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MR. EWART'S NOTION.
387

volved reductions in various articles for the benefit of trade, so extensive that, on a calculation of the revenue and expenditure for the year, they found there would be a surplus of revenue over the expenditure of not more than £100,000. The duties which the honourable member now proposed to repeal produced to the revenue the sum of £347,000, and it was, therefore, obviously impossible to adopt the honourable gentleman's views without involving the imminent risk, nay, the certainty, of a very large deficiency, instead of the small surplus he had stated. Mr. Milner Gibson said he was glad to find the right honourable gentleman justifying the duty on these articles solely on fiscal grounds, and without making any reference to the obsolete pretence of protection to agriculture. The entire amount of the revenue raised from this most impolitic and mischievous source was, it was admitted, only £347,000—a sum which would most assuredly be increased, rather than diminished, by reducing the duty on articles which this country itself could not supply to half the extent of the wants of the population, more especially now that in every quarter pasture land was being converted into arable. Mr. Hume supported the motion. Mr. P. Howard said, that, after the great concessions made by government this year in favour of trade, it was hardly fair to call upon them to make more at present, however deserving the duties in question might be of the attention of the government and of the House next session. Mr. Newdegate expressed hope that, though the agricultural members might be silent on the present occasion, the House would not suppose them to be indifferent to the subject under consideration. Mr. Cobden said that, though the honourable members for Derbyshire, and some other counties, might find it to be for the interest of their constituents to support the duties on butter and cheese, he could not see why the members for Norfolk and Suffolk, for instance, should adopt the same course. If the right honourable baronet would take