could be repealed without affecting the landed interest, whilst the people would be relieved from their distress, he had never had any doubt whatever" (cheers). It was easy to complain of bad faith and of the betrayal of constituencies; but the first thing a public man had to do was, he must be right (hear), and if he found that he was not right he ought at once to return to what reason and experience showed to be most conducive to the real interests of the country. There was no question on which a public man had greater justification in exercising his right to change his opinion than the Corn Laws. It had never been a party question. Many had lived to learn and to benefit by experience. Every day new lights and new facts broke in upon them, and warranted any man in changing his opinion. Mr. Huskisson had changed his opinion. The Noble Lord the Member for the City of London had manfully come forward and declared, "What I did twenty years ago, when I was a young and inexperienced man, was erroneous, and I have seen good reason to change my opinions." He (Mr. Ward) himself admitted that the first vote he had given was with the Right Hon. Baronet, in favour of the Corn Laws, and he had only altered his views since he had brought his mind to bear, and since he had done what few, perhaps, did ("oh, oh!")-looked honestly and fairly into the question, divested from all class-he would not say interests, for they had not so much effect upon an honest mind-but class-prejudices and parties, ties which were more difficult to shake off than considerations of personal interests. Men got hampered with party connexions, or they had made some hasty and ill-considered speech

at a county meeting, and they thought it only consistent with their honour to adhere to their opinions, till the country was united against the obstinate and blundering pursuit of a policy which was as ruinous to their own interests as it was to the interests of the country (cheers). In the course of this long debate he had certainly listened to some very able speeches. There was the speech of the Hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. S. O'Brien), which he had cheered, sitting on that (the Opposition side of the House), quite as much as any one who had listened to it on the other side; he had never heard a speech which in point of delivery, feeling, and tone, and everything except the principle on which it was founded, he more admired. But strip it of its glitter, take away its appeals to the feeling, and it was but a petitio principii from the beginning to the end, a begging of the question. It proceeded on the assumption that the Legislature could protect all, that all would be richer and better by their acting on that system of legislation, and that upon this foundation could be built up a fabric of kindly and social relations. And if it were granted that they could thus make the people richer and happier, and if they could thus benefit all without doing injury to any, they had hitherto been the most blundering of mortals, and they had disregarded a most sacred duty when, instead of attempting the grand object, they had preferred an irksome attendance in that House and constant ameliorations. But how did the system work? They had partially tried it last year. It was admitted that if it were applied to any interest, it must be applied to all, that it must be universal. They had no right to apply it to wheat and to neglect barley; and so they were to go down to the smallest interests, which as being unable to protect themselves, had a greater claim to their special attention. They must go down to the smallest branches of the most unimportant manufactures. They had done an injustice in passing the tariff. If Hon. Members would recollect, they took off the duty from tare and clover seed, and yet when the Hon. Baronet the Member for Essex, (Sir J. Tyrrell) met the farmers of Essex, they said, "What have we to do with this reduction, ninety-nine farmers want tare seed where there is only one who grows it." There was the question of protection confined to the agricultural interests, and that was the answer of the farmers. This great principle then was most defective-it was a great humbug (laughter); they could not carry it out. What said a Noble Lord a friend of his-though he did not know whether he might still call him his friend, so great were the differences now between them, but one who had been his friend-Lord Dacre? He said that if they had a Free Trade in Corn they must have a Free Trade in cattle food. How could he have this without doing an injustice to some portion of the agricultural body, which grew food for cattle? If the measure which the Hon. Gentleman the Member for Winchester (Mr. B. Escott) had originated had been carried, and if maize had been introduced into this country, there would as a consequence be a lessened demand for oats and barley, and the farmers of Scotland and of the fens of Lincolnshire would be the sufferers. All other interests might be benefited, but one would receive a great injury. The truth was, they could not work out the principle,