The Sun.
London, England, 1846-03-28 00:00:00

reading of the Corn Importation Bill, assured the House,
with reference to the petition that had just been presented,
that he had never interfered in the slightest degree with his
tenants, upon the subject on which the petition had been
presented. He was prepared on public grounds, notwith-
standing all the obloquy that had been attempted to be coal
upon him, to support the present measure, which, he felt as-
sured, would receive the sanction of Parliament. He was
convinced that there was no ground for the alarm that had
been expressed by several members for the results if the
present measure was carried ; the value of land would not be
decreased, the rents would be kept up, and the public miad
would be set at rest upon the question. He was one of the
trustees of land in Essex. and it was not until within the last
three weeks that he and his co-trustees had been offered that
rent for it which they thought it was worth. If it was to be
supposed that the measure would have the effect of throwing
land in the country out of cultivation, why, he would ask,
should such individuals as Lord GEORGE BENTINCK be
found foremost in a project to recover land from the ocean?
He denied the assertion that had been made that the famine
in Irelhnd was totally without foundation, and that the
greatest misrepresentation bad been made with respect to it.
The report of the Government Commissioners was not the
first thing that alarmed him with respect to the state of
Ireland, for his attention had been called to it by a letter of
the 21st of October, from the secretary of the Agricultural
Society of Ireland. Immediately upon receiving the infor-
mation the Government thought it their duty to revise the
laws with respect to the importation of food, and the result
of their revision was the introduction of the measure now
before the House. The Right Hon. Gentleman then read
several letters for the purpose of showing that the state-
ments that had been made by the Government relative to
the disease in the potato crop', had not been exaggerated,
and from which it appeared that one-fourth of the crop was
totally unfit for human food. Added to this, a deputation
from Limerick had waited on the Lord Lieutenant at Dublin
but a few days ago, to represent to him the alarming state of
destitution and want of food that existed in that part of the
country. The Right Hon. Baronet concluded b
Ofy
DUBLIN warmly
supporting the Bill, and wisuring the Recorder
that he preferred his open hostility to his smouldering re-
sentment. The Right Hen. Gentleman had cast the horo-
scope of the Government, had stated that be found they
were falling, and he sat behind them in order to kick them
because they were falling.
Mr. STRUTT, the Marquis of WORCESTER, Mr. D. GARD-
NER., and Mr. MILDMAY, opposed the Bill, which was sup-
ported by Mr. BouVERIE.
The House was subsequently addressed by Sir R. Pm.,
Mr S. O'BRIEN, and Lord PALMERSTON ; after which the
House divided, when the second reading was carried by a
majority of 88, there being 302 for it, and 214 against it.
The House then adjourned.

