The Sun.
London, England, 1851-02-12 00:00:00

THE SUN,

to make such a manifestation of (pinion as rill compel him
to aet upon that which I believe to be his own conviction.--
(Hear, hear.) I ask the House to declare, in the face of
the country, that it is not to be tolerated that, in a condi-
tion of general prosperty, there should be one suffering class
whose grievances create no sympathy, and to whose earnest
entreaties for redress no friendly attention is to be paid.
I ask this House, in the name of common justice, and of
common humanity, to place on solemn record the expres-
sion of their opinion, that it is the duty of the administra-
tion to terminate at once a state of things so anomalous
and so deplorable. I could wish the Noble Lord at the head
of the Government to undertake the management of this great
question himself. lam actuated by no factious motives.
(Hear, hear.) I do not bring to the consideration of this
question any thing of that fervid passion which distinguishes
the proceedings of less deliberate societies or of meetinge,
where my own name is sometimes mentioned as that of
one who is not sufficiently ardent in his efforts to obtain
redress for the suffering classes. Ido not think that for
this reproach there is any warrant in truth, but I can make
much allowance for the feelings of worthy men, who without
any fault of their own find themselves in a position of the
greatest perplexity and the deepest suffering. Whether
my policy has been right or wrong, of this I am in my
heart convinced, that under circumstances of difficulty
and of danger, I have taken that course with respect to
the agricultural interests which is the result of long thought,
observation, and pain, and I ask you to adopt in their
regard a policy which justice does not disapprove, and
which policy most emphatically recommends. If I make
no further appeal to the Noble Lord at the head of the
Government, I entreat you and him to believe that it is
from no hostile feeling, but because I have twice already
appealed to him in vain. But I now appeal to the House of
Commons. True, it has been called a " Free-trade House
of Commons;" but I appeal to it with confidence, neverthe-
less, because have the utmost confidence in the cause I ad-
vocate, and the most unbounded reliance on the spirit of in-
tegrity which, notwithstanding that I differ from many of
its Members, I believe to animate the bosoms of all.—(Loud
cheers.) This House has now at its disposal an opportunity
not lightly to be discarded—a golden occasion for which we
will not easily find a parallel in the records of any Par-
liament in this country. It may perform a great of-
fice, and fulfil an august duty. It may step in at
this auspicious moment, and do that which the Minister
shrinks from doing—terminate the bitter controversy of
years, and bring back what the great Lord Clarendon
calla " the good old temper of the people of England."
( Hear, hear.) It may terminate that unhappy controversy
between town and country which has been the fruitful source
of jealousies and animosities, and which good men of all
parties cannot but deplore ; it may build up again upon their
ancient basis the defences of the land of England—that in-
terest to which we owe so much of our power and freedom
—that interest which has fulfilled the union of those two
qualities, for combining which a Roman Emperor was deified,
imperium et libertas, and all this it may do, not by favour,
not by privilege, not by sectarian arrangements, not by class
legislation—(Hear, hear)—but by asserting the principles
of political justice and obeying the dictates of social equity.—
(Enthusiastic cheering.)
The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER said that the
Hon. Member who had just resumed his seat had offered
at least one piece of advice of which he (the Chancellor of
the Exchequer) would most cheerfully avail himself. The
Honourable Gentleman had advised that the important
question of agricultural distress should be approached in a
calm, rational, and temperate spirit, and there was so
much of propriety and of good sense in the advice that he
for one would not hesitate to accept it. In justice to himself,
however, he would take leave to say that he did not think
that there bad ever been anything in his conduct, so far
at all events as it referred to this question, which renderel
it necessary that such an admonition should be given. He
could say, in all sincerity, that he had on all occasions
endeavoured to consider this question with becoming
composure, and with an unaffected anxiety to take that
course with reference to it which he believed to be re-
commended by considerations of justice and of honour.—
(Hear, hear.) He would endeavour to act in the same
_ _

spirit now, for he had not the least doubt that that calm,
temperate, and impartial discussion for which the Hon

Gentleman appeared to be so solicitous, would inevitably
lead to the rejection of his proposal.—(Cheers, and laughter.)
