of free trade had been agitated in England, the manufacturers of the United States had become animated with a warlike spirit against us from a conviction that war was the only way by which they could maintain protection for their manufactures. If then, Sir Robert was not prepared to fight hostile tariffs with free imports, he was not justified in proposing his present measures; and, if he was prepared so to fight them, he would produce a convulsion, of which no man could foresee the result. Noticing the speech of Mr. S. Herbert, which he denounced as a genuine League speech, he observed that that gentleman had no right to address the House as if he was a martyr, when in reality he was a convert, to those free-trade doctrines which he had resisted with the utmost vehemence when he was in opposition. A change in his situation in the House might have worked a change in Mr. Herbert's opinions; but he should like to know what right he had to threaten the country with "anarchy, misery, and ruin," if resistance were longer continued to the Government measure? Did he imagine that the gentlemen of England would be influenced by the same panic which had worked wonders among his colleagues? The fact was, that the Cabinet was an alarmist Cabinet, fear was stamped upon every countenance in it, no matter whether it arose from the pressure of famine in Ireland, or from the abundance of suffrages in Yorkshire and Lancashire. Having thus met the arguments advanced in favour of the new system of free trade, he next proceeded to bring forward his own arguments in favour of the old system, and maintained, in opposition to the

League, that with protection we could feed the people, and employ them too. He lamented that there were no statistics of agriculture; but this was undisputed, that fifty years ago we were compelled to import corn to supply our population, and that now, when our population was doubled, we fed them from our own resources, and at lower prices than formerly. No man could prove that protection had been the bane of agriculture in England, unless he could show that the cultivation of our soil was inferior to that of other countries; but it was generally admitted that it was infinitely superior to that of every nation in the world. Those who boasted of our present prosperity could not deny that our people were employed; and, if it were not as well employed as he could wish, still its work would not be increased by the admission of foreign competition, nor its wages increased by a reduction in the price of corn. He thought that in England we ought to do more than merely maintain a balance between its agricultural and manufacturing interests. We should give a preponderance to the agricultural. We had been told that the object of this change was the transference of power from the agricultural to the manufacturing class. mitted the intelligence, and did not envy the wealth and opulence of the manufacturer; but in this age, when we had been suffering much from class interests, were we to be rescued from one class merely to sink under the avowed domination of another? If such were to be the great result of the struggle, he protested against the ignominious catastrophe. If we were to have a change, he hoped that the foundations of it would be

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deep, and the scheme grand and comprehensive then, instead of falling under the thraldom of capitalists, who prided themselves more upon their wealth than their intelligence, we should seek, in bending to a new course, for the means of safety in the institutions of our ancient monarchy, and in the invigorated energies of an educated and enfranchised people.

Mr. Cardwell observed that, as he had never yet spoken on the question of the Corn Laws, he was anxious to explain the grounds on which he gave his cordial support to this measure for their final adjustment. He then proceeded to expose the fallacy contained in the arguments by which the Protectionists defended the existing Corn Laws. He showed that those laws had not rendered us independent of foreign supply--that they had not given security for the investment of capital in land-that they had not insured the farmer a remunerating price-and that they had not afforded the labourer a protecting price for his labour. He then contended that the repeal of these laws would promote the prosperity of commerce and manufactures; and that that prosperity would increase, as it had increased, in past time, the rate of wages in the commercial and manufacturing districts. A man with 30s. a week would consume more bread, butter, beef, mutton, and other agricultural produce, than a man with 8s., or even 16s. a week; and when the consumption of agricultural produce was thus increased, the profits of the farmer would be increased likewise, and the condition of the agricultural labourer would be proportionably bettered. He called upon the House to

keep pace with the march of improvement, and to rely on the evergrowing demands of our increasing population, and on the expanding energies of trade and commerce. He had always entertained, and had never disavowed nor disguised, the sentiments which he had just expressed; but he had likewise always considered that great questions like the present ought to be regarded as questions of time. If, then, this question were а question of time, was not this of all others the time to look out for a supply of food? And, if the adjustment of the Corn Laws were to be accomplished, when could it be done with less dislocation of existing interests? He contended, too, that this Parliament had a perfect right to decide the question; and if it should decide it, as the Government advised, by removing the sources of discord between conflicting classes, and by exhibiting a wise and discriminating regard towards all the interests of this great empire, it would confer an inestimable benefit upon the present and every succeeding generation.

