206
MR. COBDEN.
the house—how this system benefits the farmer or farm-labourer; nor have they attempted to show how it can benefit the other classes of the community. You stand up and say, 'I do this for the benefit of the farmer and farm-labourer;' but my honourable friend the member for Wolverhampton did not ask you to say whether you would support the Corn Law for that purpose or not; but he requested you to come here and show how you have benefited them. Have you done that? Have you proved the benefit which you confer upon them? No! Immediately you rise you begin talking in the future tense, as you do in all your arguments; you tell us what you imagine the opposite system would do to injure the farmer and farm-labourer; but you have never attempted to show how the present system can possibly benefit them. My honourable friend the member for Wolverhampton has brought this matter fairly before the house. This is not a motion sanctioned by the leading benches on this side of the house, I admit ('Hear, hear,' from the ministerial benches); but it is the sole question of controversy out of doors—there the point to be determined is entirely between protection and and no protection—and when the honourable gentleman on this side of the house, who has so large an amount of public confidence as my honourable friend the member for Wolverhampton has (Loud cries of 'Oh, oh,' and laughter, from the ministerial benches, met by counter cheers from the opposition), brings forward a motion against protection, I say the government is not treating him with due respect, nor the public with justice, unless they meet the arguments which he has brought forward on this occasion. The right honourable gentleman the President of the Board of Trade has told us that he will not argue this question, because protection is a principle which is recognised by this country; we come here to deny the justice of that principle, we call on you to justify that principle of protection. Is it not sophistry—I can call it no less—to meet us by saying, 'The principle is admitted, and, therefore, we will not answer your arguments unless you give some special ground against this mode of taxing corn?' We take exception to the principle itself, and I ask the right honourable baronet to meet the arguments of my honourable friend by showing how this principle of protection can be beneficial to the country at large. Gentlemen upon the treasury bench have shown a disposition to evade this question. There is, for instance, the noble lord the member for North Lancashire; nobody can deny but that he possesses talent for debate. He came up to this house pledged to defend the Corn Law, and he has never yet opened his mouth upon the subject. I challenge him to give us his opinion on this point—I defy him to justify this law to the manufacturers of Preston and Blackburn, not to the minority, whom he says have petitioned this house, but to the majority who are opposed to this system.