Indeed, he was at a loss to imagine on what plea of com-
mon sense or of common justice that proposal could be sup-
ported. On former occasions the Hon. Member had so far
obliged the House as to submit to their consideration pro-
positions which, whatever might be their faults in other re-
spects, were, at all events, clear, definite, and intelligible;
but he had sedulously avoided pursuing any such course on
the present occasion. His speech was a jumble of all
imaginable topics, but he did not call upon the House
to adopt any particular measure with respect to any one
of them, or even to exrress an opinion on any one of them.
There was scarcely a question which had bean the subject
of political discussion luring the last five years, whether
national taxation, local taxation, acts of settlement, or
acts of currency, that he had not huddled together into
the hodge-podge of his speech, and he did not con-
descend to describe the course of policy which he would
wish the Legislature to adopt with reference to any one
of them. He could not tell with what sentiments the Hon.
Member's speech had been received by those who sat in
hia immediate vicinity; but to him (the Chancellor of the
Exchequer) it appeared to be vague and inconclusive. it
embodied no distinct proposition that he could comprehend,
and it led to no practical conclusion. Having already inti-
mated to the House his intention of making, on Friday night,
the official statement of the financial measures of the session,
it was not to be expected that he should, in replying to the
arguments of the Hon. Gentleman, anticipate the discussion
which was to take place on that evening.—(Hear, hear.)
Therefore, he wished it to be understood that in the remarks
he was about to make, he did not mean to deal with the
question otherwise than upon general grounds, nor did he in-
tend to speak of any of the measures which he would feel it
his duty to propose to the' House on Friday evening —(Hear,
hear.) He had to complain that the Hon. Member had mis-
conceived certain observations which had fallen from him on
a former occasion on the subject of national finance. The
first occasion on which he had had to meet the Hon. Mem-
ber on this subject was in 1849, and what was the proposition
which the Hon. Gentleman then brought before the House?
It was no other than this, that not only the agricultural in-
terest, but the whole community, was in a state of the deepest
distress, and, indeed of absolute ruin. He said that, whether he
went into the marts of commerce or the fields of agriculture,
the same overwhelming cry of distress greeted his ear from all
sides. His (the Chancellor of the Exchequer's) answer was,
that so far as commerce and manufactures were concerned,
the Hon. Gentleman was decidedly labouring under a singu-
lar infatuation, and that the facts were not as he (no doubt
with the best intention) had represented them; and that,
with regard to agricultural distress, it was, in some respects,
exaggerated, and, in another respect, premature. What he
had stated on the subject was this, that in 1847 the average
price of corn was 695. 9d. a quarter—that, during the year
1848, it had fallen down only to 50s. 6d., which was the
average price during 1846, 1845, and 1844,—and that these
facts and figures proved that it was impossible that the de-
clination in the price could have been occasioned by recent
legislation on the subject of the corn-laws. For this reason,
he said that the statement of ruin to the agricultural interest
was, to say the least of it, premature, because no circum-
stances connected with the repeal of the corn-laws had yet
taken place which could possibly have produced a state of
things such as the Member had described. Moreover,
by a reference to a volume which he now held in his
hand, he had proved to the Hon. Member that the
price of meat was acteally higher in 1848 than it had
been in 1844, and that the agriculturists must have been
in a better position in consequence. These explanations he
had made for the satisfaction cf the Hon. Member, and in
order to show that his alarm was in some respect exagge-
rated, and in some respect premature, but he had never de-
nied the existence of a certain amount of agricultural dis-
tress. He had never concealed from the House his convic-
tion that it was impossible for such a change to be intro-
duced, as that involved in the repeal of the corn-laws,
without occasioning a certain amount of distress and suffer-
ing to the agricultural classes.—(Hear, hear.) Experience
had convinced him that it would be most unreasonable to
expect that any branch of industry which had been accus-
tomed to lean on the crutches of protection, could have those
crutches knocked from under it without experiencing some
difficulty and distress; but at the same time he believed
that before long it would revive and stand in a stronger po-
sition than before. To these opinions he still adhered. He
might be mistaken in his views, but he had never attempted
to conceal from the House his honest convictions.—(Cheers.)
