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tion of the petition, argued the fairness of subjecting agriculture to the same competition which trade had to encounter, and declared his belief that land had not been so productive as it might have been if the owners had exercised their energies in increasing its productiveness. Mr. Richard Birley seconded the motion and the President rose for the purpose of putting it to the meeting, when Mr. John Benjamin Smith rose and said that he had understood the President to say, that the petition spoke the sentiments of the whole of the directors. He was a director, and he begged to say it did not express his sentiments. The President said he certainly understood that Mr. Smith had agreed to the petition on the day before. Mr. Smith replied that he did agree to what he then heard, but some passages had been added since; he believed that it was in the prayer of the petition that passages had been added from which he could not but dissent. "The inference to be drawn from that prayer was, that the chamber approved of a protective Corn Law of some sort—an inference which he could never allow to be drawn from any document purporting to bear his sanction. He did not hesitate to say that he could not approve of any protective duty on corn, and that in his opinion the whole course of legislation on the subject had been, from beginning to end, one of the most scandalous instances of landowners legislating for their own benefit, at the expense of the people, that was to be found in the history of legislation in any country of the world." The cheers that greeted this declaration showed that a change had come over the spirit of the chamber Mr. Smith went on at considerable length to advocate the principles of entirely free trade, and concluded a very effective speech by saying that he thought he had shown that our Corn-Law legislation had been "one of most shameful injustice, and that they should so state in their petition, with the addition that while the members of the chamber sought for abolition of the Corn