The Sun.
London, England, 1852-11-24 00:00:00

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1852.

Yesterday the business of the Session may be
said to have really commenced. If for nothing
else, the Hon. CHARLES VILLIERS would, in refer-
ence to his motion of last evening, deserve the
thanks of the country at large, for having extorted
from the prolonged silence of the DERBY-DISRABLI
Cabinet the eminently satisfactory amendment
brought forward by the CHANCELLOR of the MC-
CHEQUER. There can no longer be any hesitatiom
-whatever in the mind of the community as to the
conclusion at length arrived at in reference to the
Free-trade policy by the principal Members of the
present Government. We take last night's amend-
ment to be the veritable epitaph of Protection. In
eliciting that interesting document from the taci-
turnity of his Parliamentary opponent, the Ho-
nourable Member for Wolverhampton reminds us
of the wight in the ballad, who

" Went and told the sexton,'
And the sexton tolled the bell."

His voice may with truth be declared to have
sounded the key note for the De Profundisof the
Monopolists. In this manner Mr. VILLIERS has
appropriately crowned his many eminent services
to the population. He has completed in the most
effectual manner the important successes of which
he has been himself throughout one of the most
distinguished, but at the same time one of the
lehst ostentatious originators. Every one miist
have felt last night, on listening to him, how unne-
cessary it was to vindicate himself from the charg e
of factious interference in bringing forward his mo-
tion in favour of the recognition of the Free-trade
principles. Why we all remember, the House re-
members, the country at large remembers, how
sedulously and perseveringly, for fifteen years,
CHARLES VILLIERS has been the consistent advo-
cate of the measures of unrestricted competition.
From him, therefore, the important resolution of
yesterday came with a very peculiar appropriate-
ness. And however much he may have indulge d
in the course of his argument in what Mr.
DISRAELI humorously designated " convenient ge-
neralities," he at any rate succeeded in eliciting
from the lips of that right hon. gentlemen a more
explict announcement of the formal abandonment
of Protection than had hitherto been extorted
from any one of the members of the Administra-
tion. "In point of fact," as Cousin PHCENIX
saith, the Free-traders could scarcely look for a
more complete acceptance of the reality of their
triumph under all the existing circumstances.
40_ -Alleptashe has already repeatedly shown himself
4, be in
theintricate tactics of debate, the CHAN-
CEL
I°ll of the EXCHEQUER has seldom shone—if,
,amply' in regard to mere skilfulness—to more
conspicuous advantage. His oration of yesterday
was
a masterly and comprehensive retrospect of
the past career of
hi
trospect in Which
he
colleagues as a party--a re-
sarcasms and e t
e scattered very plentifully
before
th
wP„ced ere, :_ore the _s—flowers of rhetoric
amendment.
strewn, as it
Thro
pathway of his
ughc e speech there was a
kind of refrain—droller and. droller with every
recurrence—about a certain
who had of politicians,
described as parties
perpetrated an
enormous mischief." Scarcely any One
amon the
more distinguished Members on the benches of
the opposition, but was pelted by
--mil with
mingled shower of jibes and compliments. It a
was,
in this manner that Mr. DISRAELI, after eniogis_
ingin eloquent terms and with winning
earnestness,
the indisputable consistency of the representa-
tive of Wolverhampton, spoke of that honourable
gentleman afterwards as the "Storm Petrel
of Protection"—remarkable for making porten-
tous appearances at particular crises a
Person especially noticeable for two things,
" precision of thought and concinnity of expres-
sion." Somewhat in a similar mood the Leader
of the Commons referred, in another portion of
his
harangue, to the FIRST LORD of the TREASURY
as a statesman not backward in maintaining a