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which Mr. Cobden assailed them." These were truths, and the acknowledgment was from an organ of the monopolists which had been notorious for bitter denunciations of the free traders. Yes, no man answered Mr. Cobden's charges, and no man, not even Peel himself, attempted to answer them. The country gentlemen felt that they were unanswerable. Peel felt that they were unanswerable. But he saw that the squires were cowering under the withering sarcasm, and scared out of the arena of debate, by the straightforward statements and forcible arguments of the honest and fearless representative of free-trade principles; he saw that, under such circumstances, a victory gained by mere numbers, while all the fair stand-up fighting was on the other side, would be & virtual defeat; and the necessity of diverting the current of opinion into another channel. He knew the house he had to deal with. He raised a new dispute to draw attention from that which had gone against him; or, as was expressed in the Manchester Guardian, a paper not apt to be unfavourable to him, he created a noise and a smoke, that his retreat might be concealed in the confusion, Mr. Cobden bad more than once, without a single cry of "order," asserted the responsibility of the premier. No one perceived anything unparliamentary in his language. Not a single angry "hear" indicated that any one believed that the word responsibility was used in any other than its parliamentary import. At the conclusion of Mr. Cobden's speech, Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Bankes rose together; and strong proof was then given that the house was totally unconscious of any breach of parliamentary conventionalities, for loud cries arose of "Bankes," "Bankes," that gentleman being expected to reply to the statements as to the condition of his own agricultural constituents; but the Prime Minister, by violent gesticulations, by striking an empty box before him with furious violence, and by a countenance which indicated extreme agitation, succeeded in obtaining the ear of the house, and