Sir W. Molesworth entered into a close argument on the political economy of the question; and he looked forward to the time when improved agricultural science would produce corn in this country at so cheap a rate as to outbid the foreigner even in supplying a population larger than the present; to a time, too, when the iron network of railways would have converted Great Britain into one vast city, agricultural products being brought uninjured to the best market in the world.

Mr. Thomas Duncombe heartily supported the Minister, challenging the Protectionists to form an Ad

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ministration, or to vote "want of confidence. But, in fact, they dared not face opinion in the country. At Westminster they dared not produce a candidate, though he might have stood on the hustings in Covent Garden up to his knees in native cabbages. He asserted, that the tenant-farmers did not care a straw for protection, and that they would vote for the measure if they could vote by ballot. (An emphatic Hear, hear!" from Sir Robert Peel.) Had such a measure been adopted in 1842, it might have saved Ministers the painful boast that they had sent down a regiment of guards and a park of artillery to Manchester. Mr. Duncombe warned Sir Robert Peel, however, of a danger to one part of his scheme: it being already rumoured that, after the Corn Law is disposed of, the manufacturers intended to oppose the alteration in the Law of Settlement. Let him look to that, or the entire measure would be made comparatively worthless.

Sir Thomas Acland rose, with some warmth, to defend the agricultural interest against the charge of ignorance and bigotry which the last speaker had preferred against it. He had never been a friend to extreme protection. He had welcomed Sir Robert Peel's measure of 1842. But the reasons which Sir Robert Peel now advanced in support of the sweeping change, and the further reduction which he now proposed, were by no means satisfactory to his mind. Eloquent in language, no doubt, they were, and of great excellence in debate, but convincing they certainly were not. Sir Robert Peel seemed to use every effort to put his opponents in the wrong, but took very little pains to place himself in the right. It was a most unjust im

putation on the agricultural interest to assert that it upheld the Corn Laws because they starved the labourer for the benefit of the landlord. Believing that the existing Corn Law had worked well for the landlord, the farmer, the labourer, the manufacturer, and the exporter, he could not accept the measure which Sir Robert Peel now offered to him; for he could not, in three weeks, learn to read backwards the lesson which Sir Robert Peel and he had learned together, in the same school, for thirty years. He believed that the League was at the bottom of all this change: but a greater agitation even than that which the League had raised, might have been put down by Ministers firm and resolute, though it could not be met by Ministers who, in heart and in spirit, by some process or other, had, secretly arrived at the same conclusions with the League itself. In conclusion, he informed Sir Robert Peel that he would not join in any factious opposition to his Government.

He would not even worry his measure. If Parliament should pass this measure, and the Crown should sanction it, Sir Robert need expect no further trouble from him; but, if the division should be closed on the present debate, then Sir Robert would not be able to carry his measure, and the sooner he dissolved the present Parliament the better.

Sir George Clerk, Vice-President of the Board of Trade, after stating that, though he could not give a silent vote on this question, yet he did not expect to advance a single new argument in support of his view of it, after the protracted discussion of the last seven nights, proceeded to comment upon the speech of Mr. Disraeli, and to contro

vert his statements. Sir Robert Peel had done nothing more than carry out the principles of the system which Mr. Huskisson had propounded in 1824, and which Sir Robert himself had then supported. He wished that he could consider that the emergency was only temporary; but he was bound to look beyond the present year; and, in a country where the potato was the principal food of the majority of the population, it was his duty to inquire from what quarter that population could procure the seed for the potato crop of 1846 and 1847. The emergency, therefore, was not confined to the present season, but extended to future seasons. Moreover, the deficient supply of potatoes was not confined to Ireland, but extended to England also; and, as a proof of that position, he mentioned that potatoes, which in January, 1845, varied in price from 50s. to 80s. a ton, varied in January, 1846, from 80s. to 160s. a ton. That high price was an index of the deficiency of the supply in England at this moment; but, in May next, he believed that the deficiency would be so large as to require that every impediment to the importation of food should be removed. Besides all this, the grain of the last harvest, though not deficient in bulk, was deficient in weight, and that deficiency produced a very unfavourable effect on the averages. The Government knew that the potato disease prevailed all over the Continent, that the harvest in Germany had failed to a very great extent, that alarm had been excited in consequence in Belgium and Holland, and that those two countries had permitted the importation of corn into their ports. At that time-namely, in Novem

