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MR. BRIGHT.
369

the agriculturists to be sensitive, to be shrinking, and then he used that sensibility as an argument against the advocates of free trade in corn, and stated, that in consequence the present system of Corn Laws was not to be touched, although it starved thousands of the population of the country. The right honourable baronet had asked the advocates of free trade in that House for some proof that free trade would give more food to the people; and he said that he felt with great force the responsibility of tho question put to him, whether he, as a minister of the crown, would retain in existence a law which restricted the supply of food to a population which was increasing at the rate of 400,000 every year. Did the right honourable baronet want any proof to convince him that the true source of a certain and unfailing and abundant supply in the article of corn was to permit the laws of nature to take their course with respect to it, and to repeal at once those restrictive laws which ignorant men had made in direct contradiction to the laws of nature? If the right hon. baronet did not know that, then he must have studied the condition of this nation to little purpose indeed. How were the people of this great city fed? Here was a population of two millions, and during the last few weeks there was an addition of a hundred thousand or more persons to it, and all those individuals were supplied with provisions every day without the intervention of a secretary of state, and without inconvenience or uncertainty. Corn was the produce of most countries; and how could he suppose such a deficiency when we were enabled to have a stock on hand of commodities, some of which were almost entirely the produce of only one country, such as cotton. There was at that time more than six months stock of cotton in Liverpool, although it was chiefly produced in the United States; and there was a similarly large stock of everything which we required which the unhallowed finger of protection had not touched. Of all the articles