the house "as if they were anxious only for the continuance of their luxuries, and were totally insensible to the sufferings of the poor." Mr. Wallace showed that trade on the Clyde was not more prosperous than it was in Bolton or Sheffield. Mr. Escott made a curious substitution of effect for cause. He asked: "How is it that the distress has increased since the price of provisions fell?" The price of provisions had fallen because of diminished consumption, the consequence and effect of the distress. Mr. C. Wood spoiled a good speech by an argument in favour of a "reasonable" fixed duty, which laid him open to the sarcasms of Sir James Graham, who followed, and with whose address the debate for the night terminated. The agriculturists did not like the following passage in his address:—
"They were accustomed in that house to bandy about all sorts of criminations and recriminations respecting free trade principles; as to who were the authors of them, and as to those by whom they had only been adopted. After all, however, it was ridiculous to make such points the subject matter of such disputes. By most men these principles were now acknowledged to be the principles of common sense, and the outline of these principles was now disputed but by few. The time had long gone by when this country could exist solely as an agricultural country. We were now a commercial people. As long as Great Britain remained, as she now was, the mistress of the seas, she must be the emporium of the commerce of the world, and he felt perfectly satisfied that agricultural prosperity in this country, if deprived of the support of manufacturing prosperity, could not and would not long exist. He would even go further than this. He would say that with the increasing population of this country—increasing as it did at the rate of somewhere about 220,000 per annum—it was indispensably necessary that there should be a progressive extension of commerce, and that none were more deeply interested in securing such exten-
