Providence rather than the ministry for it. The country at this moment was prospering, and the discontented and disappointed were those who supported protection. They have legislated, and have failed; they have been thwarted in their object by Providence; and the poor, the people, the trade, and the revenue, bare all profited by the result. So far as the right honourable gentleman has relaxed the protective system, he has reason to be satisfied; it has contributed to the prosperity of the country, and he has nothing to regret as regards revenue, or any other circumstance. The right honourable gentleman cannot point to any duty that he has reduced, with the view to relax protection, that he has not reason to be satisfied with and for advancing farther in the same direction. It ought to be his object, as it is that of all wise men, that this country should continue in its present state, so far as it is prosperous. What rast importance then is it to settle this question of protection, and determine whether it is not for the liberation of trade, that the great mass of the people are enabled to possess the great essentials as well as the comforts of life. The system of protection is opposed to this. It has no object if it is not." He rejoiced in the declaration of Lord John Russell, that protection was the bane, and not the support of agriculture, and called upon the House to watch with the closest attention the new financial measures of government—to support them if they abandoned, and to oppose them if they were based on, the protective principle. The address was ultimately put from the chair, and unanimously agreed to, when the House adjourned.
How stood the question now? Sir Robert Peel had avowed that the principles of free trade were those which ought to regulate the interests of nations, and that we ought to buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest; Sir James Graham had declared that they were the principles of common sense; and Lord John Russell had
