OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
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who, if he had been present, would have voted with the monopolists. In the list of the majority were found the names of
- Lord John Russell and Sir Robert Peel;
- Viscount Ebrington and Peter Borthwick;
- H. Labouchere and Lord Castlereagh;
- Lord Palmerston and Sir James Graham;
- Honourable G. Cavendish and Busfield Ferrand.
It is but justice, however, to the gentlemen connected with the late whig ministry to say that there were not many of their names to be found in such companionship, and that the following were in the honourable list of the minority:—
- Buller, C.
- Dalmeny, Lord
- Ellice, Right Hon. E.
- Grey, Sir George
- Howick, Viscount
- Macaulay, T. B.
- Maule, Honourable Fox
- Smith, Vernon
I subjoin some notices of the protracted debate:—
From the Morning Post:—
"Melancholy was the exhibition in the House of Commons on Monday. Mr. Cobden was the hero of the night. Towards the close of the debate, he rose in his place, and hurled at the heads of the parliamentary landowners of England, those calumnies and taunts which constitute the staple of his addresses to farmers. The taunts were not retorted. The calumnies were not repelled. No; the parliamentary representatives of the industrial interests of the British empire quailed before the founder and leader of the Anti-Corn-Law League. They winced under his sarcasms. They listened in speechless terror to his denunciations. No man among them dared to grapple with the arch enemy of English industry. No man among them attempted to refute the miserable fallacies of which Mr. Cobden's speech was made up. * * * * * * Melancholy was it to witness, on Monday, the landowners of England, the representatives by blood of the Norman chivalry, the representatives, by election, of the industrial interests of the empire, shrinking under the blows aimed at them by a Manchester money-grubber; by a man, whose importance is derived from the action of a system, destructive in its nature of all the wholesome influences that connect together the various orders of society. Well; the cycle approaches its completion; the wheel has nearly effected its revolution;
