The Sun.
London, England, 1849-02-02 00:00:00

THE SUN,

to declare before your Lordships and the country, strength-
ened by experience of every succeeding day, my conviction that
this country will never prosper—that you will never be able
to thwart and defeat the dangerous designs of mischievous
men, bent upon still farther measures of perillous
change, and having, as they imagine, at length
grasped the lever by which they hope to upheave and up-
root the old and venerable fsundations of this country—my
Lords, I say every day's experience convinces me more and
more that if you hope to see the return of prosprrity to the
manufacturing and commercial interests, as well as of the
landed and agricultural interests, including in these latter
interests not the country gentlemen alone, but the farmers,
and also the labourers of England—(Hear, hear)—
you must retrace the steps you have taken —you
must return to make a large portion of your revenue
depend upon the product of moderate import duties—you
must return to the principle of protection, and not only is
my conviction firm that this is that to which, if you are wise,
you will return, but my belief moreover is strong, that at no
very distant period to that principle and to that system the
feeling and deliberate opinion of the country will compel
you to return.—(Hear, hear.) My Lords, with the view I
take, it is hardly necessary for me to waste your Lordships'
time by referring to the present prices of agricultural pro-
duce, or to waste your time by showing that the farming
interests of this country are in a state of considerable depres-
sion. I have, indeed, heard that, as has been said lately, on
tke authority of a very distinguished individual, after
all, the wheat crop is a very small proportion of farmers'
produce. —(A laugh.) I can easily conceive that at
the present moment thanks to your Lordships' le-
gislation and that of the other House of Parliament,
—the farmers' wheat crop does constitute a very small item
of his annual produce. At the present moment the price of
corn is 455. per quarter—the precise amount to which I ven-
tured, in the debate on the corn-laws, to express my opinion
free trade would bring down the regular price of corn in this
country; and that at the price of 455. you would have intro-
duced, one year with the other, something like four million
quarters. Now it singularly enough happens that the price
of wheat at this moment, I believe, is 455. and a fraction
per quarter, and that in the course of last year—a
year, be it observed, of very moderate prices—there
wer6 imported about 5,000,000 quarters of all descrip-
tions of corn. I say it is impossible, if these prices
are to be permanent, that the agricultural operations of this
country can be carried on with profit to the farmer; and I
say that if they cannot so be carried on with a profit, the loss
will in a very short time fall, not upon him, but upon the
labourers employed, and all connected with the agricultural
interest. But, my Lords, there is a most significant fact
staring us in the face at the present moment, and I appeal
as to this, not to figures, but to your Lordships' expe-
rience, and I speak to men connected with almost all parts
of the country upon the point, and I ask if experience
throughout the kingdom, and more especially in the
southern counties, does not show, that in spite of the
low prices that were to bring about universal plenty,
happiness, and contentment, there is a larger amount of
vagrancy, a greater amount of mendicancy, and a greater
number of able-bodied agricultural labourers thrown
upon the poor-rates than there ever was before? I ask
your Lordships whether these increasing evils are not
pressing exclusively upon the land, and becoming more into-
lerably burdensome than they have ever been at any other
period? Now, if this be really the truth—if this fearful
state of things is actually going on—then it is not honest to
sink the fact. I believe, my Lords, that you have given,
in her Majesty's Speech, an erroneous and exaggerated
colouring, even of the state of those interests that
are mentioned in it; and that there is an entire omission
in that Speech—not, perhaps, wilfully—on the part of
her Majesty's advisers, but still most censurably, of all
mention of important interests now in distress, and ap-
proaching their ruin. I will not now enter into details re-
garding our West Indian colonies. I have to thank your
Lordships for having so patiently listened to me while endea-
vouring to correct what I deem to be serious mis-statements
in her Majesty's Speech; and I must also apologise most
unfeignedly to you for my having been drawn, in the course
of my hasty remarks, to an unexpected length. I have to
move, as an amendment upon the Address before your Lord-
ships, that at the conclusion of the paragraph which de-
clares the state of the revenue to be one of progressive im-
provement, and after thanking her Majesty for that com-
munication, that the following words be inserted, viz.—
We regret, however, to be compelled humbly to represent
to your Majesty, that neither your Majesty's relations with
foreign Powers, nor the state of the revenue, nor the con-
dition of the commercial and manufacturing interests of the
country are such as, in our opinion, justify us in addressing
you- Majesty in language of congratulation, and that large
portions of the agricultural and colonial interests of the
empire are labouring under a state of progressive de-
pression, calculated to excite serious apprehensions and
anxieties."
