rally employed on wages; they lived on the produce of their land; the potato was to them their chief subsistence during the period of the year in which they had no employment. Therefore, when it was stated that the people were unemployed, and that the potatoes on which they had relied were diseased, it was to be construed as a total failure in the means of subsistence for themselves and their families. And he thought the House would be satisfied that this was no ordinary case of distress; that it was an occasion which called upon the House to make those exertions to relieve that distress in which it had so readily concurred, and he believed that it would not give credit to the statements of the Right Hon Gentleman, and underrate the danger to the people. The Right Hon. Gentleman had said that this was not a moment for the means taken by the Government. He (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) knew not what means the Right Hon. Gentleman would have taken. He said he did not consider consequences, but went straight to his object. But the Right Hon. Gentleman was not responsible for public affairs, and for the measures necessary to relieve a whole people suffering under great distress, and he ought to make some allowance for those who were placed in a different situation, and were in the responsible position of being required to watch over the condition of that people, even if this be a measure brought forward without regard to political consistency, which the Right Hon. Gentleman thought so great a virtue. He (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) did not know how the Right Hon. Gentleman could reconcile it to himself not to propose some permanent measure to relieve the distress of the country, when the chief article of food there was in a state of decay, and when the effect of the taint would be felt for years to come; for the Hon. Member for Lincolnshire had said that he believed such would be the effect. He thought the Right Hon. Gentleman would have done well to have considered what expedient it were wise to pursue to prevent so great an evil. He ought not to have been content with saying "no" to the measure of the Government; but to have pointed out what other course it was proper to take to guard against a similar evil. As he upon a former occasion had an opportunity of addressing the House upon the question then before them, he should not at present enter into any further explanations. Seeing the danger which threatened the country, and considering that that danger was not likely to impend for a short, but rather for a considerable period, it did appear to him that nothing should be allowed to interfere with the food of the people; and, believing that a freer admission of food than they had hitherto enjoyed was not only necessary for their prosperity, but for their existence, he felt no hesitation in giving his concurrence to the measure then under the consideration of the House, however much opposed that measure might be to the opinions which he formerly entertained and expressed; and he should feel that he incurred a deep responsibility if he had taken any other course. He should feel that he incurred a very weighty responsibility indeed, if he allowed the desire of preserving political consistency to interfere for a single moment with a measure which he deemed essential to the subsistence of the people (hear, hear).

The EARL OF MARCH Complained, that the remarks of the Right

Hon. Gentleman who last addressed the House were most unjust as regarded him, and those who thought with him. If he and his friends had declared that they should oppose an extraordinary measure by extraordinary means, he confessed that he did not see how they could be justly censured for that. England had been under the influence of successive Corn Bills for more than 500 years; and he hoped they would not give up for a vain theory a system under which they had so long been prosperous. He was justified in calling it a vain theory, and he could refer them to the speeches of the present Secret. tary for the Colonies, especially those delivered by him in 1842, in the course of which that Right Hon. Gentleman said it was of great practical importance that a reasonable protection should be given to the agricultural interests of the country. Again, the Right Hon. Baronet at the head of the Government told them in 1842, that though it was necessary that they should, to some extent, be dependent upon foreign supplies, yet they ought not to permit themselves to be wholly in their power-they should not permit themselves to be exposed to the hostility or the caprice of any foreign Government, or to the chances of the crops failing in any part of the world. that doctrine was good in 1842, it was equally so at the present moment. He regretted to find that the question of the Corn Laws was often argued as if it were a landlord's question, but he conceived it to be one which equally interested the labourer, the yeoman, the mechanic, and the tradesman. He protested against placing in jeopardy not only the owners and occupiers of land, but also the agricultural labourers, the shopkeepers in the rural districts, and the manufacturers who supplied our colonies or the home market. It was his duty, therefore, to the respectable constituents who had sent him to that House to oppose a measure which would create a panic, and which departed from safe, sound, and deliberate legislation (hear, hear).

If

MR. FINCH moved that the debate be adjourned till Thursday, which was put and agreed to.

THURSDAY, MARCH 26.

