his opinion, that this measure was inconsistent with the interests of the-tithe owners. Nothing could be more accurate than the statement which the Hon. Member made, that under the Commutation Act, that tithe is an invariable quantity, though the price is variable. In my opinion, the very accuracy of the statement disposes of the question so far as the tithe-owners are concerned. Under the Tithe Commutation Act an invariable quantity is secured, whatever may be the change of cultivation, the only variation is in the price. Now, observe; before the Tithe Commutation Act, the tithe-owner was not only exposed to a variation of price-because if he took his tithe in kind, he was liable to the variation of price-but also to a great variation in quantity; whilst under the Tithe Commutation Act, he is free from that variation in quantity to which he was before exposed, and he is liable only to that variation of price from which he was not before exempt (hear, hear). That is my answer to the objection of the Hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford. I will now refer to the damage likely to arise to agriculture, and I must here say that the prosperity of the home trade has been almost invariably concurrent with the improvement of the land, with the prosperity of agriculture, and speaking generally, with the reduced price of food. In the neighbourhood of the manufacturing towns the importation from distant places has received a great and a progressive increase. Manchester and Liverpool now draw their supplies of agricultural produce from Ireland, from Scotland, and from the northern counties of England; and simultaneously with that increased importation of produce from a distance, there is an increased price in the neighbourhood of the towns; and so far from its being a consequence that the value of land in the neighbourhood of the towns should fall, the very reverse is the fact. And now, Sir, I come to the consideration which I own operates most powerfully on my judgment, I cannot overlook the fact, that the Government of this country is, in practice, vested mainly in the land-owners. The other House of Parliament is composed almost exclusively of landowners; and there is in this House a great preponderance of the landed interest (hear, hear). A Government so based and so conducted cannot long maintain any influence in opposition to the great body of public opinion; such a Government to be safe, must make it evident to all that its rule has been impartial legislation (hear, hear); and now, when we consider the concentration, the union, the intelligence, the growing numbers, and the increasing proportion of the manufacturing population, who have, if not an universal, a very general opinion deeply seated in their mind, that the Corn Laws do enhance the price of bread, and do at the same time lower wages-that they make the manufacturing workmen pay more and receive less. If you persist in maintaining such laws, you may depend upon it that the population will not place confidence in the impartiality of your legislation. The people, upon this point of their daily food, will not at all times listen to reason; they cannot be cajoled by fallacies, and I am satisfied, in my own judgment, that they are not wrong in their opinion. They are right in their opinion, that with the manufacturing population of this country high prices are concurrent with low wages, and

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they are placed in a most unfair position when the price of bread is artificially enhanced, and at the same time the means of obtaining it are decreased (cheers). If, Sir, time would permit, I could give you conclusive evidence, which I have before me, that this opinion is no longer confined to the manufacturing population. I could show that the agricultural population are beginning to be of the same opinion (hear, hear). I could produce evidence to show that there is a diminution of crime when prices fall, and that there is an increase of crime when prices rise. I can show that distemper and mortality also increase in proportion to the rise in the price of food, and that they decrease as the price of food diminishes. It has been already proved that though the wages in agricultural districts do to a certain extent rise with the price of corn, they never rise in the same proportion as the price of food (hear, hear). I have shown, then, the unanswerable opinion of the manufacturing population. I have said that the same opinions prevail in many districts among the agricultural and rural population. I am bound to say that I cannot declare the conclusions drawn by the manufacturing population to be unsound and untrue; and believing them to be sound and true, and that it would be dangerous to the permanent domestic peace of the country, and that it would not be safe to resist all consideration for this opinion, I shall give my hearty and unhesitating support to the bill now before the House (cheers). But I think it necessary, perhaps, that I should say, with reference to our domestic peace, there is no time to be lost (hear, hear), and that with reference to our foreign relations the measure and the time are decidedly politic. Nations trading with each other are bound over in heavy responsibilities to keep the peace. Governments may be prone to war, but if commerce be free, and if there be extended ramifications promoting the social enjoyment of each, they will consider their common good; and whatever may be the disposition of Governments to war, a people whose daily comforts are ministered to by other nations will be the friends of peace; and thus the peace of the world will be best preserved, when commerce shall extend her benefits to the great body of the people (hear, hear). The Hon. Gentleman who moved the present amendment made a quotation from a modern poet, and then sat down. I will follow his example, of ending with a quotation, and though mine will not be exactly from a modern poet, still it will meet the tone and the spirit in which this measure is proposed. In Pope's Windsor Forest there are some lines so beautiful and so appropriate to the subject of this freedom of trade, and so real a description of the measure we propose, that I may be excused for quoting them. Looking forward as he then did to the happy days when London should be a free port, he apostrophises that noble river, the Thames, which is the channel to bring to this metropolis the commerce of the world, in these words:

"The time shall come when, free as seas or wind,
"Unbounded Thames shall flow for all mankind;
"Whole nations enter with each swelling tide,
"And seas but join the regions they divide;
"Earth's distant ends our glory shall behold,

And the new world launch forth to meet the old."

(loud cheers.) That is a real description of the measure which we

are now discussing; and I say again, let that vision be realized, as I am convinced it will be, by giving a second reading to this bill (loud cheers).

MR. STUART said that he not only gave all credit to the Government for the reasons which induced them to propose this measure, but that he had been ready to listen to whatever could be said in its favour. Now, the Right Hon. Baronet had, in the latter part of his speech, expressed opinions which he (Mr. Stuart) had heard not only with sorrow but with great alarm. The Right Hon. Gentleman's argument was, that the time had come when the people were aware that the landed interest had an undue preponderance in that House.

SIR J. GRAHAM-I did not say "undue."

MR. STUART Well, not an undue, but a preponderating influence; then, if that existed in that House, what had become of the Reform Bill? (hear, hear). He had listened with the greatest attention to the speech which the Right Hon. Baronet at the head of the Government had addressed to the House because he wished to hear what were the strongest arguments that could be brought forward in favour of this measure; but he had heard nothing like the opinion expressed by the Right Hon. Gentleman the Secretary for the Home Department with the view of coercing their opinions (hear),-that they were not to look at the measure whether it was right or not, but at public opinion, at the growing opinions of the manufacturing interest. A more revolutionary doctrine there could not be (hear, hear). He was but a very humble individual, but, with a great body of the sound and sensible part of the community, he entertained the opinion that that House did fairly and properly represent the whole people of Great Britain, of the manufacturing as well as of the landed interests. It was indeed a monstrous doctrine to say that they were to be guided not by their own opinion, but by the manufacturing interests (hear, hear). Now, he intended to vote against this measure. Anxious as he might be to support any measure that was brought forward with the sanction of the Government, still, as an honest man, he felt bound to vote against the present. Until he had heard the astounding opinion of the Right Hon. Baronet expressed that evening, he had thought that all sound and practical statesmen were agreed that the landed interests of this country were the basis of all its prosperity (hear, hear); and even the Right Hon. Baronet at the head of the Government admitted that protection was to be removed, not because it is wrong in principle, but because a great necessity had arisen. But, if that were so, he called upon the Government to remedy those temporary evils by measures of a speedier and better kind. He considered that a Government which came down to support this measure by threats of a change of opinion in the manufacturing body-an assertion which was founded upon very imperfect evidence-must be, indeed, as it had been called, a falling Government, and ought not to last for a day (hear, hear). A Government which attempted to influence the votes of independent Members of that House, by motives of terror, founded on the ebullitions of public opinion at meetings, or in newspapers, would, in his opinion, reduce the Legislature to the lowest state of degradation and corruption.

It was the duty of the Government to prevent the Legislature from being overawed by the expression of mob opinion, which might be excited by the appeals of Members of that House to assemblies of fustian jackets. If a mob of the working classes should again congregate in Lincoln's-inn-fields, in order to overawe the House, and influence its decisions, it would be the duty of the Government to interfere; and a Government which was incapable of preserving them from that species of intimidation ought no longer to exist. The Right Hon. Home Secretary (Sir J. Graham), in advising them to legislate on the opinions of the House, and to cast aside the records of Hansard, only repeated the advice given by Jack Cade, to his followers," Henceforth let all the records of Parliament be destroyed, and receive the laws from my mouth" (hear, hear).