The Marquis of LANSDOWNE next rose to address the
House, but Ins speech was very inaudible in the gallery. We
understood him to say that he must begin by stating that had
it not been for the speech of the Noble Lord who had just sat
down, he would have been perfectly content to rest the
grounds of his vote in favour of the Address that had been
moved that night upon the speeches of the two Noble Lords
behind him. But after what had fallen from the Noble
Lord who had last addressed the House, he (the Marquis of
Lansdowne) felt it necessary to make a few observations. The
Noble Lord who had just sat down, was pleased to conjecture
that this silence had been occasioned by the supposition
on his (Lord Lansdowne's) part, that the speech of
the Noble and Learned Lord (Lord Brougham) was favour-
able to the Address, and to the policy which it recommended.
Such was the simplicity with which the Noble Lord had
been pleased to charge him. But
,he did certainly think the
Noble Lord had shown as much simplicity when he con-
sidered, as he (Lord Lansdowne) well keew at the time and
expected he would consider, the speech of the Noble Lord,
which went so much further in approbation, and therefore
so much less in disapprobation of the Address, to be in
favour of the sentiments he himself had just expressed.
—(Hear, hear.) Yet although he congratulated himself
upon having secured the assistance and approbation
of the Noble and Learned Lord in favour of what he
was pleased to call the landed interest, that
Noble and Learned Lord had taken the opportunity
already of reminding him that he must not congratulate
himself on having secured his assistance in going back-
wards—( Hear, hear)—to protection, which he had just an-
nounced to their Lordships as his policy. In that respect,
at least, he could not assure him of having found much en-
couragement from the Learned Lord, or assistance. With
regard to the silence alluded to by the Noble Lord, and his
own reasons for abstaining for the while from offering him-
self to the attention of their Lordships, he would say that the
Noble Lord had availed himself as undoubtedly he was
well competent to do, of that opportunity, and the terms of
the Address, in order to state an opinion, and to found that
' opinion on assumed facts, at a moment when, in the
very terms of the Speech, it had been announced that
the whole of the papers would be very shortly laid
upon the table. He would be permitted to say that the
.Noble Lord could not, for his purpose, have ever adopted a
more judicious time.—(Hear, hear.) If the Noble Lord had
waited for these papers, no one of the assertions which he
had made in his speech, and which he had made the foun-
dation of that opinion which he invited their Lordships to
adopt, not one of these assertions which would not have
been falsified. In proCeeding to reply to the speech of the
Noble Lord, he would take it up in the order which the
Noble Lord himself had pursued. But he begged leave, in
the first instance, to say that he disclaimed with the Noble
Lord altogether the opinion that hostilities had been coun-
tenanced by the British Government, or with their consent
suspended between Austria and Hungary. He assured them
that they had never interfered with these hostilities, never
meant to interfere with them, and never were desired to
interfere. At the same time they could not but contem-
plate with deep interest a struggle carried on under circum-
stances of great difficulty, in which individuals had displayed
before the world sentiments and conduct of so lofty a cha-
racter. He assured the Noble Lord that they had taken no
part whatever in the negotiation between the Emperor of
Austria and his subjects—a negotiation in which he deemed
they had no right to take part. There were other nego-
tiations, however, connected with that power into which
they had entered, and which, he hoped, would end in con-
solidating the interests of that power, and the general
peace of Europe. His Noble Friend at the head of the Foreign
Department had, nevertheless, been represented as insisting
upon being permitted to interfere, and as thrusting his
mediation upon. other nations. There was one instance, in-
deed, in which they had offered their mediation : they
had communicated to Austria the terms on which they