MR. FINCH said that it was unfair to ask a party not invested with power what course they, as Protectionists, would take if in office; but he would say that the principle they would maintain would be the good old English principle of Protection, under which the country had hitherto flourished. Whether that should be by a fixed duty or a sliding scale would not lead to any great difference of opinion. Nothing could be more constitutional, however, than to reject a measure containing such sweeping changes as the present, and to force an appeal to the country. The measure, indeed, involved a fivefold revolution. A social revolution, because the effect of Free Trade would be to do away with the Poor Laws; a commercial revolution, because it would take away what had hitherto been the bond of union between the mother country and the colonies; a financial revolution, because it would shake public credit, and, by laying the public burdens on the rich, dry up the sources of industry; and a political revolution in a double aspect, because it would transfer the pre-eminence to the manufacturing

classes, and favour democracy by making the Crown more dependent on the will of the favoured portion of the community. A Minister who proposed such changes incurred great responsibility (hear, hear); and if he consulted his own permanent interest, he would desire to devolve a small portion of that responsibility on the shoulders of the people. The interests affected were far more numerous than were at first sight supposed. According to Mr. M'Culloch there were 200,000 owners of land in England and Wales, and 150,000 tenant-farmers. Taking each family at three persons, this would give 1,000,000 persons. The agricultural labourers with their wives and families were 4,000,000, and those in villages occupied in trades dependent upon the agriculturists were 2,600,000; so that there were 7,000,000 engaged in, or dependent on, agriculture, or one-half of the whole population; and taking the capital employed, if there were a depreciation of twenty per cent., the annual loss to those agriculturists would be £5,000,000. No reliance could be placed on the prognostications of the Right Hon. Baronet. The bullion and the Roman Catholic questions had shown his mutability, and the results had falsified his predictions. His last proposal seemed to have great favour with him; but orators, as well as writers, were apt to misjudge the relative value of their own works. The more consideration he gave to the bill, the more strong was his conviction that it was the most pernicious measure ever submitted to the British Parliament. He hoped the Protectionists, both in and out of that House, would persevere, and nail the colours of Protection to the mast, and that, if they did fall, they would fall as honest and patriotic men ought to do,-at the post of duty.

LORD RENDLESHAM contended that the Right Hon. Baronet ought to have afforded the constituencies of the country an opportunity of expressing their opinion on this subject. After reading a long letter addressed by Mr. Huskisson to his constituents in 1814, in favour of the protective system established by the Corn Law of 1815, the Noble Lord proceeded to contend that as, in the agricultural districts, the rate of wages was regulated by the price of corn, the present measure would have a most injurious effect upon the labouring population. The light land which had been brought into cultivation under a system of remunerative prices must also be converted into pasture land. He might mention that at a recent meeting of tenant-farmers in an agricultural district, they were so much dissatisfied with the proceedings of the House, and with the manner in which their interests were represented, that they expressed their determination, at the next election, to bring forward a tenant-farmer as their representative,

MR. FELLOWES said he was returned to Parliament to support the principle of Protection, and he had not heard anything which had induced him to change his opinion. Certainly, if he had seen reason to abandon those principles he should have felt it his duty to resign into the hands of his constituents the trust they had committed to him. The present Ministers must not imagine that the question was now settled. An appeal must be made to the people in the course of time, and then the people would express their

opinion in plain terms. He believed that the country would rather have a Government radically disposed, checked by a strong Conservative party, than a Government saying one thing to-day and doing another to-morrow.

MR. FULLER believed that the security of all property would be injured by the measures proposed; and if they were carried, Englan would be reduced to the condition of Ireland, and there would be safety for life or property.

MR. BORTHWICK observed, that the Hon. Member for Lambeth (Mr. Hawes) had urged on the other night that the period from 1787 to 1792, during which the variation in the price of wheat never exceeded 7s., proved the advantage of Free Trade in corn in producing a steady price. But, in fact, those years were an argument for Protection; they were not years of Free Trade, either practical or theoretical, but of protected trade, there being a duty on imports and a bounty on exports. He felt it his duty to vote against the measure, not from any wish to see a new party in the state, but because he thought the measure would be most seriously injurious to the country.