MR. BOUVERIE said the Hon. Member who had just sat down had seemed indignant, because he (Mr. Bouverie) smiled when the Hon. Gentleman said that the existence of manufactures and commerce depended upon the agriculture of this country; and that if our commerce and manufactures were destroyed agriculture would still continue to flourish. He remembered some lines in a work published a few years ago by the Noble Lord the Member for Newark (Lord J. Manners)

"Let wealth and commerce, laws and learning die,
"But leave us still our old nobility;"

which, with a very slight alteration, would most appositely express the views of the Hon. Gentleman:

"Let wealth and commerce, laws and learning die,
"But leave us still our own fertility."

He (Mr. Bouverie) apprehended, if we had had nothing but that
fertility to depend upon, if the commerce and manufactures of the
country, which, during the last half century, had trebled the value of
the land, had never existed, the Hon. Gentleman would not have
sought a place in that House, but would have continued in the pro-
fession of the law, and might have been in the condition of one of
those Picts of whom we read in ancient history. The Honourable
Gentleman seemed very slow to believe any facts which did not suit
his own purpose. He (Mr. Stuart) had stated that the manufacturing
classes were not favourable to a repeal of the Corn Law.
He (Mr.
Bouverie) wondered, as that was the opinion of the Honourable
Gentleman, that, when he desired a seat in that House, he had
not presented himself to a great manufacturing constituency, in-
stead of relying on the support of a constituency over whom the
landed interest maintained an unfair and unconstitutional influence
with regard to the return of Members. The Hon. Member for
Newark had entirely lost sight of the main question at issue-
whether this law was one which the House ought to repeal or to
maintain? In arguing this question, Hon. Gentlemen opposite
had assumed as he (Mr. Bouverie) considered without just
grounds-that the protective laws had produced that advantage
and prosperity to the landed interest which was undoubtedly
their object. He maintained this had not been the case. Let
the House recollect that it was not in a time of plenty and
abundance that the Chartist insurrection took place; but it was

at a period when the Corn Laws operated to increase scarcity, and when, in consequence, the people were suffering from want of employment. And when did peace and contentment re-appear? It was when Providence, more bountiful than the laws, blessed the country with a good harvest; and the people were enabled, by their honest industry, to earn a livelihood (hear, hear). Therefore all those who, like the landowners, were interested in the maintenance of peace and order, should be desirous of seeing a law like the present removed from the statute-book. He feared that a great number of the Hon. Gentlemen opposite were unable to appreciate the statesmanlike views of the Right Hon. Baronet at the head of the Government, but he believed that the country would do justice to his motives. He believed that many of the Hon. Gentlemen opposite, even when they supported the Right Hon. Baronet, had only accepted him as a necessity, and that their support of him was not a result of their love but of their fear. The Right Honourable Baronet had the wisdom to foresee the ignominy and disgrace which would befall that party by continuing in their old policy, and struggling with the intelligence of the country. The Right Hon. Baronet wished to save them from the disgrace of defeat, and offered them a fair and honourable retreat, and on themselves would lie the responsibility of rejecting that offer (hear, hear).

THE MARQUIS OF WORCESTER maintained that the Hon. Member for Newark was perfectly justified in referring to the statements relative to the potato rot in Ireland, as that subject had been brought forward by Her Majesty's Ministers themselves. He and his Hon. Friends about him would be most happy to vote a supply for the relief of Ireland, but they had no proofs yet given them that there was more distress in Ireland at the present moment than ordinarily. In reference to what had fallen from the Hon. Member for Liskeard, he would observe that he had heard it whispered that that Hon. Gentleman's constituents were not so strongly in favour of Free Trade as he could wish the House to believe (hear, hear). He believed that the effect of the measure proposed by the Government would be to reduce many tenant-farmers to the scale of labourers, and to drive many labourers either to emigration or to the workhouse. One reason why the Right Hon. Baronet should have been careful in giving way to the Anti-Corn Law League was, because it was not at all probable, after these measures were carried, that the League would disperse, or that they would not immediately commence another agitation for something else (hear, hear) The agitation would go on, and be directed against the Church of England, and against every branch of our constitution (hear).

MR. D. GARDNER said, he was returned as a friend to Protection, and not to Free Trade, and his constituents would wish him to state the reasons of his opinion and vote. The Government had laid no sufficient ground for the present measure. The effect of the measure now under discussion must be that the prices of grain would be lower, and remain steady at a lower amount; and hence the rents of landed property must be lowered. There ought to have been measures of compensation such as relief from burdens on land, introduced at the same time with this bill. The Right Hon. the Home Secretary had