ber last-the Government found, that although the price of corn in London was very high, the averages were very low. No subject had attracted the attention of Government with more anxiety than the circumstances to which he had just alluded. The Government had likewise regulated the quantity of corn coming into the country and afterwards going out again for reexportation to Belgium and Holland. Fortunately, only a small quantity was re-exported. If a large quantity had been re-exported our ports must have been opened, in order to enable us to eke out the quantity of corn, which would be found not too large for our supply. Under such circumstances we might have been justified in suspending the existing law; but, if the law were once suspended, away went for ever the great argument on which the sliding scale rested, and it was evident that along with it went the law itself. He then proceeded to defend the measure now proposed by the Government, and to show that it would equalize prices, not by bringing English prices down to the Continental level, but by raising Continental prices to the English level. He likewise entered into a description of the agricultural resources of Germany, Poland, Russia, and America, for the purpose of demonstrating that the apprehensions which had been once entertained, that so large an inundation of foreign corn would follow the repeal of the Corn Laws as would throw our arable land out of cultivation, were false and unfounded. In the last five years we had imported 10,000,000 quarters of corn, or 2,000,000 annually. He did not think that any man would contend that the people of England had

been over-fed in that time; and he now asserted, that if in the next five years our importation should amount to 3,000,000 quarters a year, it would not be more than sufficient for the rapid increase of our population, and would not throw a single British acre out of cultivation. He then answered in detail the arguments advanced by various speakers with respect to the injury inflicted on the silk-trade, the paper-hanging trade, and the zinc and spelter trade, by the relaxation of protective duties. He upset all their assertions and arguments by the production of Custom-house and other public documents, proving that every one of these trades had derived the greatest benefits from the very measures which were said to have been so pernicious to them. He also accused Mr. Disraeli of having been guilty of the greatest unfairness in his "business speech," as he had himself been pleased to call the speech which he had delilivered on Friday evening. He showed that Mr. Disraeli, in the comparison which he had drawn between the effects of protection and those of free trade, had never taken his comparison during an average of years, but had always made his contrast between the best year of protection, and the worst year of free trade. After stating that he could not congratulate the honourable Member on his first apappearance upon the stage as man of business," for he shone much more as a joker of jokes, and a fabricator of pleasant sarcasms, he proceeded to notice his question, "Can you fight hostile tariffs by free-trade imports?" Now to that question he replied, first, that this measure had not been introduced with any reference to foreign nations, but with refer

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ence to the interests of the great mass of the community in the British Islands; and next, that Mr. Disraeli had grossly exaggerated the repugnance of foreign countries, and especially that of France, to a liberal system of commercial policy. Having grappled with all the alleged facts of Mr. Disraeli, and having satisfied the House, he hoped, that in the statement of them all Mr. Disraeli had been inaccurate, he next proceeded to comment upon Mr. Disraeli's opinion that the House ought to give a preponderance to the agricultural interest. For one, he (Sir G. Clerk) repudiated it, both as a Member of Parliament and as an individual landowner. If the influence of the agricultural interest depended on the continuance of the Corn Laws, he for one should tremble for it. Mr. Disraeli's argument on that point was the most dangerous one that could be used, and had hitherto been always disclaimed by the landowners; for, translated into plain English, it meant nothing else than that the Corn Laws must be maintained to keep up the landlord's rents.

Mr. Beckett Denison began by adverting to a statement made by Mr. Ferrand, on a former evening, to the effect that Sir Robert Peel, when he did him the honour to ask him to second the Address, had deceived him as to the measure which he (Sir Robert Peel) intended to propose. Now Sir Robert Peel was the last man in the world to deceive any body; and in no way, either directly or indirectly, had he deceived him. When he (Mr. Beckett Denison) seconded the Address, he expected that Sir Robert Peel would propose a measure of the same character as those which he had proposed on several