into Parliament during the last year of the services and life of Mr. Canning, and had for him, both publicly and privately, feelings which he could hardly qualify as less than idolatry—such as he had for no other statesman, almost for no other man. With these feelings, he certainly did not sympathize with, on the contrary he viewed with great disapprobation, the course pursued in 1827 by the right hon. Baronet and many of his then political followers. In a discussion shortly afterwards, he gave vent to the keenness of those feelings in as bitter terms as he could find. These feelings made him attend with the more anxiety to all that then took place; and he certainly had no reason for believing, but, on the contrary, every reason for disbelieving, that anything occurred which at all fastened upon the right hon. Baronet the imputation lately levelled against him. He was confirmed in this impression by his distinct recollection of Mr. Canning himself standing up in his place in the House, shortly after the resignations had taken place, and saying in a marked manner, that for the resignation of the right hon. Baronet (Sir R. Peel) he had been fully prepared. After the right hon. Baronet's own statement now, he must do the right hon. Baronet the justice to say that he thought the case attempted to be substantiated against him (his own words were the best to employ) had been "completely shattered." He would only add, that in voting against the measure which the House was shortly to approach, he should feel great regret at giving a vote against the right hon. Baronet at the moment when he had conducted to a triumphant issue perhaps the most important question that ever engaged the attention of the Parliament of this country.

MR. VILLIERS said, as the character and opinions of Mr. Canning had been most irrelevantly intruded on the debate, he could not help asking the House to consider on which side they thought Mr. Canning would have been arrayed on the real cause of quarrel between the different parties in this House-namely, free trade and monopoly. Why, he did not scruple to assert that the chief reason of that persecution which followed Mr. Canning to the grave, was, that he was known to be favourable to the principles of free trade; and that it was known to every friend of Mr. Canning, to every contemporary, and to every man who was watching public affairs at the time, that the men who were really the enemies of Mr. Canning, who, if

any, were the cause of his death, were those who represented the party with whom the noble Lord the Member for Lynn was identified. The hon. Gentleman continued: The noble Lord (Lord G. Bentinck) has talked much of his feeling for his relative; he has proclaimed the sense which he has always felt of the wrong that was done him; and he has traded with the sympathy which he expected from the House in the expression of those feelings on the oceasion; and yet there is not a man in this House who knows better than himself that whether he looks to the opinions that he upholds, or the men he is acting with, or the principle which he professes, that he is wholly, completely, and unequivocally identified with the party, the persons, and the principles which were in fact in the bitterest hostility to his relative, for whose memory and principles he would have the House believe he felt such respect and veneration. Yes, with everything that the late Mr. Canning would have spurned, the noble Lord is associatedwith every man that persecuted him, he is intimate-to the policy that the whole tenor of his life would make it certain he would repudiate, the noble Lord devotes himself-in fact, to everything that the kindly feeling, the enlightened views, and the just and liberal tendency of his mind, would have rendered dear to Mr. Canning, the noble Lord who intrudes his relative's concerns on the House, is the most opposed, and is doing precisely what Mr. Canning would have been shocked at, and with all his brilliant talent and generous soul would have resisted to the utmost of his power; and yet the business of the House is to be stopped, the feelings of its Members are to be appealed to by the noble Lord on behalf of monopoly and oppression, because the right hon. Gentleman who seeks to relieve the country from both, is alleged to have been, nineteen years ago, the enemy of Mr. Canning. Sir, the hon. Member for Winchester said that the country heard these low personalities which had been engaging the attention of the House for some months past with indifference. Sir, in one sense of the word, that is true; but, Sir, if unmitigated disgust can be construed into interest, it is otherwise that is what is felt at the proceedings of this House of late. There is one class of persons, however, who will not receive these recent statements about the right hon. Gentleman without interest-I mean the farmers of

the country. They will read the abuse of the right hon. Gentleman, and they will examine the grounds on which is founded the present mistrust of him; and they will see that it rests on facts of nineteen or twenty years' date. They then will turn upon honourable Gentlemen opposite, and say, "Why you had reason to mistrust this man in your pockets. When you came to us and told us to trust him, we saw you turn out the noble Lord the Member for London, because you said he was not our friend; and you told us to support the right hon. Gentleman because he was our friend. You told us we ought to trust him, and yet you had about you the means of putting us on our guard, for it seems your charge against him now is, that he was utterly untrustworthy nineteen years ago. What are we to think of your eternal care about the British yeoman? What are we to think of your solicitude about native industry, if we see now that the man for whom you told us to sacrifice our fortunes and our principles, you yourselves distrusted, and had every reason for expecting that he would abandon the protection on which we were induced to pay you highly for our land?" This is the language they will hold, if Gentlemen opposite begin to sentimentalize with them about treachery, and all the horrible things that are said to have befallen them. Here is the real treachery, duplicity, and perfidy (words the most choice in the vocabulary opposite), will they say; and with justice will they, probably, reject those at the future election who hope to entrap the British yeomen by the sort of language that has been lately held within this House. They knew, it seems, that the right hon. Gentleman would abandon protection, when they told them to cast out the noble Lord the Member for London, and elect the right hon. Gentleman in his place as the stanch Friend of that principle. But the noble Lord the Member for Lynn has sought to save himself to-night by saying that he was not a follower of the right hon. Baronet, but of the noble Lord the late Member for Lancashire, and now a Peer. Why was this? Can anything be so small and paltry as this? What! a follower of the noble Lord, who is a Colleague of the right hon. Baronet, and who submits to follow the right hon. Baronet, and to be bound by his policy, to be instructed in his course by him, to submit his judgment to that of the right hon. Baronet, to ac

