The Sun.
London, England, 1840-01-14 00:00:00

cause you believed that what was stated in their behalf was
true. I call upon you to say whether what has been
alleged in favour of the Corn-laws has in your experience
been proved to be true ?—( Loud crier, of " No.") This,
then, is the moment which tt, who have ever sought
to refute the fallacies by which you have been duped,
or by which the people of this country have been
duped, have selected to point out to you that
the Corn-laws have not Mailed the promises
held out, and that they tree connected with all the
evils you are now, enduring. Gentlemen, this is not
the first time that public indignation has been aroused and
expressed in this country against the Corn-laws. iiefore
the last law was passed the general feeling of the country
was that Corn-laws had disappointed the expectation's of
their framers, and that the whole system was ere of delu-
sion. This led to the precious compound of absurdity and
mischief, the fluctuating scale—a wale which disappoints
every farmer's expectations, makes the merchant a gambler,
and which makes us pay a high price for good food when
our own is unfit for use. But, Gentlemen, are we a free
people? Arc we an enlightened and intelligent people?
Are- we going to endure this law, which is unjust in prin-
ciple, and proved by experience to be injurious.—( Loud
cries of " No.") I cannot believe that you will submit to
the influence of sheer power in enforcing that which is
decidedly injurious to your interests. Is there any delu-
sion that can be practised upon you that may induce you to
endure those laws. Some among our
.friends may be de-
luded by the saying that protection is required for the
agricultural classes ; but I look at the inscription before
me, and I say, " a fixed duty is a fixed injustice."—
' (Cheers.) Gentlemen, the phrase is a fallacious are, and
protection to the agriculturist may only perpetuate the evil
of which you complain. Manfully, and justly did your dele
gates in London, in my judgment, state the views of the mer-
chants of this country, when they said the general interests
of trade needed no protection, when that protection, in
principle, was injurious to the interests of the community.
—(Cheers.) If there are any of our friends who are
sticklers for protection, they will be rendering good service
to the cause by telling us what they mean.—( Loud
cheers.) I can understand compensation—l can under-
stand an arrangement in point of time—l can understand
a man obtaining relief under any peculiar grievance, but
I don't understand the meaning of a protection which is op-
posed to the best interests of the community at large.
If the landowner is like the slave-owner, and requires com-
pensation, why then let his case be inquired into.—
( Cheers.) If he has a title to it he can prove it, and,
like the slave-owner, the English people will never refuse
justice.—( Cheers.) If it is shown the community would
be injured by giving time to the landowner to change his
system and relation with his tenants, the public then will
submit to the subject being considered, as no man wishes
to do injustice to the agriculturists. What the public
want is, that no injustice should be done to them in the
name of the agriculturists.—( Cheers.) There are men
now clamouring for compensation and prptection, who
could not walk when the Corn-law passed; and, thirty
years hence we shall have the same thing, if you choose
to give them a fixed charge.—(Cheers.) There will
always be some claims to indemnity, and until we have
clear and determined ideas upon this question of
protection, we are in no condition to battle with
those who claim monopoly on that principle.—( Hear, snd
cheers.) It is a question whether we shall protect
the producer against the consumer.—( Cheers ) It is a
question whether trade was made for the community, or
the community for trade. —( Cheers.) Gentlemen, I have
given, as I was bound to do, much study and thought to
this question ; and it is my firm conviction that the land-
owner of this country is not entitled to any compensation,
and I believe that he will share with the rest of the com-
munity in all the advantages which I feel an immediate
abolition of this law must confer upon them.—( Cheers.)
I do riot express my individual opinion ; I only express my
assent to those who, with more experience than myself,
have announced this thorough conviction in their minds.
