inference from the general policy being understood; but to this there was the objection that the Times asserted that its news was not a matter of inference, but of fact; and the ordinary Government papers per severed in denying the truth of the news altogether. The Times was scolded, insulted, jeered at, lectured, and everybody was warned not to mind the Times; but everybody did mind it; and the Times persevered day after day, week after week, in haughtily asserting that its intelligence would be found correct within an assigned period. Meantime, the general conviction was complete, that the Times had some peculiar means of information. One report was that the Duke of Wellington had come down to the Horse Guards in great wrath, swearing, as he threw himself from his horse, at the pass things had come to when the Corn Laws were to be given up; but, besides that such a freak was not very like the shrewd and loyal Duke of Wellington, there was no reason here why the Times should be exclusively in possession of the information There are some, of course, who know, and many more who believe they know, how the thing happened; but it is not fitting to record, in a permanent form, the chit-chat of London, about any bat the historical bearings of an incident like this. The Times bad true information—and that is all that is important to the parrative. As we bave said, the announcement was made on the 4th of December. On the 5th, the Standard exhibited a conspicuous title to a counter-statement: 'Atrocious fabrication by the Times;' but, meanwhile, the effect of the announcement by the Times, at the Corn Exchange, was immense surprise, not so much displeasure as might have been expected, and an instant downward tendency in the price of grain.' So said other papers. "We adhere to our original announcement, said the Times of December 6th, that Parliament will meet early in January, and that a repeal of the Corn Laws will be proposed in one House by Sir R. Peel, and in the other by the Dake of Wellington.' The Free Traders so far gave weight to the assertion, as to announce everywhere, with diligence, that they would accept of nothing short of total repeal; not a shilling, not a farthing, of duty should be imposed without sound reason shown."
The free traders did not need the assertion for their announcement, for "nothing short of total repeal" had been their demand during the whole seven years of their agitation. It was as much their cry in 1841 as it was in 1845; as much their cry when they asked for a fund of £100,000 as now, when they were about to ask for one of £250,000. The prospect of famine, not the accession of
