and latitude and situation; relying ourselves on the freedom of our industry. Yes, we are going to teach the world that other lesson. Don't think there is anything selfish in this, or anything at all discordant with Christian principles. I can prove that we advocate nothing but what is agreeable to the highest behests of Christianity. To buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest. What is the meaning of the maxim? It means that you take the article which you have in the greatest abundance, and obtain from others that of which they have the most to spare, so giving to mankind the means of enjoying the fullest abundance of earth's goods, and in doing so carrying out to the fullest extent the Christian doctrine of "Doing to all men as ye would they should do unto you" (loud and prolonged cheering).

MR. SPOONER said, the Hon. Member who had just sat down had said that this debate was the fullest of extraneous matter of any he had ever known. The Hon. Member seemed determined to furnish an instance in his own speech, at the beginning of which any one who had dropped into the House, might have supposed that he was discussing the Reform Bill, and the propriety of the £50 clause. But he (Mr. Spooner) would ask whether a £50 tenant-at-will was not as well qualified and had not as good a right to vote as a £10 householder? (cheers). He would also ask the Hon. Member, when he spoke of the influence exerted by the landlords over their tenantry, whether he did not know that very much the same influence was exercised in quite as objectionable a manner by the master-manufacturers over their dependants. The Hon. Member had told the House that the landlords did not understand their position, that their authority rested on a very narrow basis, and that they would not have a majority in case of a dissolution. The present Parliament, he maintained, had been specially called to decide the question of protection to corn. An appeal was made to the nation to ascertain their opinion on that point, and what was the result? Why, a majority of 90 and upwards in favour of protection. Since that time, however, the great leaders of the Protection party had changed their opinions; their colleagues had also changed their opinions; and when men of such, well-known integrity of character, and such eminent station, changed their opinions, they necessarily carried with them a large portion of the public. It was important, therefore, to ascertain whether the change was confined to the Ministry and their adherents, or whether the public sympathized with them (hear, hear.) The Hon. Member then proceeded amidst considerable manifestations of impatience, to deny that in voting against going into Committee on this question he flinched from inquiry. If the proposition of the Right Hon. Gentleman (Sir R. Peel) had been to go into Committee on the Corn Laws, with a view to their modification, to that proposition he would have given his most unqualified consent, especially if it had been with a view to the adoption of a fixed duty, which he considered to be the only system which could now be rationally maintained; but he objected to going into Committee just now, because by doing so he would be pledged to the principle of a total repeal (continued expressions of impatience). The Hon. Member then proceeded to read a passage from a work written by Lord John Russell, but, in

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consequence of the noise that prevailed in the House, he was wholly inaudible in the gallery. The Hon. Gentleman was afterwards proceeding to make some further observations, but the cries of "Divide" became so loud that the Hon. Member yielded to the wish of the House, and sat down.

MR. P. BORTHWICK, who was received with loud shouts of "Oh! oh!" observed, that he could not give a silent vote on this occasion, and hoped to be permitted to make a very brief statement to the House. He considered that the question with that House and the constituencies who had sent them there, was not whether they ought to support her Majesty's Government, but whether the measure which Government had submitted to the House was a right or a wrong measure. He (Mr. Borthwick) had done his utmost towards overthrowing the Government of which the Noble Lord opposite was the leader in that House, and his opinions still remained unchanged. Had he changed them he would have felt himself bound to give his constituents an opportunity of expressing their sentiments on the subject. He had, however, not been convinced by the arguments of either of the Right Hon. Gentlemen, and he should therefore vote against this measure. He condemned the policy of the Government as a gross insult to common sense, because, allowing Protection to be thebane of agriculture," it proposed to continue that bane for three years longer. The Hon. Gentleman concluded by declaring his belief that though the Free Trade party had the head of the Right Hon. Baronet, they, the Protectionists, still possessed his heart. Throughout the whole of the Hon. Gentleman's address, the impatience of the House was extreme.

