The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-05-21 00:00:00

THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.

mutation it. should be established, beyond contradiction, that
there would be a. cheap and regular supply, and cheap and
regular enough it ought to be, before such a measure as throw-
ing the poor lands out of cultivation was adopted. He doubted
whether the supply could ever be made sufficiently abundant.
Russia, Prussia, the North of Europe, and the United States of
America, were the countries on which we must be dependent;
and if we had now difficulty in coping with those countries,
how would those difficulties be increased when those countries
knew that we were dependent upon them for our supply of
food? It was a great fallacy to suppose that the export of our
manufactures would be increased by the import of foreign corn;
all our custom-house returns proved the contrary. Here the
noble lord entered into some statistical returns to prove this as-
sertion, but the noise in the house prevented us from under-
standing their details, and, indeed, from hearing any part of the
termination of the noble lord's harangue.
Lord ALTHORP said that every man must admit the great im-
portance of this question, and that it was one on which the
feelings of the country would be excited whenever it should be
brought under consideration with the view to its final settle-
ment; but he would put it to the house to consider what would
be the situation of the country if either of those resolutions
should be adopted. If they loOked to the many great and im-
portant questions which yet remained to be brought under the
consideration of Parliament, they would, he thought, admit that
if there was a time less suited than another for the discussion of
this question, it was the present. (Hear.) Looking at the mere
question of the time which remained for the public business yet
to be done, he thought it would be found short enough without
the addition of this question, which under any circumstances
would make so large a demand on the attention of Parliament.
Under these circumstances he would ask, ought such a period
to be chosen for re-opening a subject of such magnitude, and
which must greatly excite the country from one end to the other?
Besides, the price of corn was not now pressing. It was low,
and the manufacturers were on the whole in a state of employ-
ment. When he objected to making any change in our system
at this time, he must add, speaking his own private opinion, that
he did not see any such great advantage which those laws pro-
duced to the lauded interest. He hoped that at any time he
should not allow considerations of individual interest to sway in
giving his opinion, even as a private person, on a subject of
such magnitude, and still less should he do so in his character
as a minister of the crown, whose duty it was to take those mea-
sures which might best promote the interest of all classes; but
he might remark, that he did not see the corn laws had been of
such advantage to the landed interest that he, as a landed pro-
prietor, would be greatly benefited by keeping them as they
were. His great objection to any change now was the unfitness
of the time, and the pressure of so many other and more ur,,,,,ent
subjects on the attention of Parliament. On these grounds it
was his intention to have moved the previous question" to the
resolution of the hon. member for Wolverhampton; but he was
now precluded by the forms of the house from doing so, as au
amendment was already moved. He would therefore oppose
the amendment, with the view of meeting the original question
afterwards with a negative. With these feelings of the unfit-
ness of the time for the consideration of this great question, the
house would see the propriety of his not following either of the
hon. members into the details into which they had gone. He
might remark, however, with respect to fluctuations of prices,
to which the hon. member had referred, that it was impossible
to prevent such fluctuations where the price of corn In this
country was raised by factitious means above that of the Conti-
nent.. He would alsoobserve on what appeared to him to be a very
erroneous opinion on the subject of prices as affected by the corn
laws. It. was believed by many that the loss to the consumer in
this country was equal to the whole amount of difference be-
tween the price which corn bore here and that at which it was
sold in the foreign market. Now this was not the case, for it
was always remarked that the opening of our ports to the ad-
mission of foreign corn was immediately followed by a rise of
prices in the foreign market, so as often to come very near to
our own price. He would add that he did not see that any prac-
tical inconvenience had been shown to result to any party from
the operation of this system.
Mr. A. BARING said, that if anything was calculated more
than another to excite alarm and Inconvenience in the country
on this question, it was the speech of the noble lord who had
just sat down, who, admitting the badness of the present sys-
tem, would leave it in its unsettled state, without any attempt
to fix it one way or the other. He (Mr. Baring) had been
accused of sometimes speaking one way, and voting another
(hear, hear), but there was nothing- in that so inconsistent as
was the conduct of the noble lord on this occasion. The noble
lord had stated that the present system was as bad as it pos-
sibly could be.—(" No, no.")
Lord ALTHORP did not wish to be made answerable for more
than he had said. What he did say was, that he had great
doubts of the benefits of the present system of corn laws to the
landed interest. He did not see that the advantages of the
present system were such to the landed proprietors as to make
the removal of it a matter desirable for their interest. His ob-
jection was to the time. _ _ . . .

