to which they were equally incited by the Right Hon. Gentleman, or with a change of opinion every whit as great, and as amply acknowledged, by the Noble Lord. On the other hand, what was it that they proposed who were opposed to the present measure? What was their policy? What did they design?-a new fixed duty, a new sliding scale?-this one they had condemned. He knew not what was their policy, but if he wanted to find a comparison for them who relied on the unsafe and unsteady protection of Corn Laws, he should say that they were like Milton's Norway fisherman, who anchored his boat on the back of a whale (hear, hear).

LORD EBRINGTON regretted, that though we had the prospect of a total Repeal of the Corn Laws, we were to be cursed with a three years' sliding scale, against which the Noble Member for London (Lord J. Russell) so prophetically warned the House on the 14th of February, 1842, as not being adapted to a harvest in which the quality of the crop varied. It was unwise to preserve this vestige of a pernicious system, which had, in fact, nothing to do with protection, but which doubled the uncertainties of trade, by making the importer unable to calculate either when or at what price he should be able to sell; and the Government thus, while conceding in substance to the Anti-Corn Law League, left enough to justify the continuance of the agitation. The present season too was peculiarly favourable for the total repeal, there being no great accumulations abroad; whereas there would very likely be a store got ready to be brought into competition at the end of three years. If he were called upon to suggest a measure for settling this matter, it would be one in accordance with the opinions of a gentleman who stood high in the estimation of all who had considered this subject he meant Mr. Scriven. He would appoint real property commissioners to go into the whole subject, recommending that they should take steps to assimilate the condition of England with respect to the facility of dealing with landed property to the state of matters on the continent, where it was transferred from hand to hand as easily as the three per cent. consols in this country; so that by degrees all classes would come to have an interest in the welfare and safety of the owners of the soil.

MR. RASHLEIGH appealed to the Right Hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government if he was determined to yield to the unscrupulous and unconstitutional demands made upon him by the Anti-Corn Law League. He considered that if the measure of the Government passed it would be neither more nor less than a bonus to further agitation. The Hon. Gentleman then read a letter from one of his constituents in East Cornwall who employs about 3,000 persons, in order to show that in that county the measures of Government were not approved of; and concluded by stating that, however painful, he felt it to be his duty to withdraw all his confidence from the Right Hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government, as he could not allow himself to be drawn through the muck and mire of expediency to adopt the new notions of the Right Hon. Gentleman.

MR. F. BARING said, that though some of the points started by his Noble Friend (Lord Ebrington) were not unworthy of discussion,

yet, seeing good in the Government measure, and the seeds of future good, he should give it his cordial support. One thing had developed itself in the course of the debate the determination of a large body of Members to form a party acting independently of the Government, and independently of the parties into which the House was usually divided. To those gentlemen he should wish to put a question as to the course they were about to pursue. Honourable Gentlemen, he thought with his Hon. and Learned Friend the Member for Liskeard,-when they chose a leader and joined themselves together into a party, were bound to express to the House the course they were inclined to pursue. It was in no feeling of personal disrespect that he addressed Hon. Gentlemen opposite. It was no surprise to him to see-and he had seen with pleasure the spirit and talent with which they had fought the battle in the disadvantageous circumstances into which they had been cast; but he asked what they proposed to do with the present Corn Law? It was very well for an individual to rise up and oppose the measures of the Government, but it would be almost presumptuous in an individual to propose a different course, for he could have no power to carry out his views; and accordingly no one Member could be justly called on to state his views; but it was not so with a party; and if Hon. Gentlemen rejected the present measure, let them state what was the measure they were prepared as a party to lay before the country. He wished to ask them if they thought they could go to the country upon the question of a fixed duty? And if they thought they could not, he would like to know to what kind of a sliding scale they were to attach themselves? He wished to ask the Noble Lord (Lord George Bentinck), who was the leader of the party, and who had shown so much ability in addressing the House, to have the goodness to state to that House and the country, not in figurative language, but in plain prose, the business scheme by which he was prepared to stand. He (Mr. Baring) would also like to know what was the expectation they had of the result of their opposition to this measure? It was quite clear that the opinion of this House was in favour of the measure of her Majesty's Government; but he believed that some expectation was entertained by Hon. Gentlemen opposite that the bill would he thrown out in another place. Now, he would ask those Hon. Gentlemen whether they had counted the cost of the opposition which they were about to court? (hear, hear). Some Hon. Gentlemen proposed to meet the difficulties of the case by an appeal to the country. But he begged to be allowed to ask them, even if they succeeded in their appeal to the country, were they perfectly certain they would secure Protection? He would suppose that they had succeeded in filling the Treasury bench with men perfectly able to meet those who now occupied that bench as well as those who formerly occupied it. He would suppose that they had secured a majority in that House; but had they no other enemy to encounter? He entreated them to look for a moment, independent of party, to the whole course of every Government since 1815. If they looked to the history of the administration of commerce they would find one continued course of relaxation. One Administration might have gone quicker, and another might have gone slower; but

