The Sun.
London, England, 1846-06-13 00:00:00

I ';_TP E 1 +.t,L F 4tll •';
f-!: 3. -SE OF 1.01? f'S
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The LORD COAN-CELLoa took his, ,„,at on the Woolsack
Five o'clock.
aIESSA FR°Y. THE COMMONS.
Messengers from the Cor:strions brought up certain Bills.
Lord L YTTEL, r 0 N.. 7. laid noon the table dale House cer-
tain papers cons siding. information respecting the colonies of
New Zealand, /Australia, and Nee foundland.
EDUCATION.
The His's, jp of BANGOR presented several petitions from
different pi .ices in Wales in favour of a better and inure ex-
tended sy, stem of education in Wales.
PUNISHMENT OF DEATH.
The Merquis of NORM ANBY presented a numerously_
signed ree,ition from the county of Down (Ireland) against the
punish ment of dea'h.
CRIMINAL REFO7MATION.
The Bishop of OXFORD presented sev• ral petitions from the
deity of Oxford, praying their Lordships wsust take some mea-
sures for instituting a place of refuge for erimin .1s who had
been liberated. and enable them to obtain an hcnst living.
FORGERIES BY A CLERK IN IRELAND.
The Marquis of CL AN RICA RDE. rose to draw the atten-
tion of their Lordships to the conduct of a clerk to a certai
firm in Ireland, who had committed some very extensive for-
geries, yet who had been liberated without being brought
to trial for such a proceedihg.
PROTEt:TION TO AGRFULTURE.
A NOBLE LORD presented several petitions from Salop and
other paces praying tors their I,,,rdships would give protec-
tion to British agricseture.—( Hear, hear. )
TENANT RIGHT.
The Doke of RICHMOND gave notice that he would, in
the Committee on the Corn Bill, move for the insertion
of a clause for the purpose of allowing all tenants to vacate
their leases and to receive compensation for their exhausted
. crops. A Noble Lord said that he never had subscribed to the
Cheshire Agricultural Protection Society, but he had the
minutes of the Cheshire Protection Society before him, in
which ho found Lord Delamere's name down as having sub-
scribed 251., arid as being an annual subscriber of iwo guiseas
CORN IMPORTATION BILL.—ADJOURNED
DEbATE.
The Marquis of EXETER then oaened the adjourned
debate on the Corn Inirortation Hill. but in so low a time
to be almost wholly inaudible in the rep:rters' gallery. He
;vas understood to implore their Lordships not lightly to
abandon the present protection to agriculture, and asked wha
sort of arguments, had beer, adduced in supie.rt of the second
reading of this hill--(" Hear "irorn the Duke of Ri hmond
The Noble Lod then referred to the years 1792. 1793, and
1794, when, he stated, the price of wheat was She, with a
protective duty of 245., but owing to the extremely low
tone in which he spoke, the tendency of hi: remarks
were, as we have a till, inaudible in the
The Noble Lord then went into a statistie,l ststeinent. tor the
ipurpose of showing tlaat the free-trade primifile, as (level, pod in
the lava tariff, had not worked so favourable as to ju.tily
the deductions which 11,d been made by the Minister—
that an entire free trade iu corn would be beneficial to
the country ; on the contrary, he c,uld show that it
Would have a most disastrous effect, by throwing land out of
cultivation, it would not remunerate the farmer tor his labour,
in consequence of the low rate at which corn would be sold.
When the price of corn fell, rents were always found to decline
in proportion ; and thus the land .wrier and the tenant
Would be mtrually injured, while the country would
lose the benefit of having a revenue which sh,,ot,i
be maintained In some sort, and the only way it could be
Maintained would be by ;erns some heave tax upon property,
which it would not be able to pay. Undor the old system
agriculture had flourished and the country pro-pered, and he
did not see with what reas m they sought to change it ; and,
believing that the measure would be hurtful to the country and
injurious to her interests, he would give it his most decided
opposition.
