after a vast number of important questions which attached a man to that it aparty. Undoubtedly, in early life, he had never attached himconstituen o the party of the First Lord of the Treasury, and he had not terests of th me his supporter till in 1836 he had seen the necessity of joining personal standard, and ever since he had admired the wisdom and integrity S his course. He must say, also, that throughout America he had found but one feeling among the friends of peace, who said that if we would only interest, by prosperity, the western states of America, which were invulnerable to our arms, and inaccessible to our commerce for we had already the interests of the eastern states in our favour-we should do more to promote the peace of America than all the concessions we should make in the Oregon or elsewhere. He had received a letter from a very intelligent merchant at Boston, who said that the effect of the proposed alteration in the tariff would be that England would completely fortify herself against all competition in manufactures. Again, it was not the experience of the three prosperous years of 1843, 1844, and 1845, but the experience of the three famine years of 1840, 1841, and 1842, that had convinced the Right Hon. Baronet of the inutility of the sliding scale. And it was upon those grounds he should support the second reading of this bill.

CAPTAIN BERKELEY said that he had entered the House believing that the Corn Laws, as they were then constituted, were for the good of the country, though he had always voted with the Hon. Member for Wolverhampton, for an inquiry into them, as he conceived that such an inquiry was just and right. However, when he found that the Noble Lord whose political opinions had generally guided his own, united with the Right Hon. Gentleman opposite, who he might say, was one of the greatest statesmen of his time, for one purpose, in which neither of them, especially the Right Hon. Gentleman, could have any personal interest, he (Captain Berkeley), as a practical man, without pretending to understand, as some Hon. Gentlemen opposite had pretended to understand, political economy, felt himself bound to give way to the Right Hon. Baronet, and to vote in favour of this bill.

SIR R. H. INGLIS said there were two features of the Government scheme-one was that it would be an immense cost to the country; and the second, that it would be attended with injury to the titheowner. On the 1st of February, 1849, the revenue would exhibit a loss of £1,500,000 from the measures now proposed. As to tithes, they were the oldest legal right in the country, and when they were abandoned, as they recently were, the tithe-owner had the strongest moral as well as legal claim upon those who profited by the exchange. The landowner might by an improved state of agricultural science, get the same rent for his land as at present, although he (Sir R. Inglis) could not be brought to believe it (hear, hear). But the tithe-owner was excluded from this. He received an unvarying quantity, at varying prices, and if the measures of the Government reduced the price of corn to the extent anticipated, he would be, in many cases, absolutely ruined. How the Government could reconcile this measure with a sense of justice towards the titheowner, he did not know. Tenterden steeple had been said to be the

cause of Goodwin Sands, and he saw just as much connexion between the distress of Ireland and the measures on the table of the House for the relief of that distress. He was not prepared to forget the claims of the agricultural interest to the protection they enjoyed in common, he believed, with the same class in every other country. As an advocate of protection to native industry, he should give his cordial support to the amendment before the House (cheers).

MR. CHILDERS said the price of bread was lower in England than anywhere, and the price of corn was not much higher. The price of bread, according to the foreign consuls' returns, was much lower in London than in Antwerp, Ostend, Dantzic, or Odessa, and at Marseilles, a port at no great distance from Odessa, in October, November, and December, last year, the price of corn was higher than it was in this country. If this measure passed, and a Free Trade in Corn were sanctioned, although we might draw our supplies from Dantzic, Odessa, and other places, when corn was cheap, he was satisfied, from the great demand which existed in this country, that prices would not fall below what they were under the present system. As an agriculturist he felt no hesitation in supporting the second reading of the bill. He believed that our adoption of the principle of Free Trade would lead to an amelioration of the tariffs of all other nations, for he was convinced they would be induced to imitate the example we thus set them.

On the motion of LORD POLLINGTON the debate was then adjourned.

TUESDAY, MARCH 24.