whether it was the Government of Lorde Right Hon. Gentleman,
whatever Administration they might chit as great, and as amply
find in the commercial policy of each he other hand, what was it
What did he (Mr. Baring) draw from thresent measure? What
was a Free Trade influenza in Downing-strenew fixed duty, a new
(loud cries of "hear, hear"). However able or He knew not what
be those who formed a Government for the purposon for them who
the principle of Protection, he (Mr. Baring) had no taws, he should
as to the result, they would soon find themselves cho anchored
follow the principles of their predecessors (hear). Agita
not the true cause of the defeat of those who advocated the pret of
of Protection; it was reason, justice, truth, by which they were
betrayed. They were silently undermined by the stream of time,
because their castle was built upon the sand (cheers).

MR. SHAW said, his object in rising was to refer to some of the official documents that had been laid on the table relating to the apprehended famine and fever in Ireland. Some time since he had stated his opinion in that House, that the potato failure in Ireland had been exaggerated, and that her Majesty's Government had been misled into an undue alarm by the reports which they had received. He was well aware of the unpopularity of such a statement; but in a matter of such grave importance he felt it a duty to state what he in all sincerity believed. He fully joined in declaring that any failure of the potato crop in Ireland (and he admitted there had been some) was a great aggravation of the ordinary misery of the people; and he had given a ready support to those measures of the Government which had had for their object to give employment to the unemployed, food to the hungry, and medical attendance to the sick poor. Still he thought the evil had been exaggerated. He did not accuse either the Government, or those by whom they had been misled, of intentional exaggeration; but that there had been, in fact, exaggeration--that the Government had, in fact, been misled, he now again asserted, and he was prepared to prove. With regard to the paper headed “Disease” (Ireland), presented to the House on the 13th of the present month, introduced so pompously and with such threats of extinguishing his (Mr. Shaw's) representations by the immense impression it was to make upon the House. He (Mr. Shaw) lamented that even so much sickness and apprehension of sickness prevailed at the present time in Ireland as that return set forth, but he did not recollect a year in which at that season the same might not be said with truth of the sanatory condition of that country, and a more complete failure of the promise, as compared with the performance, to establish any alarming increase of fever as the consequence of famine he had never met with (hear, hear). The paper was headed" The most serious representations made by the several medical superintendents of public institutions." He believed the medical superintendents of public institutious in Ireland were in number nearly 700, and all the extracts given in the paper in answer, he presumed, to a circular, only amounted to 108. He (Mr. Shaw) had analyzed these, and he found of the 108 that only 29 gave any positive opinion that fever or other epidemic had been caused by scarcity of food. Six, who reported that fever had appeared, de

1

ON THE (

of Members to form a

yet, seeing good in the Gove not owing to the scarcity of food; others attributed
good, he should give it his Pprehension of disease to various other causes;
itself in the course of the her, bad habitations, insufficient clothing, and, above
eployment (hear, hear). The following extracts, which
at random, afforded fair specimens of what these
ment, and independentions" principally were:-" Apprehends fever in dis-
usually divided.
rongly recommends establishment of a fever hospital."
tion as to the fle-bodied men and an equal number of women, besides many
Gentlemen,- farmers, are seeking employment. Apprehends breaking out

Member for

isease.

