Russell, dated Edinburgh, November 22nd. His lordship after stating his expectations that ministers would have called parliament together, and showing the evils attendant on the exclusion of foreign corn at this crisis, said:—
"I confess that, on the general subject, my views have, in the course of twenty years, undergone a great alteration. I used to be of opinion that cord was an exception to the general rules of political economy; but observation and experience have convinced me that we ought to abstain from all interference with the supply of food. Neither a government nor a legislature can ever regulate the corn markets with the beneficial effects which the entire freedom of sale and purchase are sure of themselves to produce.
"I have for several years endeavoured to obtain a compromise on this subject. In 1839 I voted for a committee of the whole house, with the view of supporting the substitution of a moderate fixed duty for the sliding-scale, In 1841 I announced the intention of the then government of proposing a fixed duty of 8s. a quarter. In the past session I proposed the imposition of some lower duty. These propositions were successively rejected. The present First Lord of the Treasury met them in 1839, 1840, and 1841, by eloquent panegyrics of the existing system—the plenty it had caused, the rural happiness it had diffused. He met the propositions for diminished protection in the same way in which he had met the offer of securities for protestant interests in 1817 and 1825—in the game way in which he met the proposal to allow Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham to send members to parliament in 1830.
"The result of resistance to qualified concession must be the same in the present instance as in those I have mentioned. It is no longer worth while to contend for a fixed duty. In 1841 the free-trade party would have agreed to a duty of 88. a quarter on wheat, and after a lapse of years this duty might have been further reduced, and ultimately abolished. But ibe imposition of any duty, at present, without a provision for its extension within a short period, would but prolong & contest already sufficiently fruitful of animosity and discontent. The struggle to make bread scarce and dear, when it is clear that part, at least, of the additional price goes to increase rent, is a struggle deeply injurious to an aristocracy which (this quarrel once removed) is strong in property, strong in the construction of our legislature, strong in opinion, strong in ancient associations, and the memory of immortal services.
"Let us, then, quite to put an end to a system which has been proved to be the blight of commerce, the bane of agriculture, the source of bitter divisions among classes, the cause of penury, fever, mortality, and crime among the people.