On the order of the day for the resumption of the debate on the second reading of the Corn Importation Bill being read,

LORD POLLINGTON said it was his painful duty to vote upon this question against Her Majesty's Government, and he must ask the indulgence of the House whilst he attempted to explain the reasons for that vote. The conclusions he had formed were quite independent of any party. He admitted that those who called for Protection were bound to show that, under that system, there would be a sufficient supply of food at reasonable prices, and they were prepared to show that there would be. Before removing Protection the Right Hon. Baronet ought to have removed all the burdens and disabilities of the farmer, who must apply science to cultivation, and must for that end give an expensive education to his sons, and those who had the good fortune to possess land adapted to that cultivation ought to be allowed to grow hops and tobacco. He sincerely hoped that the measure of the Right Hon. Baronet, would be as successful as it could possibly be, and that our example would be followed by other countries. With regard to Russia, some tendency had been shown there towards Free Trade; but this example other countries were not likely to follow. In France no doubt there were liberal men in the Chambers; but such men as Guizot were not the true exponents of public opinion in France on the subject of Free Trade. No one could lament more sincerely than he did the failure of the crops in Ireland, yet he hoped and believed that the extent of that failure

was by no means so great as it had been represented. But, be that as it might, the House ought not to hold out to the country any expectation that a temporary remedy would suffice for that which could not be otherwise regarded than as a source of permanent evil. He regretted to think that this unhappy question had produced more differences between members and their constituents than perhaps any other question that could be named. He had seen one letter from a member to his constituents, in which the writer said, that though those who returned him had asked no pledge, yet he felt that under present circumstances he ought not to retain his seat and vote for the Ministerial measure. That was the case of more members than one, and a very painful case it was. For his part, however, he had resolved to vote against the measure, and nothing should induce him to depart from that principle.

MR. PLUMPTRE considered the measure very rash and very perilous; and even to those who expected the most from it he doubted not that it would prove insufficient and unsatisfactory. Notwithstanding all that had been said about the low price of grain having no influence on the rate of wages, he denied this altogether, and was able to say from long experience as a farmer, that the rates of wages were very materially affected by the prices of corn. Amongst other objections to the bill he entertained a strong opinion that it would have a most injurious effect upon the interests of the tithe-owners. They ought not to make an alteration of the Corn Laws without altering the Tithe Commutation Act. He had been called upon to vote for this bill on account of the poor, but he believed that he should be most widely and most permanently promoting the prosperity of the whole people by giving this measure his most determined opposition (hear, hear).

MR. HAWES referred to the petitions from the large towns, praying that this measure should pass without unnecessary delay, as proving that there was nothing perilous or rash in the Government proposals, and that they would promote the general prosperity and welfare of the country. He must tell Hon. Gentlemen on the Protectionist benches that there never had been a great question agitated by members of any mark or note which had met with so little of public sympathy as their opposition. Where was the sympathy with them in the silk trade? Where were the petitions from the consumers of timber opposing Her Majesty's Ministry? The general opinion was, that, taken as a whole, these measures were highly conducive to the public welfare; and, in obstructing them, Hon. Gentlemen had not sufficiently studied the temper and spirit of the times. He (Mr. Hawes) would frankly say that he expected a much lower average price of corn under the operation of the present bill than we had hitherto had in this country (hear, hear). But he was also of opinion that it could be borne by the English agriculturist, who, in the diminished cost of production and the increased amount of produce, could afford to grow wheat to a profit at a much lower price. In 1836, one witness examined before the agricultural committee of that year gave it as his opinion that wheat could be grown to a profit by the British farmer at 40s. a quarter, and he (Mr. Hawes) believed it could. The operation of the Corn Laws upon our social system

had been most mischievous. Its tendency had been to diminish profits, and thereby to stimulate the manufacturer to invent new machinery and adopt more economical processes. No doubt the manufacturing system carried with it large social evils, which it was the object of the House to counteract, but they were mainly attributable to the course of legislation in that House. Whenever you interfered with the profits of trade in this great country, similar results would happen. He should give Her Majesty's Ministers his cordial and entire support on this question. He believed that the present measure would be received with gratitude by the great mercantile and manufacturing interests, and that it would remove many of the social evils under which this country laboured (hear, hear).