themselve
The people being unemployed, are unable to purchase
3d. Outbreak of fever frequent in summer months, and spreads
House
rapidly for want of an hospital.""5,000 or 6,000 poor unemployed.
Breaking out of disease apprehended in the spring and summer.
Suggests the erection of a fever hospital in districts where destitu-
tion is heavily felt. Medical district of officer embraces a diameter
of 12 miles from his residence." Nothing could be more natural,
nor more just, than that medical officers should recommend the
establishment of fever hospitals, and a better provision for the sick
poor in districts where no doubt such were wanting, and that seemed
to him the whole drift of the return (hear). He had then en-
deavoured to show, from the market prices of potatoes throughout
Ireland, which should be the best criterion; from a comparison of
the Government's own reports; and from an analysis of the fever
return, that there was at present nothing approaching to a famine in
Ireland. From all this, it is evident that fears have been magnified
not a little. The Right Hon. Baronet, too, at the head of the
Government, had rested so great a part of the case of his present
measure on the foundation of the potato failure in Ireland, that he
(Mr. Shaw) felt the more justified in dwelling upon it (hear); but,
for his own part, if he were to admit that the failure had been to
the utmost extent represented, he still should be at a loss to under
stand why the whole commercial policy of a great empire should have
been changed to meet a casualty which in this climate every think-
ing man who had supported the existing system of Corn Laws must
always have contemplated as possible; and, if the system was good
for anything, it must have been good to provide against contingen-
cies to which they were constantly subject. He (Mr. Shaw) still
believed the measure would be disastrous to the best interests of
England; but still more unquestionably so to Ireland (cheers).
When he saw that in the year ending the 5th of January last, there
had been imported into Great Britain from Ireland upwards of
3,250.000 quarters of corn and flour of Irish growth, he could not
comprehend those new political economists who said, if by the repeal
of the Corn Laws you removed the artificial price that was then paid
for their corn in England, it would be left at home for the poor Irish
farmers and their own families to eat (hear, hear). The Hon.
Member here made a quotation from Hansard of a speech of the
Right Hon. Baronet the First Lord of the Treasury in 1841; and
then proceeded to say that the gentlemen sitting around him (Mr.
Shaw) acted on a simple principle, which, but for them, would have
become obsolete to support what they thought right, and oppose
what they deemed wrong (hear, hear). They incurred none of the

M M

responsibility of a change of opinions, occasioned by expediency, and not by conviction; they had no thoughts of, or wishes for office (cheers); and they were, nevertheless, by no means so apprehensive as the Right Hon. Gentleman opposite of an appeal to the country (cheers). If the measure was to become law, he (Mr. Shaw) earnestly hoped that his anticipations of its ill effects might not be realized (hear). But at least throughout the present generation the mode of carrying it would remain an indelible disgrace to English statesmanship (cheers). It had not only shaken all public confidence in public men, but the ramifications of its evils were absolutely untraceable (cheers). It had not only broken party ties and destroyed personal friendships, but, setting constituents against their representatives, friend against friend, father against son, and son against father (cheers), it had convulsed all the relations of social and domestic life (cheers). They must all participate of the evil, they would all share the sorrow; but the consolation of himself and those friends who sat around him would be, that they escaped the degradation. [The Right Hon. Gentleman was loudly cheered on resuming his seat.]

The CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER presumed that the cheers with which the concluding remarks of his Right Hon. Friend had been received by those around him were chiefly to be ascribed to the peroration of his speech, in which he animadverted with his accustomed severity upon the conduct of those with whom he was formerly connected, and to whom he was at present opposed. He first stated that the accounts on the table represented nothing more than the ordinary state of scarcity in Ireland (hear). And what was his inference from this? That with a population suffering under this degree of starvation, which every day's account confirmed in the strongest manner, with a great increase in sickness, arising from destitution— then the Government came forward and asked for means for adding to the quantity of food in the country, so as to prevent the future recurrence of this calamity. The Right Hon. Gentleman thought it consistent with his duty to object to the measures of the Government, the purpose of which was a more extensive introduction of food, and the diffusion of comfort among the population. Let him read to the House what were the statements with respect to the population of Ireland at this moment-whether it was the ordinary state or not. He would begin with the most favoured part of Ireland,-Ulster. From Market-hill the report was, · Fever, diarrhoea, and dyspepsia have increased considerably, and are in many cases traceable to the use of unsound potatoes. It is very probable that fever will break out and spread, especially among the lower orders." From Belturbet, in Cavan, the report was, Dyspepsia, dysentery, and diarrhea, caused by unsound food; cottiers are without even tainted potatoes for food; many unemployed poor are in a starving condition; breaking out of disease, arising from scarcity of food." From the Tullagh Dispensary, Clare, the reports were " Fever patients have increased near two-thirds, compared with the last year; many of the poor unemployed; potatoes daily getting worse." This statement mentioned the want of employment. What was want of employment in Ireland when food was scarce? The people of Ireland were not gene

66