proposed to mediate, terms which were favourable to the
Austrian interests. At the moment Austria did not think tit
to accede to these terms; but a time elapsed, new circum-
stances occurred, and the relations of parties were somewhat
altered, when at length their mediation was accepted, and a
Congress would be called upon such terms as perfectly justi-
fied the course determined on by the Noble Lord the Secre-
tary for .e °reign Affairs. He did not certainly think that his
Noble Friend opposite ;(Lord Stanley) would go so far as to
say that, having undertaken a mediation, at the request and
in consequence of the application of another power, they
should offer only such advice as she herself might wish.—
(Hear, hear.) Such, at least, were not the terms on which
they had, or ever would consent to interfere in any coun-
try; and when the Noble Lord chose so to misrepresent the
policy of his Noble Friend at the head of the Foreign Depart-
ment, he might remind that Noble Lord of the time when
he was in conjunction with his Noble Friend (Lord Pal-
merston), and when hii Noble Friend entered upon some
of the most important negotiations with the greatest powers
in Europe, and carried them to a successful termination, with
the complete approbation of the Noble Lord then, though he
had now withheld it, and with the very best effects upon the
peace of the world. If, however, it were conceded to the
Noble Lord that the policy of his Noble Friend (Lord Pal-
merston) had been of a disturbing and unpeaceful character,
why, the Noble Lord, by his own expressed opinion, had still
the consolation that his Noble Friend, during the past year,
had been most unsuccessful in his endeavours.— (Hear, and
laughter.) These endeavours had been made at a crisis the
most exciting, and under circumstances the most trying which
for many years had occurred in Europe—at a time when those
evil passions alluded to by the Noble Lord had been let loose,
and hostilities existed between country and country, and
even forgotten nationalities had been revived in a spirit of
bitterness; but thanks to the policy on which his Noble
Friend had proceeded—(Cheers)—and thanks to that con-
junction and co-operation of France with England—(Cheers)
—noticed in the Speech from the Throne, these evil passions,
these hostilities between country and country—these nation-
alities had been for the time successfully prevented from end-
ing in a general war. It was mainly owing to the policy of
his Noble Friend that there had not been a general outbreak.
—(Hear, hear, and cheers.) He now came to notice the
comments of the Noble Lord on their mediation in the affairs
of Sicily. In the first place, the Noble Lord would have
their Lordships to believe that, as regarded any of the par-
ties concerned, the interference of the Secretary for Foreign
Affairs had been uninvited.
Lord STANLEY explained that his remarks applied to the
interference of the squadron.
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been the language of the Noble Lord opposite in animadverting
upon the conduct of the Government? "Is that the 'he would have said, "in which you use the King ofNwaalY,s"
an ancient power in friendly relations with the British
Go,
vernment ? You have neglected your obligations in so treat--
ing a friendly power who has solicited, under important cir-
cumstances, your advice and mediation." They did go to
Naples, but when there, they were solicited to send also into
Sicily. " Would the Secretary of the Legation at all events
not go ? Or would they not send, if it were only an attache?
Would nobody go ?" Somebody did go, therefore. As re-
spected Naples, then, it was a power with which they had
been in a state of alliance, and a power which had solicited
their interference. Indeed, looking at Sicily, not as indepen -
dent of Naples, not as a country which they wished to be inde-
pendent of Naples, but as a country having certain rights, and
in possession of these rights, as being practically independent,
these rights were recognized ar the ground of British interfe-
rence in Sicily. He did not say that they had been invited at
the time to effect for Sicily recovery of the possession of these
ht s; b ut circumstances afterwards did occur which made i
obligatory on the British Government to give the weight and