for figures ought to be manifested, and the table which I have produce: ought to be examined, when to the West-India planters we are invoked to extend our commiseration. But mark, these West-Indians are not contented with that they have already got; they insist upon a permanent tax upon the English people. I contend, Sir, that a perpetuation of monopoly was no part of the contract made with the West-India planters. The noble lord the member for Lancashire, who told us, that as the organ of the Whig government (the organ of the Whig government!!) he introduced the Emancipation Act, has not suggested that the continuance of monopoly was any part of the contract. If it were, upon what principle could the equalisation of the duties on East and West-Indian sugar and rum have been sustained? When that equalisation was proposed, the unfortunate West-Indians made out precisely the same case as they make out at present. They told us that the West-Indies were in a state of transition, that a great experiment ought not to be disturbed, that East-India sugar was the produce of slavelabour, that it was produced from dates at a very inferior cost. With what scorn were these expostulations received by the representatives of the East-Indian interest in the House of Commons! How indignant they were at the remotest, and the most delicate reference to Hill Coolies and to slaves; and with what impassioned force my honourable friend, the member for Beverley, denounced the effrontery of the men, who, with twenty millions in their coffers to a continuance of their monopoly had the audacity to put in a claim; but now-now, Sir, that these East-Indians have got a share in the privileges against which they inveighed so vehemently: now that they are embraced in the monopoly which they represented as so detestable, they who have made no sacrifice by whom no loss of any kind has been sustained, whose slaves have not been emancipated; they, forsooth, have the unparalleled intrepidity to ́turn round, and, uniting themselves with those very West-Indians of whom they were before the fierce antagonists, talk to us of the expediency of sustaining the colonial interests, while of the interests of the people of England they are utterly forgetful, and think nothing of the sacrifice which an exorbitant protection, even upon their own admission, of necessity involves. The resolution adverts to sacrifices: yes, much has indeed been sacrificed, but you are not contented; you require that an annual tribute shall be offered to monopoly, and to ensure its punctual payment, you insist that, instead of recruiting the revenue by a just apportionment of existing duties, new burdens shall be imposed upon the people. This proceeding will, most assuredly, be attended with evils far greater than any which can by possibility arise from reducing the duties upon sugar, from introducing it into a larger consumption, and thus producing that accession to the revenue which, if we may judge from the parallel case of coffee, must necessarily ensue. If such consequences followed from the reduction of the duty upon coffee as I have proved to have been derived from it; from the reduction of the duty upon sugar, whose admixture with coffee is indispensable, and of which the use is so multifarious, analogous results must follow. Independently af this fiscal advantage, a two-fold benefit must accrue to the great mass