knowledge him, in the fullest sense of the term, a leader; and yet the noble Lord pretends to be so innocent as to suppose, because he calls himself a follower of Lord Stanley, who followed the right hon. Baronet, he is not a follower of the right hon. Baronet, whose enemies were Lord Stanley's enemies, and whom the noble Lord was therefore obliged blindly to oppose. Why, was there ever such quibbling, and such a way of escaping from the charge of associating himself with the enemies of his relative, whose memory he has brought before the House? And now, Sir, I should like to ask what right the noble Lord had to assume the privilege of criticising other men's conduct, because he was the follower of that noble Lord? That noble Lord is not exactly a pattern of consistency, of attachment to party, or regard to principle. Why, Sir, when I first came into Parliament, not disposed myself to be critical about men's conduct, to my astonishment, I observed the noble Lord (Lord Stanley) was the subject of constant reproach and jeering in this House, for having deserted his party and his principles. The thing that struck me most was, the noble Lord going through the form of sitting with the Liberals, and being obliged to pass over to the other side whenever he had to vote. It was a regular thing; the noble Lord was then marking to the House the party to which he had been attached, to which he was bound by principle and old connexion; and the new party, and the new principles, to which he had allied himself. It became so distressing at last, that the noble Lord was compelled at once to pass over to the party to which he had ever been opposed, identifying himself with them; and ready to take office with them whenever they were able sufficiently to injure and discredit his natural friends and allies. Why, Sir, it was the joke of the day that the noble Lord could get nobody to follow him as a party in his crooked and faithless course; and till the noble Lord announced it to-night, I did not know that he had had one follower bold enough to incur the obloquy which it had brought upon him.

The noble Lord tells us tonight that he was the follower of the most notorious deserter of his party that was known in that day; and do not let it be said that I am charging the noble Lord wrongfully, or that I am leaving it open to him to say that the party deserted him; for it is no secret that no other Member of that noble House to which he belongs

changed.

No! His noble father (the Earl of Derby) remained attached to the principles of his life, his family, his party, and has, I am told, actually voted for the very measure which the noble Lord the Member for Lynn would make the touchstone of honour in opposing. He has voted as every liberal-minded politician would vote for the abolition of the Corn Laws; but the noble Lord sets himself up as a critic upon every other man's conduct, because it appears to-night that he is the single follower of this noble Lord. Well, but considering the extraordinary assumption of superior purity by the noble Lord, was there ever anything so unlucky as this very question of the Corn Laws on which to rest his battery upon the rest of mankind? Why, it seems, after all the pledges which we hear were given for the maintenance of protection at the election of 1841, it is this very noble Peer that was the great and striking innovator of it, and against whose measure there was greater violence, more obloquy heaped upon its author, than upon any other person or measure which has since been attacked. Yes, it was the Canada Corn Bill, as it was called, purporting to let in all the surplus grain from the United States, that occasioned more alarm, excited more mistrust, elicited more vehement alarm for abandonment of principle, than any Act that was drawn up to the repeal of the Corn Law itself. And I declare, having read and heard much of the protection violence and bitterness of speech, there is nothing that I have read or heard since, that has at all surpassed what was addressed to the authors of the Canada Corn Bill; and if there was reason at all in the attack on the authors of the change on that side, I am bound to say it was as well deserved as it has been on anything that has been done since. Why, the hon. Member for Warwickshire, if I am not mistaken, is at this moment pledged to move for the repeal of that Act, as fatal to the protection of British agriculture. [Mr. NEWDEGATE: I am not pledged.] Well, if the hon. Member is not pledged to repeal it, I will almost venture to pledge myself to prove that he made a strong speech against it, and that he was present when some other Member of this House did pledge himself to procure its repeal. [Cries of "Where?"] Where? why, at the Freemasons' Tavern two years ago, when native agriculture dined there, for the avowed purpose of denouncing the free-trade mea