SIR J. TROLLOPE said the Hon. Member who had just sat down had assumed that the people of this country were unanimous in favour of the present bill. But in his part of the country (South Lincolnshire), which was a purely agricultural district, the unanimity was entirely the other way, for he had found but one individual who held up his hand in favour of the Government measures. The agriculturists in the county with which he was connected had not been behindhand in providing for the food of the people. He could not call to mind a single piece of waste and unenclosed land in the part of the county he represented, except in the borough of Stamford, where the rights of the freemen had prevented the enclosure. There had been a great increase in the productiveness of this district. From information he had obtained from the inspectors and clerks of markets in his own county, he found that in the 14 years from 1828 to 1842 there had been an increase of 70 per cent. in the article of wheat alone (hear, hear). Since that period there had been so much additional drainage effected, so much breaking up of inferior pasture land, and the use of artificial manures, that a great further increase must have taken place in the productiveness of that county. He might safely take the increase during the last 16 or 18 years at 100 per cent. (hear, hear). The population of that district had not increased at a greater ratio than 20 per cent., and there was therefore an increase of produce amounting to 20 per cent. applicable to other districts, to Manchester, Newcastle, Leeds, and London. The access to those markets had hitherto been by the circuitous and expensive route of coasting and canal navigation. But the agriculturist was not permitted to get cheaper ships from the Baltic and the Rhine to carry his produce to market. We knew that foreign ships could be built and manned more cheaply than ours, but there was no Free Trade proposed in this respect. Although he differed from Her Majesty's Government on many points of their policy, he must say he thought they had adopted a wise and judicious course with regard to Ireland, in having-with a cautious, and almost sparing handafforded means of employment to the people, not as a gift, but as a loan (hear, hear). He could not consider that the present Free Trade measures of Her Majesty's Ministers would settle this question. If they intended to be successful they must go on in the course they were pursuing; for they could not relieve the commercial portion of the community from restrictions without extending similar relief to the agriculturists; and till this was done there would be no

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settlement of the question. The agriculturists had been charged with neglecting the poor; but he would state that in no district were the poor better off than in the extensive agricultural district he had the honour to represent. During the last 26 years the wages he, as a landowner, had paid to his labourers, varied from 9s. to 15s. a-week. The average amount of wages was 12s., and that was the present rate, but the better class of labourers could earn a larger sum. If, however, the present bill was adopted, the consequent restriction of cultivation would necessarily compel the farmers to reduce their expenses; and that reduction would first be applied to the wages of the labourer (hear, hear). He had felt it his duty to his constituents to express their views and his own on this subject, and he would give his strenuous opposition to the measure of Her Majesty's Government. SIR J. HANMER said he agreed with the Right Hon. Member for the county of Perth, who spoke last night, that it was desirable for and justifiable for others who supported this measure, and were wholly dependent upon the land, to rise and state their reasons, lest it should be thought simply an emanation of that enormous money confederacy," of which his Hon. Friend the Member for Cambridgeshire had spoken rather bitterly. That Hon. Gentleman invoked justice to aid him in support of what he believed to be protection, which yet he did not regard as equal in endurance to justice; for he contemplated the possibility of this Corn Law being repealed that was, rendered unnecessary by time. And therefore, his Hon. Friend opened all the question, of whether this was not the time at which it should be repealed by Parliament, looking at the condition of agriculture, which it might be was able now, in its own interests, best understood, to dispense with the existing system of what was called Protection. He thought the condition of the world, at home and abroad, rendered it full time. He believed it was necessary that a great example should be shown of what the true policy of such a country as this really was, and the example was not without its fruits even now. The revenues and expenditure of England and France had been contrasted by Baron Charles Dupin; and since the opinion of foreigners had been called the voice of cotemporary posterity-at all events it was uninfluenced by party and personal topics, and by philippics, such as one heard occasionally in that House, but looked to the main current of affairs, and took its judgment thence,-let them see whether, in the policy of this country, influenced as it had been for a long series of years by the Right Hon. Gentleman, governed as it was by him now, there was any inconsistency apparent to Baron Dupin. So far from it, he saw but one object steadily pursued from 1815 to the present day; and when he drew his conclusion and his comparison with the contrary system in his own country, it was not in favour of France. The case of the Government was that great public emergency called on them to proceed. He believed that this was true. On the one hand, reason, experience, the concurrent voice of statesmen, the warnings of many years, the accents of 1842, stronger and deeper than them all, and which sounded in the ears of this Parliament, called upon this Parliament, rather than on any other, to take the steps to which they were incited by the Government, before which party spirit bowed its head,