Mr. A. BARING said, that he had no wish to misrepresent
what the noble lord had said. He had understood him to say
that the system was not a good one, and yet he was not pre-
pared with any measure for its change for a better. If the
present corn laws were so bad, no time would be misapplied
which was devoted to the reconsideration of that question with
a view to their amendment. It was an injury done to all classes
of the community that such important questions as this should
be hung up in a state of uncertainty. The noble lord argued
that if we opened our ports, the price of corn on the continent
would rise, and therefore that the agriculturists need not be
alarmed at the prospect of a depression of the price in this
country to the extent .of the price in the foreign market when
the ports were closed. Now this might be the case in times of
scarcity, but if we admitted foreign corn habitually, its price
would not rise so materially above the foreign averages as to
prevent an inevitable reduction of the price in the English
market to an extent ruinous to' agriculturists. In conclusion
he expressed a confident expectation that without hearing
better arguments for a change than had been adduced to-night,
the house would not consent to either of the motions that had
been brought forward.
Lord PALMERSTON complained of the lion. member's mis-
representations of what had fallen from his noble friend. The
hon. member had before now observed, in reference to himself,
that his (Mr. Baring's) speeches and votes occasionally dis-
agreed in tenour (a laugh), and probably on the present oc-
casion the hon. member was too much engaged in keeping hold
of his own ideas, with a view to reconcile them to his vote, to
attend sufficiently to the sentiinents expressed by the noble
Chancellor of the Exchequer.—(Laughter.) His noble friend
did not say (as the hon. member appeared to suppose) that it
was the intention of ministers in a future session to make a
complete alteration in the corn laws; on the contrary, his noble
friend carefully guarded against stating the intentions of go-
vernment one way or the other.—(hear.) Neither did his
noble friend say that the corn laws were injurious to any in-
terest in the country; but that, in his opinion, they had not
been attended with as much advantage to the agriculturists as
they had been led to expect. In this respect his own opinion
entirely concurred with that of his noble friend. But there was
no drawing an inference from this statement as to what minis-
ters might be prepared to do in reference to the subject in fu-
ture. He could not see the force of the hon. member's argu-
ment that it was politically dangerous for a country to depend
on other states for a portion of its supply of food. Every ma•
nufacturing country which exported its manufactures must be
dependent on other countries for food, because if the manufac-
turers could not sell their commodities in the foreign market,
they could not buy the means of subsistence either at home or
abroad.—(Hear.) He entirely concurred with his noble friend,
that in the present time and circumstances it was inexpedient
to agitate this important question ; but surely his noble friend's
objecting to entertain the subject could not be fairly said to
throw the agricultural interest into doubt and uncertainty—
(Hear). He regretted that the subject had been brought for-
ward, but having entered upon its consideration, he thought
that the house had better dispose of it in the manner recom-
mended by his noble friend, by negativing the amendment, in
order to afford his noble friend' au opportunity of meeting the
original resolution by the previous question.
Mr. C. FEuGussox observed, that if the lion. members for
Wolverhampton and Middlesex were friends of free trade, and
desirous of relieving the poor, plans more worthless than those
embodied in both resolutions had never been proposed, inasmuch
as neither the one hon. member nor the other pretended that his
scheme, if adopted, would reduce corn a single shilling in the
quarter.
Mr. ROBINSON said it was a fallacy to suppose the present
system of corn'laws could exist without a full discussion in this
liouse as at present constituted. He admitted that the present
time was not judiciously chosen to discuss it. In the present
session it was perhaps impossible, amidst so many difficult and
important questions, but in another session there must be a full
discussion of the corn laws, the working of which had not an-
swered the purpose for which they had been introduced.—
(" Question.")
Mr. CAYLEY, owing to the impatience of the house, was quite
inaudible.

Mr. 13 ENETT spoke amidst cries of "Question." He con-
sidered that the present law had benefited all classes of the
country. So long as the weight of taxation pressed upon the
farmer, so long must there be a protection to the agricultural
interest. He hoped tiot:the e,ue6tion would be considered as
settled.