LORD G. BENTINCK asked the patience of the House while he endeavoured to answer some of the arguments that had been used on the other side. No man there felt more deeply his total unworthiness to ask that indulgence. As long as he had been in Parliament he had never ventured to trespass on the time of the House on any question of importance. They did not object to the present measure on account of the change it proposed to make with regard to agriculture; but it affected 1,100 articles of commerce; it was a great commercial revolution. They did not object only to the removal of protection from the agricultural interest, but to its removal from the silk trade, the shipping interest, and many other interests affected by the proposed tariff. The Right Hon. Secretary at War had called on the agricultural interest to accept this great change, while in his opinion it could be accepted, and before it should be extorted from them by force, and with the loss of character, station, and influence with the country. Would to God, he thought, it could be carried by this House of Commons consistent with its honour (hear, hear). While he thought it would be deeply injurious to all the great interests of the country, he confessed he thought it could only be carried by this Parliament with the loss of character, station, and influence with the country of many Gentlemen who sat on that side of the House. He willingly conceded to Gentlemen opposite that their honour was not concerned; they had been and still were the consistent advocates of Free Trade in corn, and in that House they redeemed the pledges they made when soliciting the suffrages

of the people (cheers). He was at a loss to understand upon what the Right Hon. Gentleman the Secretary at War based the extraordinary assertion that the present was not a Protection Parliament (cheers). Was it not, emphatically, upon the question whether they were to have the protection of a fixed duty of 8s. or a still higher protection, that, in 1841, her Majesty appealed to the people? There was no mistake about that fact (hear). It was not only the Right Hon. Gentleman now at the head of the Government, and then the leader of the Opposition, that could challenge his opponents and charge them that they were going to dissolve Parliament on the cry of "Cheap Bread" (cheers); his Right Hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department followed in his wake, and it was the latter that charged the then existing Government not only with that offence, but with "the malice of the Devil himself" (cheers and laughter). That Right Hon. Gentleman quoted at the time a speech addressed by Mr. Tierney to Mr. Canning in 1807, and in which the speaker charged that Minister with dissolving Parliament on the cry of "the Church in danger," and when ironically cheered for the quotation by the Noble Lord the Member for the city of London, the Right Hon. Bart. said that, bad as such a cry was, it was not half so maddening to an excited populace as the cry for "Cheap Bread" when raised from the Treasury benches (hear, hear). What cry was raised now from the Treasury benches? Had they not heard the old cry for "Cheap Bread," and had not pathetically and patriotically the Right Hon. Baronet declared that the question being a landlord's question, he would not consent to eke out his rents from the sufferings of the people (cheers). All knew the history of the dissolution of the last Parliament of the vote of "No confidence," -of the speech from the throne, in which her Majesty said, alluding to the Corn Laws, that on a question of such paramount importance to the trade and industry of the country, she had availed herself of the constitutional privilege of appealing to her people (cheers); and, when all that was borne in mind, it was not whether this member or that member was pledged to Protection, but it was that every member was, by that speech from the throne, bound to support that principle of national policy (cheers, and cries of "oh!"). The present House of Commons could not, therefore, carry any measure for the removal of protection to agriculture without immediate dishonour and lasting disgrace (loud cheers). The country, they might rely upon it, would not be satisfied with a three years' experiment of a system; and the Right Hon. Gentleman, therefore, argued to no purpose if he founded his belief of the efficacy of his changes on the experience alone of those few years. He had challenged the House to produce one single instance of failure either to the consumers or producers following upon a relaxation of duties, and he (Lord G. Bentinck) was ready to meet that challenge. They had heard the Hon. Member for Birmingham (Mr. Muntz), who was declared to be the manufacturer of no less than a seventh part of the whole manufacfacture of spelter in Great Britain, state, that the result, upon the producers of spelter and zinc of the relaxation of the duty upon the foreign importation of those articles, had been the ruin of every concern engaged in that manufacture in its raw state (hear).