No man could foresee with accuracy at what time or to what
extent the temporary difficulty and distress consequent on
the repeal of the corn-laws would fall upon the agricul-
tural classes, for they all knew that it must
very much depend upon the seasons and the pro-
ductiveness or unproductiveness of the harvest. It •
must depend also to some extent on the demand for agri-
cultural produce by the manufacturing classes. The demand
from the great seats of industry had always
happythatmarket;was to
that demand had been during the last few years,
great.unprece-
bdeernthlyad e
himself to was
o f
bealarmedpihn to that
n
suffered il theextenth.gMreeanate;
than the facts of the case warranted. There was nothing
still
oio
a
in the importation returns to create dismay; for,
of wheat
re-
referring to them, he found that the importation of
and flour during the six months ending the sth of April last,
was less by one half than the importation of the same arti-
cles during the six months ending the sth of April, 1849.
(Hear, hear.) Tuis was a most significant fact. It certainly
indicated a great falling off in the supply of foreign corn.
And while on this subject, he would take occa,ioa to ob-
serve, that the event had proved that those who bad antici-
pated vast supplies of foreign corn from certain countries
were wholly mistaken as to the precise quarters from which
those supplies were to come. It was expected that there
would be an immense influx from the United States, and that
the American corn would be sold here for 355. or 365. a quar-
ter, but no such result had been realised, nor anything like it.
The supply had, in fact, come from countries from which no
supply whatever had been anticipated. There had been
considerable importations from France, but the present state
of agricultural affairs in that country was anomalous, and
strictly exceptional. The price of corn in France in the
month of March last was lower than it had been for the pre-
ceding thirty years. The importations from that country
into England in the year 1849 was 740,000 quarters ; in 1850
it was 1,100,000 quarters; but the misery which prevailed
amongst the agricultural interests in France at the present
moment proved how inefficient were protective laws and a
large foreign importation to secure prosperity to a people.
The French newspapers teemed with the most deplorable
statements of distress amongst the agricultural classes in
France. He held in his hand an influential French journal
in which it was stated that the depreciation in the price of
corn still continued, and that there was every prospect of the
agricultural classes being more severely depressed than ever.
So much for prohibitory laws and large exportations The
solution of the difficulty in which the English agriculturists
were involved appeared to be that there was a large produce
of corn in 1849, and that the depreciation in price was occa-
sioned by the badness of the quality—not more there one-
half of what came to the flail being fit for the market. This
was certainly so in many counties. As far as he was him-
self concerned, he had never expressed a wish that the price
of food should be high in this country. He had always said
that he believed it to be for the interest of the great body of
the people, and especially for that of all classes who were
engaged in industry, that the price of food and meat should
be as low as the world could afford. The recent change in
the price of meat was not to be attributed to the small in-
crease in the importation of foreign cattle, an increase which
in the year 1850 only amounted to 6,000 oxen and 11,000
sheep. It was rather to be attributed to increased home
production—(Hear, hear)—and it should be remembered
that there was more than a corresponding falling off
in the quantity of imported provisions. The fact was,
that the diminished price of meat was owing to the in-
creased production of the article in this country.—(Hear;)
The returns during the last few years of the number of
cattle brought to the Newcastle and Glasgow markets
established this fact beyond controversy.—( Hear, hear.)
He believed no foreign beef whatever had been brought into
Newcastle or Glasgow. The quantity of beasts slaughtered
in Glasgow in 1848 was 19,788 ; in 1849, 22,882;
in 1850,
26,200. The number of sheep slaughtered in those years
was—in 1848, 69,290; in 1849, 8'3,480. and in 1850, 96,104.
That showed a very increased demand, which must have
proved highly beneficial to the agriculturist. He (the Chan-