revived precisely at the moment when the restrictions on the importation of foreign corn were removed; so, in 1815, when these restrictions were again imposed, commerce languished, manufactures failed, and universal distress overspread the land.” Enough of Sir James Graham.

Now for a specimen of Mr. Baring in 1815, when he was a merchant.

Mr. Baring." All that had been advanced on this point was a mere excuse for keeping up high rents. It was impossible for any evidence to show more clearly, than the evidence before the House had shown, that the artificial support of the agriculture of the country which had been called for would be improper."-" He doubted very much if this country could ever be made to furnish a permanent supply equal to the consumption of its encreasing population. If lands could not produce corn without greater sums being expended on them than the corn was worth, they might be made to furnish a supply which would make us purchase our bread at 1s. 6d. the loaf, when, if we exerted our industry on that same land to raise that which was congenial to its soil, by exchanging its produce against that of the corn lands of other countries, we might get our loaf for one shilling."-" As to the danger of depending on foreign supply in case of a war, during the reign of Bonaparte, in spite of the greatest hostility, more corn, three times over, had been imported, than ever had been

before."-" Experience has shown that a country could never be starved-Holland was dependent on foreign supply, and its price was, and almost ever had been, the average price of Europe." How the same Mr. Baring who had spoken these words publicly in the House of Commons in 1815, could in 1834 stand up in the same house, and attempt to advocate the continuance of corn laws, must certainly surprise, not only every candid mind, but every person of common modesty.

But to return to our present period and subject, the following is an admirable condensation, by one of the London journals, of Sir James Graham's defence of corn laws, when acting the part of foreman to the special jury, who on the said 6th, 7th, and 8th of March 1834, tried their own cause, and gave a verdict in their own favour.

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We, the landed aristocracy must live, but, were we to be just, we could not live!"-Sir James Graham.

And will the landed aristocracy of Great Britain persist in justifying, by their conduct, those who speak for them thus? The argument, however, seemed to be conclusive, for three hundred and twelve, out of four hundred and sixty-seven, of the said landed aristocracy, voted, though not in these precise words, to this effect, that, as they could not afford to live, as they liked to live, on the fair market price of their land, the deficiency must be made up to them, whatever it may cost

the rest of the nation, out of the wages of labourers, the profits of farmers, the incomes of annuitants, and the ruin of thirteen millions of people dependent on manufactures. And this, although in thus compelling the consumer to give them a boon of two millions, they oblige him, at the same time to cast away, as has been already shown, twentyseven millions and a half, which benefit no being on the face of the earth;--nay, which but partly repay the farmer his loss on forced production, a loss which, but for the interference of unjust laws, had never been incurred.

Suppose, for a moment, the wine merchants of England mad enough to form a project for making wine sufficient for the consumption of the nation from home-grown hot-house grapes. Suppose, further, the result to be, that such wine as we import at five shillings per bottle, should stand our home producers in one pound per bottle, so that to have a profit of even five per cent, they were compelled to charge one guinea per bottle-Would any one buy their wine? If they, upon this, set up a cry about their ruinous losses, would parliament give them a protection, amounting to a prohibition on foreign wines? and thus obliging all Englishmen, who drank wine, to drink it at a guinea per bottle?

Not unless being a wine merchant, were the qualification for being a member of parliament, in which case, a majority is a majority, whether

of wine merchants or of landholders.

And surely,

though the injustice might in both cases be the same, it is a much greater cruelty to rob the consumer, and check the consumption of bread, than to rob the consumer, and check the consumption of wine.

While, however, the jury-box is thus filled by the defendants, in their own case, it is clearly in their power, if not prevented by honourable principles, to give a verdict for themselves, although every man in the great court of the whole nation should see that the property belongs to the plaintiffs. Every body knows that the labourer's limbs are his own property, his estate, his bread, the bread of his children;-but what of that? the landowners have a majority in parliament, secured to them by the possession of land being the qualification for becoming a member of parliament. If they will not make an honourable use of this sacred trust, surely there ought to be some appeal, some court of equity to deliver the nation out of such a dilemma as this! There is an appeal-an appeal from the high court of parliament, to the higher court of public opinion!

Oh! the time will come, some generations hence perhaps, when an Englishman's greatest anxiety will be to prove that he is not descended from any one of those whose names will then appear marked with obloquy on the pages of history, as having, in the great assembly of legislators

to whom the people of England had confided the guardianship of their rights, lifted up their voices, and in the presence of their Maker and the nation, uttered sounding sophisms, with a view to gaining over a majority of the unwary, the uninformed, or the unprincipled, to join them in trampling upon those rights which they had one and all undertaken to protect!

When, however, we look back on the barbarities of former ages, the burnings at the stake, the beheadings on the block, the wholesale massacres, the summary executions, the private assassinations, the poisonings, the starvings to death in prison, and all the inhuman and desperate cruelties, which were in the times of our forefathers matters of common occurrence, when we call to mind that in those days of darkness, the then most polished nobles of the land, instead of deeming their triumph, as in our days, sufficient when they have sent their opponents to the opposite benches of the house, and cheered their speeches, were not ashamed of laying murderous plots, to bring their political rivals to the scaffold; nay, were proud of the savage power which enabled them to be thus the tyrant disposers of the lives of their fellow-men; and when, again, the loss of that power was almost the certain signal for their own destruction; when we remember that all this has been, and then reflect, that the salutary rise, which has already taken place in the standard