of the cor munity. In the first place, we cheapen one of the necessaries f life; and in the next place, it is obvious that if we take more of the produce of other countries, other countries must take more of the produce of our own; to that extent the manufacturers of England must be promoted, and to that extent the employment of our operatives must be cncouraged. To their sufferings, the Tories everywhere I hope, at the Justings I am sure, are alive; but when the obvious means of alleviation are proposed, they sacrifice the interests of that vast class of the community for which so much commiseration is possessed by them, to the maintenance of that too narrow commercial system, by which, if we adhere to it, consequences the most pernicious will be entailed upon us. We are met upon the Continent by retaliatory tariffs. Of our discoveries in mechanics, of our finest and most powerful machines, of the advan tages of which we were once in the exclusive enjoyment, our foreign competitors are now possessed; to other markets, to markets in the countries in which manufactures do not exist, and in which it will be our fault if they shall arise, the eyes of every British statesman ought to be intently turned; and, above all, to that splendid mart which is opened to us, in the young and prosperous empire of Brazil. I am astonished that any man should speak of our commercial relations with that rapidly progressing country in the language of depreciation. Before his constituents, such language would not be adopted by the noble lord, the member for Liverpool; he would not, before his constituents venture to insinuate that he considered the renewal of the treaty with Brazil as a matter of small amount; or if he did, and looked from the hustings to the harbour of that great city which he has the honour to represent, in many a noble ship, of all his fallacies he would behold the refutation. But how can we reasonably expect that the Brazilians will make concessions to us, if to them we refuse to make any concessions; and if the Parliament of England is not prepared (to adopt the phraseology of your resolution) to take the produce of Brazil, have we not reason to apprehend that the Parliament of Brazil will be unprepared to take the produce of England? And, even with reference to the slave-trade, is it not likely that we shall accomplish far more by treaty, enforced as treaties ought to be, than by any fiscal regulations which it is possible to devise? One of the evils resulting from these fiscal regulations is this: the people of England are taught to rely upon them as the means of restraining the slave-trade, instead of adopting the measures by which that important object might be obtained. Meetings are held, harangues are delivered, admirable resolutions are passed, and the work of abomination all the while goes on. Of a great and powerful country, expedients, so unavailing as our differential duties have been proved to be, are unworthy, and when England stands forward in the cause of humanity, it is not from the Custom-house that her weapons should be supplied. Despite your differential duty, the slave-trade is infamously prosperous-the monster consumes his thousand victims a day. There is not a creek upon the slave-coast in which the barks engaged in that atrocious traffic do not lie in wait; and even while I speak-while we sit in council here-across that ocean which Englishmen are accustomed

to call their own-across that ocean which has been most nobly called 'your home upon the deep"-how many a slave-bark, freighted with woe, despite your differential duty, holds on with impunity her swift and unimpeded way, while you, with the evidence, the incontrovertible evidence before you, of the futility-the utter and most scandalous futility of your differential duty for the accomplishment of any one purpose by which the interests of humanity, as distinct from those of monopoly, can be promoted-instead of calling upon England, to put forth her might, and invoking her to employ the only efficient means by which this horrible traffic in our fellow-creatures can be put down, expatiate upon the blesssings of monopoly; descant upon 63s., and 368., and 248., and propound resolutions for the sustainment of that fiscal anomaly, by which (and you know it,) to the atrocities of the slavetrade not the slightest obstacle is presented, while to our revenues the deepest detriment is done. The embarrassments with which every minister of this country, whether he be Whig or Tory, will have to contend for many a day, will be augmented, by which a deprivation of one of the commonest commodities of life will be inflicted upon the lower classes, by which industry will be paralysed, the employment of our suffering and pining operatives will be abridged, our commercial relations with one of our best allies will be endangered, and we shall run the risk of closing, perhaps for ever, a field of almost boundiess enterprise upon the commercial genius of the English people

CORN LAWS.

SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, MARCH 9, 1842.

I CERTAINLY am surprised that the right honourable gentleman who has just sat down, and who is so remarkable for perspicuity, should have mistaken the observation of the noble lord (Viseount Howick,) who is so remarkable for his perspicuity. The right honourable baronet has misconceived what the noble lord advanced, and he seems to me to have omitted that part of the speech which is most deserving of attention. Among the observations of the noble lord, I was struck with one which appeared to me particularly deserving of attention. The noble lord designated the measure of the right honourable baronet as the precursor of ulterior measures. The noble lord stated it was obvious that the right honourable baronet cannot stop here, and that either he or some other minister must ultimately abandon this protection. To that observation no remark has been made by the right honourable gentleman. Whether he agrees in that remark, or did not agree, it is not for me to determine. I think that the observation of the noble lord deserves the most serious consideration. The right honourable baronet is about to tamper with the law which regulates the price of provisions. It has been well said by Edmund Burke, in his excellent thoughts on scarcity, that to tamper with the laws regulating the price of provisions, is at all times dangerous," but when you do tamper with these laws--when you do more when you do yield to public opinion, you ought, at least, to see that you are acting satisfactorily to some great party. You are about to take the first step, and that an important step, in the course of innovation. You are about to take a step which does not satisfy all parties, even on your own side. The Duke of Buckingham, at least, feels a strong objection to it. When that change is proposed, he, who was not in the cabinet of 1839, ceased to be in the cabinet of 1842. Might he venture to say, "Honi soit qui mal y pense?" When you are about to make a change which is thought material by your own supporters, it is a matter of much regret and of some surprise, that you de not at once that which you or some one else must do at last. You still adhere to the vicious principle of the present system, of which perpetual uncertainty is the conspicuous essence. You still adhere to the slidingscale. You adhere to the principle that affords incentives, and that affords opportunities for fraudulent combinations. You still adhere to the principle which substitutes the spirit of rash adventure for the spirit of legitimate commercial speculation. You apply the principle or a sliding-scale to corn alone-you apply it to no other article of human food. Colonial coffee and colonial sugar are protected by fixed duties. It is said that the sugar duties are about to undergo a change. It is rumoured that the apprehensions which were so lately entertained as to the indirect sanction you would give to the slave-trade begins to subside. Do you mean to apply the principle of the sliding-scale to coffee and to sugar? If you did so, if you passed a law declaring that the duty upon