Our satisfaction at the Ministerial introduction o
free trade, earnest as it then was, is, if possible, at the
present moment tenfold. Early this morning the Corn
Bill passed a second reading, with a majority of eighty-
eight I A majority whioh, though actually inferior to
the ninety-seven votes which gave a Parliamentary
accordance to the first reading, is, in fact, positively
greater than the previous majority, when the numbers
of both divisions are respectively submittid to the right
arithmetical test, and brought into immediate juxta-
position. The deduction to be drawn from this is ab-
stractly signiacant—to us it is an extension of victory.
In addition, however, to this most important and in-
disputable fact, the other proceedings coincident with
last night's discussion cannot but afford the sincerest
pleasure to every lover of liberality, to every one, in
shtrt, interested in the welfare of humanity. As Sir
ROBERT PEEL'S reason is now attached wholly and
emphatically to those principles which have been advo-
cated by men hitherto distinguished as his political
'antagonists, we feel assured that the hearts of those
quondam-antagonists are now wholly and emphatically
attached to a statesman so honourably and valorously
actuated as himself. His address of last evening was
eminently worthy of his present position—a posi-
tion which we hesitate not to characterise
as the most dignified, the most exalted, and
the most enviable Prime Minister ever occupied. Ordi-
narily regarded, his arguments here might bo aspersed
as mere reduplications of previous inferences. Not so—
bis remarks as to the causes and effects of the proposed
measure upon the social system of England, of Ireland,
indeed of the world at large, if not altogether novel,
were at least advanced in a new way, and accompanied
with fresh illustrations. To that speech we commend
the so-called country party, and we do so, we must
confess, with just a trifle of malice prepense—they will
find their personalities upon the Premier so dissected,
and analysed, and torn as it were to ribbons
by the quiet sarcasm and withering corollaries
of Sir ROBERT. Nor was Sir JAMES GRAHAM
less fortunate in the materiel or in the influence of his
very practical and ingenuous address. Assuredly it must
have afforded Lord GEORGE BENTINCR anything but
feelings of gratification to witness the casualty—(as we
may call it)—by which the observations of the Home
Secretary were preceded—a casualty most apropos to
the purpose of the Right Honourable Baronet, but most
ill timed and calamitous for the sprouting statesmanship
and youngling oratory of his Lordship. This casualty
was no other than the presentation by Mr. COBDEN of a
petition from the tenantry of Sir JAMES GRAHAM
himself, expressing their extreme satisfaction at
the course of policy now pursued by her MAJESTY'S
Government, and at the same time distinctly
and positively asserting " that the assertion made by
Lord GEORGE BENTINCH, that the whole of the farmers
on the Netherby estate, with one exception, had signed
the petition from East Cumberland in favour of protec-
tion to agriculture, is erroneous and unfounded in fact !"
Be it observed, moreover, that the Right Hon. the
Secretary for the Home Department, denied having any
cognizance whatever of the existence or even the inten-
tion of such a petition from his tenantry until
the moment before he rose to address the
House, when the Honourable Member for Stock•
port laid that document before the representatives. It
is not irrelevant, neither is it superfluous to reiterate a
circumstance to which, if we recollect right, we have
already on a former occasion referred. We allude to the
fact of Sir JAMES GRAHAM'S revenue being exclusivt ly
derivable from his landed possessions, and a great por-
tion of which land proves remarkably unproduc-
tive, even under the most sedulous cultiva
tion. Hence every rational person cannot but
perceive that the Right Honourable Baronet would
be naturally averse to any measure likely to deteriorate
his property, and therefore could scarcely be supposed
to advocate a Bill with one quarter the zeal which he has
testified upon the present occasion, unless he were either
actuated by a most noble and scarcely paralleled act
of magnanimity, by sacrificing his own individual interest
for the benefit of his less elevated countrymen, jeopar-
dizing; in short, the very life-blood of his fortunes,
solely for the public good, or, unless he were
convinced—fully and thoroughly convinced—that
the proposed measure could inflict no injury
whatever upon agriculture. Under either of which
reasons Sir JAMES GRAHAM stands in a healthy and
solid position. If he believes that evil must result to
agriculture by the passing of this Bill, he claims our
-warmest admiration—he claims our reverence for a
noble act of self-forgetfulness. If, on the other hand,
he knows that no evil can result to agriculture from its
acceptance, his Parliamentary proceedings are good
and valid —he acts as an upright and sagacious
statesman. Precisely the same arguments, though
possibly to a different extent, apply to Sir R. PEEL.
On this very account it was that the Premier asked, in
allusion to the agricultural interest, " Why, what pos-
sible interest can I have to injure that interest ?"
Surely every interest, on the contrary, to render its
prosperity permanent, its rights intact, its capabilities
for improvement more numerous. That such would
actually be the consequence of the proposed policy is
maintained by the mot eminent, the most experienced,
and the most sagacious of our legislators. It is maintained
by Mr. COBDEN, the most practical mercantile thinker in
the kingdom. It is maintained by Sir ROBERT PEEL,
a man to whose judgment the destinies of England are
consigned by the bulk of the people. It is maintained
by Lord PALMERSTON in its beneficial relation with
fore4-,n countries, than whom a more competent autho-
rity upon this division of its consequences could not be
discovered. It is maintained by Lord JOHN RUSSELL,
Mr. GLADSTONE, Sir JAMES GRAHAM, Mr. HUME (with
whose very name political economy has become identified);
and by a host of others whose talents would alone guaran-
tee the soundness of a principle. And besides all this, it
is maintained by the most interested portion of the
agriculturists themselves—the tenant-farmers—a fact
placed beyond dispute by the respectable petitions pre-
sented in Parliament, as well as by the array of circum-
stantial evidence adduced to that effect by the Right
Hon. the Secretary for the Home Department. A sense
of confidence in the benefit which must accrue to all
parties, without distinction, by the operation of this free-
trade measure, is beginning to extend among the farming
population ; fresh leases are taken, and extreme satisfac-
tion is very generally expressed amongst those classes at
the prospects now held out by the reclamation of waste
land.
Of the paltry misstatements of the Recorder of
Dublin, in reference to the maladies which afflict Ire-
land, Sir JAMES GRAHAM made little less than mince-
meat. Howbeit, we have now merely to congratulate
, the lovers of liberality on last night's division.

Already the predictions to which we gave utterance
°spMrung up
companies.
in our observations on the the
new life has
in the offices of many of the defunct railway
Secretaries are now again busily engaged
letters to the several allottees, calling their filling
lutpo
that ease, which they are pleased to say has settled the
question of their liability, and informing them that if the
sums thereby demanded (with, in some instances) an
additional sum of ss. for cost of the letter of applica-
tion, be not paid within a certain limited time, immediate
steps will be taken to enforce the payment of the entire
deposit. Now those gentlemen must be perfectly aware
that the very important question to which they allude