their confidence from the ministry, and why? Because they got 46s. (quarter for their wheat instead of 568. (Hear, hear.) Did anybody doubt that that was the reason? (Hear, hear.) And what was the natural and only conclusion, that they would withdraw their confidence from a ministry because they had not produced misery enough, crime enough, disease enough, and death enough. (Loud cheers.)"
He did not expect the resolutions of his noble friend would meet with much favour from the House; but the discussion would form an appropriate preliminary one to his motion on the Corn Laws.
After a short address from Mr. Scott, on the motion or Mr. P. Howard, the debate was adjourned till Wednesday.
On Wednesday, Mr. Philip Howard resumed the debate on Lord John Russell's resolutions, condemning them. Mr. Escott followed on the same side, giving the protective system, however, some heavy blows as he went along:—
"The fact was," he said, "that the system of protection was shattered and tottering, and every succeeding discussion served to knock out another stone from the ill-constructed arch. There was but one rational way to defend protection. If it could not be supported as the means of ensuring a certain domestic supply of corn, and thereby, on an average number of years, enabling the consumer to procure it cheaper, he thought it could not be defended at all. He thought no statesman could defend protection of one of the first neccssaries of life upon the ground that it would put money into the pockets of the owners of land. He believed that all the arguments which had been male by those who had put themselves forward as the exclusive defenders of protection, had only tended to prove that such protection could not much longer be maintained. It might be injurious to his interests to make such an avowal, but although he had received favours from individuals who differed from him in that opinion, he felt that they were not favours which had been bought at any sacrifice of his own integrity, and they should not be preserved or
