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MR. MILNER GIBSON.
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gentleman the Home Secretary, that we should be allowed to live in peace without danger of our property being burnt or our lives endangered. I utterly repel those insinuations which have been thrown out, I must say, in a manner unworthy of him, by the President of the Board of Trade, that this incendiarism must be the result of agitation against the Corn Laws. (Hear, hear.) Sir, I say that that insinuation is unworthy of the right honourable gentleman. (Hear, hear.) I defy him to produce the smallest atom of proof that any incentive to crime has been thrown out in those counties by any of the advocates of freedom of trade. I should think it unworthy of myself if I had attributed to the society for maintaining a scarcity any such effect (hear, hear), although that society has agitated those counties far more than the Anti-Corn-Law League. (Hear, hear.) For one placard which the Anti-Corn-Law League has stuck on the gable ends of houses, the society for maintaining a high price of corn has circulated, I venture to say, six or even ten; but at the same time, although you have been agitating the country—although you have been telling the labourers and the farmers that the interest of the community depends on the high price of corn—I should be ashamed of myself if I could insinuate for one moment that its members had incited any person to set fire to property, with a view of promoting their own ends. It might, indeed, be said that the agitation of the Pro-Corn Law League Society had induced persons to destroy corn, with a view of promoting their own interest; because your doctrine is, that the less corn there is in the country the more the labourer will get; that the less the whole the greater the parts. That is the doctrine which we have heard explained by the noble lord the member for East Suffolk, because he says the dearer corn is, and the less there is of it in the country, the more the labourer will get for his share." After a speech which showed that he had a thorough grasp of the subject both in its commercial