inquiry. But I ask you to go into this committee with me. I will give you a majority of country members. You shall have a majority of the Central Society in that committee I ask you only to go into a fair inquiry as to the causes of the distress of your own population. (Hear.) I only ask that this matter may be fairly examined. Whether you establish my principle or yours, good will come out of the inquiry; and I do, therefore, beg and entreat the honourable, independent, country gentle men of this house that they will not refuse, on this occasion, to go into a fair, a full, and an impartial inquiry. (Cheers.)"
The motion was opposed, on the part of government, by Mr. Sydney Herbert. He said former committees on the same subject had not given reports that led to any good. No doubt the honourable member's object was a legitimate one; but he (Mr. Herbert) hardly saw why the House should consent to save the Anti-Corn-Law League the expense of publishing its pamphlets, by printing them in a blue book, at the expense of the country. He hoped that nobody would be taken in by the sympathy which Mr. Cobden had professed, first for the distress of the agricultural peasantry, and afterwards for that of the farmers and their landlords. It had soon evaporated, and given way to his real feeling—"Give me this committee, and I'll blow up your protective system." But the fact was, the report would be dependent on who was on the committee; and it was not, in his opinion, necessary to appoint a committee on a subject which had been so often before them, and to go up stairs in order to inquire into a mass of well-known facts. The matter could be fully debated there, without appointing a committee of fifteen gentlemen to inquire into it up stairs—a committee of gentlemen with preconceived opinions, necessarily so formed, from the frequency of inquiry and discussion on the subject, that if he (Mr. S. Herbert) could only ascertain on which side the majority of members was in the committee, he could anticipate the report. He dissuaded agricultural members from voting for the committee, which advice Messrs. Stafford O'Brien, Wodehouse, Bankes, and Lord Worsley,