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sures of the right hon. Gentleman. it was then that hon. Members knew perfectly well that the Government were proceeding in a course of free trade that must end in an abolition of the most obnoxious restrictions that existed. Again, if the noble Lord wants to know why it is that nothing that he or his party says excites any interest in this House or in the country, it is because he, knowing perfectly well what was the tendency of the measures of the Government, observing that he was assailing protection in every out skirt, and wherever he could do it safely, never raised his voice-never took the slightest heed of it; but regularly supported, and thereby encouraged, the Minister in his course. No! what the people now say is this: so long as the interest is small

long as the interest was not your own so long as the Government got strength by demolishing our protection, you were silent; you said not a word. Protection, they said, is valuable to us, if it is to exist at all, and, as much as it was to you; but while it was only abolished with respect to hats, and to corks, and to shoes, you have been benefited yourselves, and you cared nothing about the people who had to undergo temporary privation; but now that you are afraid of your own order, of your own interest, that rents may fall, that the least injury may befall yourselves, then you discover that the Minister is a traitor-then you complain of his conduct to Mr. Canning; this is the occasion for five months unceasing personality and invective. When the poor are to go to the wall, he is the only man, he is the man to rally round; but let him equally assail the great and the small, and then we have the history of this Session. The people are just and wise in this country; they see that all this violence and resistance is sordid and selfish, and they will have nothing to say to it-they wait with anxiety for its accomplishment. They see nothing chivalrous or generous in the party who are obstructing the legislation of the country on this subject. There are on the opposite side men who have been consistent on this subject; men like the hon. Members for Dorsetshire, and Somersetshire, and Northamptonshire. They have raised their voices constantly, and long have they said that protection was being abandoned; and they have complained of being deceived for three years past, and were treated by many, who now profess to be wronged, as factious troublesome men,

who could not enter into the enlightened views of the right hon. Gentleman. They were neither encouraged nor assisted; but now, when the horse is gone-when the thing called protection is lost-comes the noble Lord with all his abuse and invective, and shuts the doors, never having done a thing or said a word in time to avert the evil, as he deems it. The noble Lord had nothing to say against the principle that has triumphed; he slumbered while it was progressing; he has been off his guard while vigilance was required; and now, when opinion is pronounced, he disturbs the peace and good manners of this House by his violent and personal charges. The noble Lord has not a leg to stand upon. He is too late, and has nothing to say. He should, moreover, in decency, consider, when he and his Friends the Member for Evesham and Member for Shrewsbury pretend to represent the landed interest, what is the proportion of interest among those who attack this measure, compared with those who support it. Why, though it is asserted to be injurious to the landed interest, I firmly believe that those who support it, are greater proprietors than those who oppose it. Look at those three Members that I have mentioned. I never heard that the noble Lord and the Members for Evesham and Shrewsbury were great territorial proprietors. [Cries of Oh, oh!"] Oh! it is not right, is it, to refer to the circumstances of Members who engage in this discussion? How comes it, then, that in that speech which the noble Lord wrote out for the Morning Post, that he says that my object for repealing the Corn Laws is that I have got a sinecure, and want to live cheap on the taxes imposed on the people? I never said anything personal in my life to the noble Lord; yet, in his lavish use of personality, he could not help uttering this, as he thought, to my disadvantage, utterly untrue as it is, and not the least pertinent to the question. I have no sinecure, and never had one, and never was paid in my life out of the taxes of the country. [An hon. MEMBER: What is your place, then?] That business, and not yours. If you say I have a sinecure, I say it is untrue; and if you mean it as a charge against me, it is your business to prove it, not mine to satisfy your curiosity. I do not want to be personal. It is you who are so, and have no other argument; and I can tell you that the House is getting sick of it; it has been borne too long; and if the House is

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not impatient of it, I tell you that the constituencies are, and that the public is. ["Oh, oh!"] Oh! why, I tell you that these personalities that are bandied about here are thought discreditable to those who use them, degrading to the House that listens to them, and disgusting to the public obliged to notice them; and knowing, as I do, the deep debt of gratitude which is felt by the public to the right hon. Gentleman for having accomplished what no other man could have accomplished as well; for having conferred so inestimable a benefit on the public by repealing the odious monopoly in food, my only reason for not feeling regret at the insults, the abuse, and the contumely with which he is treated by those invariably hostile to the interests of the people, is, that I know that nothing is more calculated than their malignity to exalt him and endear him to the country.

MR. STAFFORD O'BRIEN said, the hon. Gentleman who had last spoken had sought to vindicate the right hon. Baronet from the charge brought against him, with great truth, of having unwisely, and to the disadvantage of his party, changed his opinions as to the system of protection. The hon. Gentleman then proceeded to make a severe attack on a noble Lord (Lord Stanley) who was not in that House to defend himself; had he been, he would have needed no one to stand up in his defence; no one knew better how to justify himself, or to repay with interest the attacks of the hon. Gentleman. The gravamen of the charge of the hon. Gentleman against the noble Lord was, not his consistency, but his inconsistency-an inconsistency which had assisted in advancing the cause the hon. Gentleman had so much at heart. He had attacked the noble Lord, not so much for having been the persevering, unflinching friend of protection, but because he had so far swerved from the principle as to have introduced the Canada Corn Bill. In one part of his speech he had attacked the noble Lord for his inconsistency, and in another had exculpated the right hon. Baronet from the same charge. He understood the hon. Member to say that the opposition Mr. Canning met with in the latter part of his life, did not all arise from his support of Catholic emancipation, but from his endeavours to promote free trade. The noble Lord the Member for Liverpool, the Member for Winchester, and the Member for Wolverhampton, had all charged those who opposed the