MR. C. BULLER assured the Hon. Member for Evesham that he was not one of those who complained of Hon. Gentlemen following the wisdom of their ancestors; what he complained of was, that they did not follow their "wisdom;" but selected the most unwise things our ancestors did as the ground of their policy, to the neglect really of the landmarks of true wisdom which they had left us. He thought that Hon. Gentlemen below the gangway, in blaming Ministers for their inconsistency on this question, threw blame on their own want of perception, for he was sure there were abundant indications in all the debates year after year, that the convictions of the Right Hon. Baronet (Sir R. Peel) on the subject of the Corn Laws were undergoing a great alteration; he yielded one argument after another, till it became a general remark on that (the Opposition) side of the House-" Upon what will the Corn Laws be left standing?" (hear, hear). The fact was, that for the last few years they stood upon nothing more secure than the annual promise which the Duke of Richmond extorted from Ministers that they would not be altered that year. With the convictions of the Right Hon. Gentleman, then, weakening in favour of the Corn Laws, how did circumstances operate in the autumn of last year? Some Gentlemen opposite laughed at the arguments which had been drawn from the Irish famine, and said that it afforded no justification of the change whatever. Now, here he must say that he thought Hon. Gentlemen opposite had shown some of that inconsistency with which they were so ready to reproach others; for they had not remained of the same mind with reference to the deficiency in Ireland during the course of these debates. There was nothing more marked than the tone of those Gentlemen on this subject in the first debate; they readily admitted the distress in Ireland, and held that Ministers were bound to provide for it by the opening of the ports; and it was not until they found that this admission had completely cut away their other arguments from under their feet that they bethought themselves of ringing forward Gentlemen to deny the existence of the famine

(hear, hear). It was admitted pretty generally that the potato disease would, it was more than likely, affect the next year's crop as well as the present. Well, the Government with that fear before them, must, if they opened the ports to meet the existing emergency, have felt the probability of their being obliged again to open them next vear. It would have been impossible for them to have withstood the increasing force of public opinion, thus accelerated by their own acts. The course which the Right Hon. Baronet had pursued in the face of so much obloquy was the course of a truly wise statesman. Never had he shown a more sagacious insight into the true Conservative policy than when he proposed to Repeal the Corn Laws, which had been the cause of so much heart-burning among the people of this country (cheers).

LORD G. BENTINCK was surprised that the Hon. Gentleman, when he looked to Prussia, France, and the United States, could say the united sense of all mankind was in favour of Free Trade. As well might he mistake the three tailors of Tooley-street for the people of England. It had been proved that the famine in Ireland was a gross delusion (cheers from the Protection benches). When it was mentioned in the Queen's speech, the House was disposed to listen to so high an authority. They had since had opportunities for inquiry; and the result of the returns laid before them from 414 market-towns in Ireland was, that the average price of potatoes there was a fraction under 4d. a-stone. Such being the case, Hon. Gentlemen would not persuade the people of England that there was a potato famine in Ireland. The returns referred to were dated the 24th of January, and since then the price of potatoes had been falling rather than rising. He held in his hand, as further refutation of statements advanced, returns of the price of potatoes in nineteen market-towns in Ireland during the present month, up to the 24th instant; from these he found that in four towns the price had risen; in five it had fallen; and in the remaining localities the price was exactly the same as on the 24th of January. And when they found, as they did find, that, notwithstanding the low price in England, potatoes were still exported, with a profit, from Ireland, were they not justified in believing and in stating that there never had been a more gross delusion than that which had been encouraged by the Government? (cheers). With great difficulty he had succeeded, on another evening, in pressing the Right Hon. Baronet (Sir R. Pee!) to a confession that it was his opinion, that if Free Trade in Corn had existed in the year 1836, when, as the Right Honourable Baronet had stated, the average price of wheat was 35s., the effect would not have been to create a still greater reduction in the price (hear, hear). Now, in the year 1836, he (Lord G. Bentinck) had found that wheat could have been imported, taking the average prices in the markets of ten different countries in Europe, and brought into Mark-lane at 32s. 114d., and the average price in England of English wheat being, not, as was stated, 35s., but 46s., it was consequently clear that foreign wheat could have been sold at 13s. cheaper than the home produce. And the London prices being 3s. higher than elsewhere in the country, was the assertion of the Right Hon. Baronet borne out by the fact? (hear). In 1835 the