That was one instance. Wool, strange to say, after a three years' experience, was to afford a reason for repealing the duty on Corn; whereas, in his speech in 1839, a speech never to be forgotten, the state of the trade, after twenty years' experience, was used by his Right Hon. Friend as an excellent argument why they should maintain the duty on corn. From the time when the duty of 6d. per lb. was placed on wool in December, 1819, to December, 1824, the price of wool remained steady and unvarying, at 1s. 6d. per lb. On the removal of the duty, in 1824, the price of wool did not rise; on the contrary, it fell in 1826 to 1s. per lb.; in 1827, it was 9d.; in 1828, it was 9d.; and in 1829, it was 9d. Thus he disposed of the argument respecting wool. When the 6d. duty was imposed, it did not interfere with the prosperity of the import trade, for, in 1820, the quantity imported was 10,000,000 lbs., and, in 1824, it was 22,000,000 lbs. In 1835, the price of wool was 1s. 10d.; in 1836, ls. 8d.; in 1837, ls. 9d.; in 1838, ls. 4d.; and in 1839, 1s. 3d. [The Noble Lord, in this part of his speech, dropped his voice so much, apparently from exhaustion, that he was scarcely audible.] In the course of the present discussion great reliance appeared to have been placed upon the supposed advantages which had been derived from a Free Trade in silk; but if the House only looked at the state of the silk trade during the years which elapsed between 1823 and 1845, they must see that that part of the argument on the other side had most signally failed. There were, as many Hon. Members well knew, three descriptions of silk, namely, raw silk, thrown silk, and the description of silk called dubs and husks. But it unfortunately happened that the supporters of the Government, in dealing with this part of the subject, had so confounded the three descriptions of silk, that nothing like an intelligible or satisfactory argument could be derived from the information laid before the House on that subject, and the result had been quite deceptive. He did not mean to use harsh language, but he could not help saying that the whole matter was an absolute delusion. Nothing could be more distinct from each other than were the three descriptions of silk; they were different in quality, and they paid separate rates of duty. Raw silk paid 5s. 6d., thrown silk 14s. 8d., while the duty on manufactured silk amounted to a prohibition; and yet that was the trade upon which so much reliance had been placed as affording the best justification of the commercial policy which the Right Hon. Baronet recommended to the House. He should now call the attention of Hon. Members to the operation of Free Trade upon the silk weavers, by bringing before them some portion of the evidence upon this subject, given before the committee of 1832. One witness was asked whether there was a change in the condition of the silk weavers in consequence of this change? and the reply was, very great; not only had there been a reduction of wages, but they had discharged a great many hands; many of these were women, some of whom had gone to the workhouse, whilst others, it was feared, had gone into a state of prostitution. And in reply to the question, in what way the deficiency in the earnings was made up, the reply was, that those who continued to be employed suffered great privations. Mr. Brocklehurst, a Member of the House, was

also examined, and he said that the workmen had been living in furnished houses, and had been amply provided for; at first they fell back on their little properties, which were gradually disposed of, and they were then reduced to a state of destitution; hundreds were without a change of clothes, many were without beds, with their clothes drawn over them; and at that time two-thirds of the people wanted the common necessaries of life. That was what Free Trade had done for the silk weavers (cheers and counter cheers). The duties had been reduced to a duty of about 30 per cent., but wages had been reduced to one half of their former amount. Up to 1823, when wages were regulated by act of Parliament, the men earned 2s. 4d. a day. In 1845, those wages were reduced to 1s. 2d., and they had received notice last Thursday week, that it was intended, in consequence of the reduction of duty, to reduce the wages from 1s. 2d. down to ls. (hear, hear); and the workmen, in their petition, declared the experience of twenty-five years had convinced them that cheap bread was of no use to man, woman, or child, unless they could earn good wages ("hear, hear," and cries for a division). Hon. Members must recollect that he was now acting with a party whose leaders had deserted them, and if he could not use his arguments with the same skill as Hon. Gentlemen on the Treasury benches, he trusted the House would show him their indulgence, not for himself, but for the sake of the great interests whose cause he supported (cheers). There had been a reduction in the wages on each piece of 3d. a yard, so that at the end of a year a man would earn 128s. less; and, as the estimate was that each man consumed one quarter of wheat a year, he left the House to decide how the weaver could maintain himself, his wife, and three children on his reduced wages; and he would ask what must be the difference in the price of wheat to enable the man to live with a loss of 3d. a yard on his manufacture? (hear, hear). The silk weavers would be better off on their old wages, with corn at 70s. a quarter, than with their reduced wages, even though there might be a reduction in the price of wheat, as the Right Hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department, on the 10th of June last, assured the House there would be on the opening of the trade, to 45s. a quarter. Great stress had been laid on the fact that opening the trade in corn would be beneficial to the rate of wages, and for the first time they had heard it laid down from the Treasury benches that the rate of wages had nothing to do with the price of corn; though he remembered an address to the landlords of England in which his Right Hon. Friend had laid down the proposition that the rate of wages necessarily assimilated itself to the price of corn. What had been the effect of wages when corn had fallen from 100s. to 50s. ? Had not wages fallen also? But what was the effect of that in Ireland? His Right Hon. Friend had told them that there was always the greatest distress there when provisions were cheapest (hear, hear), for then the farmer was without a market, the labourer without the means of purchase and without employment; and then came a scene of famine and destitution, and the application of legal force to prevent bloodshed. That was the picture drawn by the Right Hon. Baronet of the consequences of