the lower orders is promoted according to the cheapness of food. They cheered me when I said that the publications of the Protective Society charge gentlemen on this side of the house with wishing to repeal the Corn Laws for the sake of lowering wages, and I shall be curious to hear them, and I shall listen to them with the greatest interest while they occupy the time of the house in proving what they assert. On the surface it is evident that when corn is dear Wages fall, and when it is cheap they rise, and the honourable members for Lincolnshire and Devonshire will hare something to do when they undertake to controvert this position. I did not chink there had been a single member of this house who would adopt what is put forth by these writers. I fancied that they would say, "These are no representatives of ours or our opinions. They are amusing themselves with inventing arguments, but they really have no connection with the landed interest, and you must not judge us by them. The honourable members for Lincolnshire and Devonshire, however, identify themselves with the authors of these publications, who address themselves not merely to the uninformed, but to the unthinking and unreasoning, when they say that cheap bread makes low wages. What the honourable members may have to say I cannot conjecture, and I will not, therefore, state what I was inclined to bay, that persons of great wealth and high station lower themselves by propagating what is so untrue and so delusive. (Cheers.)"
The fact was, that when they rendered the price of food high, they threw two-thirds of the labouring population of Great Britain out of employment. A scarcity was said to be a curse inflicted on a country by God; but ought we, when we create a scarcity by our faulty and imperfect legislation, to attribute it to the operations of Providence, who has "filled the earth with good things?" The existing Corn Laws and the Canadian Corn Bill had not been passed to increase the supply of food for the people, but for special reasons, and they had nothing to do with the present agricultural distress. Sir J. Graham had told the House that there was an annual increase of 380,000 souls in the population of Great Britain every year, and had admitted that some relaxation must be made in the Corn Laws in proportion to the future increase of the population. Sir J. Graham now said that he did not make that admission with that view. Be it so. Then he (Mr. Villiers)