Several Noble Lords rose at the conclusion of the Noble
Marquis's speech to address their Lordships, but there b_ing
loud cries for Earl Delawarr,
Earl DELAWARR accordirgly proceeded to address their
Lordships, and said that he rose to perform a painful duty
in reference to this question. From the first moment
that these measures were announced to *he public, and at the
'commencement of the present year, he felt that be should be
called upon, as an humble individual, to say aye or no to these
measures in his place in Parliament, and he foresaw that he
should be placed in painful and difficult circumstances. On
the one hand, the question of severing himself from strong
political attachments presented itself ; and on the other hand,
stern requirements of duty and conscience. He felt that a ques-
tion of this magnitude and importance, involving fearful changes
.according to his opinion, required that he should give, when
called upon to express his opinion on the subject, a solemn and
serious consideration. He had laboured hard and long with
those who had brought forward this measure, and he felt that
it was an honour to be associated with such a name; but he
also felt that great as that honour might be considered, it was
V far inferior importance with the duty of acting according
'to his conscience in reference to this Bill. ( Hear, hear )
The Noble Lord, who seemed much affected, proceeded to say
that at that protracted period of the debate he would not enter
into the details of the process which brought him to the con-
clusion to which he had ultimately arrived; suffice it to say,
'that all the attention he could command he devoted to the
annsideration of the subject, but all the arguments
advanced failed to convince him the there was anything
is the exigencies of the present time to call for the adoption of
such a measure, or that any irresistible circumstances had
suddenly come upon us—he would not say to change the cur-
rent of their legislation, for they were told that it was but fol-
lowing in the course of their past legislation—but he held
that nothing had occurred to induce them to draw up the
'flood-gates which stemmed its too sudden impetuosity.
„.Re would not impute any improper motives to the Right Hon.
s_asaronet (Sir R. Peel), and the Noble Duke (the Duke of
wellington), or to the other Members of the Government, for
the course they had adopted had been taken, as on former °c-
ross', because they considered it would benefit the country.
th,_ thought they were mistaken, boat that never-
., 'mg they had "":'carried it out ith a single-
'less and sincerity of purpose.—(Hear, hear.) It had been
said " what was the use of resisting the measure—what would
they obtain by their opposition—public opinion was in its
favour, and if it was not carried this session it would be carried
!II next ?" He begged to deny that. the public were in favour
of it_( Hear, hear)—for it was well known that a great number
a Noble Lords in that House, and Members of
the • other House of Parliament, who had supported
it, stated that they vet y much disliked the Bill
in its prevent shape, and that a very large number in both
Houses disliked the principle of the Hill altogether; and there-
fore it was not fair to suppose that the public were in favour
of it, and he believed if their opinion were asked it would be
found not to be in favour of it.—( Hear, hear.) He doubted
'Much whether it. weulil be found that the well disposed
Portion of the community were in favour of any
change in the present state of things. (Hear, hear. )
There was one important fact in connexion with this measure.
that they were not allowed fair play in the expression of their
Feelings. It was pushed forward as a party measure. If
'Noble Lords did their d sty and fearlessly, honestly and manfully
'looked at the measure as it was proposed to them, they might
Yet escafrom the difficulties by which they were surrounded.
He had endeavoured thus to discharge a painful duty, and to
declare that he could not assist in passing a Bill that would
be so detrimental to the lan led interest.
The Bishop of ST. DAVID'S wished to be allowed to say a
few words on the measure before their Lordships; and he could
assure them it was not because he intended to enter into a
discussion of the general merits of this great quest ion, which
had been already so well done by ether Noble Lords,: but
to state the grounds why he thought it necessary
to address the House. He must say that the subject was so
alien to his usual pursuits, that he did not put himself up as an
authority of the slightest weight, and could aavance no new
facts and arguments to those which had been already stated.
It was from a different motive that he broke silence and claimed
their attention. He spoke in his own iefence. It could not
be forgotten that during the rec nt diseussi -in repeated refer-
tire was made to that portion of the House where he sat, and
those references were of such a nature, and contained charges
as to their motives and opinions on that bench which required
that be should claim, in explanation of the vote he had given,
their attention for a short time. He wished it to be under-
stood that he was speaking simply on his own part. and he was
not presumptuous enough to stand forth as their advocate, but
in the statements which be would make he would have their
Concurrence. Those charges, he was agreeably surprsed, only
came from one party in their Lordships' House, and that was
the party who opposed the measure. He would not have been
surprised had those charges come from another quarter, and
that it had been said that they wished to prevent the blessings
of Providence frcm being spread over the land. There might
have been texts of Scripture quoted against them in order to
raise the popular prejudice, bat he admired the wisdom and
the forbearance of the parties who proposed the present mea-
sure in not alluding to any arguments lake those. They were
fallacien not the less so because they were brilliant and pointed,
but because they took for granted the question in dispute.