Brazilian sugar and upon Havannah sugar. shall depend upon the average price of East India and of West India sugar, I will ask the right honourable gentleman, the Vice-President of the Board of Trade, whose peculiar care this would be, whether such a law would not inflict a great practical injury on the growers of coffee and the growers of sugar in the Brazils? I do not feel surprised that the agriculturists of this country do not adopt the opinions-the extreme opinions as they are considered by many-of Mr. Adam Smith, and Mr. Huskisson in his latter days, that the very measures intended for the protection of the agricultural interests are in fact deleterious to them; but it does appear to me strange that the advice of so decided a friend of protection as Mr. M'Cullogh, should not have more weight with the agriculturists. Mr. M'Cullogh says that a fluctuating scale of duty adds au artificial variation to the inevitable natural variations of the seasons, and inflicts as much injury upon the farmers as upon the traders. Is this a sound principle? Let us examine how the sliding-scale works now, to see how it will work under the proposed changes. The sliding-scale in one single year, in the year 1835, shifted thirty-five times-it underwent thirty-five different changes. On the 19th of July, in 1838, the duty was 20s. 8d.; on the 13th of September, the duty was 1s. ; in the week ending October 11th, it was again 20s. 8d.; and, before the end of December, it again descended to 1s. In the year 1840, the lowest duty was 2s. 8d.; it remained so for one week, and in five weeks afterwards it was 20s. 8d. In the year 1840, on the 17th September, it was only 1s.; in the next week, it was 2s. 8d. ; it rose to 16s. 8d. the next week; to 20s. 8d.; and on the 14th October it reached 22s. 8d. It appears to me that this system, or anything like this system, must produce injury to the agriculturists, and that the farmers suffer equally with other classes, fron that which they believe to be their safeguard. But, says the right honourable baronet, "the new plan which I propose, and the machinery which I introduce, will obviate many of the objections of the present law. I introduce rests, which will baffle the fraudulen working of the averages." It is true that you lower the duty, but you leave a duty ranging between 20s. and 1s. You therefore leave ample opportunity for working the averages-you leave every chance for having a glut of corn at a time when it can be contemplated this long duty will arrive. It has been urged, and I admit the force of the objection, that in times of scarcity it will be very difficult to maintain a fixed duty. I will meet that objection, and I will answer it by a reference to Mr. M'Cullogh. He says that if the ports are constantly open, if there is a regular trade in corn at a fixed duty, the supply would be perpetual ; and that if there be a fixed duty we shall take away the chance of a great scarcity. I admit the force of the objection; but where there is choice of evils-where we have to make our election between difficulties, I would confide in a fixed duty to be brought under the consideration of parliament, rather than surrender the averages to the jobbers of Mark-lane. Whatever may be the opinions as to a fixed duty or the effect upon the commercial and manufacturing interests of this country, there is no doubt during the last four years millions of quarters of cont