affect the employment of capital in agriculture, and lead to a greater importation than was consistent either with the profits of the importing merchant, or the security of the home cultivator. The only portion of the proposition of the Anti-Corn-Law League which had the slightest claim to originality was the immediate abolition; all their other arguments had been anticipated by the masters of the science, Adam Smith, Ricardo, or such statesmen as Mr. Huskisson or Lord Grenville, who, however, guarded their views by great caution as to the mode of arriving at their accomplishment. He regretted that he could take no part in the present motion, and heartily wished that some compromise could be effected which might have the effect of subduing agitation; if trade and commerce flourished, the landed interest need not be afraid of decay. The better way would be to revise the whole system of our protective duties, instead of dealing in perpetual harangues against the Corn Law, the maintenance of which was more desired by the farmers than by the landlords themselves. But he could see no end to agitation so long as the government were determined to maintain the existing law.
"Mr. Miles commiserated the position of Lord John Russell, thanked Mr. Gladstone for his straightforward honest speech, and called on the country gentlemen to listen to no compromise at all. The Anti-League was merely a defensive, the Anti-Corn-Law League an aggressive, association, whose interference, however, at elections had proved anything but a successful experiment. The working population were well aware that the object of the League was to cheapen bread in order to lower wages—a conclusion which none of their speeches, pamphlets, or papers attempted to meet; while the prices at which foreign grain can be imported showed that utter ruin awaited the farmer if free importation were immediately permitted. He adduced a statement, signed by three practical farmers, contradicting Lord Ducie's statement as to the expense of growing wheat on the Cotswold Hills, and denied, through the medium of figures, that the Corn Laws constituted a landlord's question."
Viscount Howick had long entertained a preference for the plan advocated by the noble member for London; but when it became a matter of necessity to choose between the existing system and a free trade, he did not hesitate to follow up his avowed principles, and to advocate a practical and immediate application of them, in preference to countenancing either actively or passively the present "unreasonable and unwise" state of the law. In a speech replete with sound principles, and confidence in their practical