They took. for granted that these blessingsw
ofould accrue from
this measure—a question which was a m steer the most Se-
rious dispute; but he was surprised that such arguments
suould have been resorted to. as their Lordships must see that
such arguments might have been used against themselves. In
making these appeals those Noble Lords should recollect
policyrecolle which
thch
whati
were the consequences likely to result from h
they assumed to be the right one. They shousludbrmecitotleledcutntdheart
the question submitted to that Committee was
the supposition that the clergy sere tyAs representatives and
coarse of their
guardians- of the interests of the labouring phoepulation. They
abeuld recollect that other Noble Lords, t
Several speech's, had emphatically thrown, overboard every
consideration of this matter as a landlords question • that they
11 the .nterests which
bad given to the labouring pophuloaltdi,onanl that they had simply
they themselves professed to
consider, d how far
result might conduce to the general
,
-benefit. They had allowedthe
..tvht the intere-ts of the community
at large were paramount. y,ab then, should they in taking
the 'clergy as the representatives of the interests of the labour-
ing classes—and he believed that they were,uriehhat
dims
hcuotni svie-
der rig them—why, then, did they take up
with the
u
and insignificant point as that of the inter
incenses of the clergy? This, at least, appeared to be unjust
in itself. and injur:ous to the parties of whom they spoke. He
believed the clergy themselves, in the consideration of this
question, would never conde:cend to consider so unimportant
a mantel. as the reduction of their own incomes. It appeared
to him that they were indications and they were the more
valuable indications because perfectly inv,lun'ary) of some-
thing which those Noble Lords were willing to conceal. not
oozy from their Lordships, but from themselves.—( Cheers. )
And he wished their Lordships to recollect the vehell"t
language in which they were addressed by oiie of those Noble
Lords, who held out some vain and indefinite threat of the con_
sequences that were to follow upon the Members of that (the
episcopal) bench ; as he saei. h •
count tryeirnoLtetrideshi desertedptserest‘e iea
lIIW —not the interests of their
labouring population—nut any one of-th—
pected to be dear and sacred to tit,„ostvhich might be ex-
(the Elisio) o ScaN
or did
character which they had to 8118tiiin.__.
be s; did net
theird
said, if they deserted them. he
non to but, he
care,atptebu„tietthßeisvhiotpb.lee) in
know what retribution was to follow, n
at the
wished to draw their Lordships'
of what was uppermost in the mind of his Lordship a
time that he spoke. Why, it was clear from
Lord said, it was not a question of the labouring
classes—not a question even of the tenant-farmers, but a
question of the landlords. —( Cheers ) If it had been other-
wise he was sure that the Noble Lord would never have ad-
dressed such an appeal to their Lordships.—( Hear, hear.;
Now, there was another circumstance that was still more re-
markable, and that was, that those Noble Lords should ex..
press so much sympathy for the interests of the clergy as to
appear
to understand their wishes and feelings
better than the
clergy themselves.—(Hear, hear.) Why, not only have the
clergy, as a body, publicly expressed no feelings on this sub-
ject.—(Hear, hear)—not only had they abstained from ap-
proaching their Lordships' House with petitions—(Hear,
hear)—but they had never, to the best of his (the Bishop of
St. David's) knowledge, in private signified to them, the
members of that (the episcopal) bench, any wish as to the
course of conduct which they would desire them to pursue on
that occasion.—( Hear, hear.) He considered that the clergy
in so doing—(Cheers)— had earned the approbation and
the respect of all who knew them. But what was the ten-
dency of the appeals which had been made to them by those
Noble Lords. except that they. ( the Bishops) should volun-
tarily and officiously interfere in this question, and so place
the clergy exactly in that. very invidious and dangerous posi-
tion which they themselves had declined to stand in ?—(Hear,
hear, and laughter.) He should like to know, wou:d any of
their Lordships say what would be the effect upon the public