There is a man in this room, the author of the most intel-
ligent work on this subject, and be has expressed, his con-
viction, that the total and immediate repeal of this law
would be of no injury to the landlord, with a
great advantage to the community..—(Cheers.) I be-
lieve, therefore, all the alarms that are instilled
by landlords into their tenants are groundless, and that
therefore, not only justice and policy, but absence from
danger, recommend the total and immediate abolition of
the present Corn-laws.—(Cheers.) Gentlemen, I have
not wished in what I have stated to divert your attention
from the difficulties which surround this question, or from
the prospect you have of obtaining that which is your due
—(Cheers.) I have not wished in w hat I have stated now
to deny that which some have asserted—that as the
Corn-law is the very worst that can exist, that any
improvement that is proposed may be considered pre-
ferable.—( Cheers.) Gentlemen, I wish rather to draw
your attention to the difficulties that do surround the
question, and in the motion that I submitted to the House
lest Session I did not raise the question of the extent or
of the nature of the change, the simple question that was
raised before that House was, whether there should be any
change at all, and you see that not 200 Members of that
House voted, or showed themselves a ive to the mischi?ror
evils of the present law. When I state that night 200
Members voted for no change in the present law, I need
not say I feel little hope or expectation from the present
Parliament—(Cheers)—and I do not feel certain that
it is not better to wait fur the effect of the strong expres-
sion of opinion likely now to be made, than receive the best
measures the present Parliament would give. Much has been
done by the talent, energy, and liberality that has gone
forth from this great capital of British commerce in dissi-
pating error and promulgating truth ; this has been much
aided by the calamities occasioned by the law itself ; I
do therefore feel that when there has been :mare informa-
tion on the subject, and more suffering endured, there will
be a far better prospect of a total arid entire change in this
law than if you trusted to what can be done by the Legis-
lature. When I see this great assemblage, and the con-
dition of those who compose it, I am far more san-
guine of obtaining a total and entire repeal of the
present Corn-laws than previously. Any one was
entitled to expect a repeal of the Slavery Abolition
Act, or the passing the Catholic Relief Bill, and the Re-
form Bill. I feel, therefore, satified that with the parties
who are interested in knowing the truth on the subject, and
with the facilities that exist for learning the truth, I feel
convinced the Legislature will yield if you do not.--
(Cheers.) But mark, that is the condition of your suc-
cess, for if you lack in your zeal—if you show any indiffer-
ence—far better it would have been that the meeting had
never been held.—(Cheers.) In proportion as you exceed
expectation so will there be disappointment in the ranks of
ycur opponents; but if you flag in your perseverance
failure will be paramount, and your opponents will °buns
confidence. The Hon. and Learned Gentleman cocluded
by stating that his humble efforts were always, and in all
shapes, at the service of the meeting in their great strug-
gle for the repeal of the Corn-laws.
The CHAIRMAN then proposed the next toast--." Earl
Fitz william and the Members of the House of Peers who
supported his Lordship on his motion of last Session on
the Corn-laws." He had great pleasure in introducing
the Hon. Member for Carlow to the notice of the meeting.
Taomes GISBORNE, Esq., M. P., then rose to return
thanks, and was received with great applause. The Hon.
Gentleman said—l shall occupy your attention but for a
short time. I should ill understand the position I occupy on
this great :occasion if I were to waste one moment
of your time in making any apologies for my inability to
treat of the subject which has been confided to my hands.
I feel it a great honour that I am at all placed before you
on the present occasion, because I am not one of those
Members who in the last Parliament voted in support of
the motion of my Hon. Friend the Member for Wolver-
hampton. I cannct say I was not a Member of Parliament,
but from indisposition I was in this position--I was a
Member of Parliament de jure, but not de
facto. I had been elected a Member of Parlia-
ment, but I had not been returned. My posi-
tion was at that moment) usurped by another
person, and he, I believe, gave the only vote which he
did give in the last Session of Parliament, in opposition to
the motion of my Hon. Friend the Member for Wolver-
hampton.—( Hear, hear.) If my Hon. Friend should
again bring forward that motion, I can promise you that
the now de facto, as well de jure Member for Carlow will,
if he is alive, be found a supporter of that motion.—
(Cheers.) Gentlemen, I can very well suppose that many
men in this assembly may wonder why I should have been
selected to respond to this particular toast, because most
assuredly I have no connections in the House of Peers, and
the last position in the world in which lean fancy I should be
placed, would be a Member of that House. But, Gentle-
men, I apprehend that I have been selected in order that I
might hate the honour of representing in this Assembly a
small, but I hope an increasing band of landowners, who
do not, to use the phrase of my Hon. Friend, submissively
make use of what he calls 'squire's logic; for though I am
myself a squire, and nothing else, yet I certainly beg not
to be included among the persons of whom he spoke, and
I hope that before 1 sit down I may able to convince him
thate such logic as I possess is of very different quality
from that to which he has alluded, and is turned to very
uifferent objects.—( Hear, hear, and laughter.) In one
respect, perhaps, there is a propriety in selecting me on
this occasion, namely, that I am one of those landowners,
a large part of whose landed possessions and those of his
family happen toi consist( of that sort oinfiloarnmd,uwshwicohultdhobsee
who use squire's Lau,
first to be turned out of cultivation by the repeal of the
Corn-laws.—( Cheers.) Gentlemen, I feel that with re-
spect to the particular Noblemen whose healths year have
drank, that it is not necessary I should pass on them any
eulogy: Their acts are their eulogy, and it is not
the first time that on this very question the most liberal,
the most just, and the most popular principles have ema-
nated from the members of the House of Peers. This
very morning an Hon, Gentleman—l do not know whether
he is present, for though I have received many kindnesses
from him, I have mailed the pleasure of seeing him, and it
was through him that my attention was directed to a part of
the Parliamentary history which had escaped me, in which
I find that in the year 1815, when the first Corn-law,
founded at all on principles like the present, was passed in
this country, a mast noble protest, drawn up, I have no
doubt, by Lord Grenville, and entered against its passing
in the House of Lords. It contains:one or two sentences
so just that I copied them out, and as they are very short,
perhaps you will allow me to read them, The Protest
beg ins—