considerations of morality and religion, he deprecated England's "running the risk of losing the benefit of its sacrifices for the abolition of slavery, and tarnishing for ever that glory, by admitting to the British markets, sugar, the produce of foreign slavery!" At length, said he, "I now come to the most important question of all, the introduction of foreign corn into this country." We beg earnest attention to what follows, for it bears directly and powerfully upon the same great question, and in the precise form in which it now stands before the country, and with which the Earl of Derby has to deal. [F] "Tamworth Election. Speech of Sir Robert Peel."--Ollivier, Pall Mall, 1841. "When I look at the burdens the land is subject to in this country, I do not consider the fixed duty of eight shillings a quarter on corn from Poland, Russia, and Prussia, where no such burdens exist, a sufficient protection for it. (_Great cheering._) Gentlemen," continued the eloquent and gifted speaker, warming with the enthusiasm which he had elicited, "it is certainly a very tempting thing in theory, to buy your corn at the cheapest market; but before you adopt that theory in practice, you must, as a matter of common justice, compare the burdens on the land in other countries, with the burdens on the land in this country. (_Cheers._) The land in this country is most heavily burdened--you cannot conceal _that_. Look at the amount of the poor-rate levied, on land, as compared with that levied on the productive means of manufacturing industry. (_Cheering._) Who pay the highway rates?--who pay the church-rates?--who pay the poor-rate?--who pay the tithes? I say, not perhaps altogether, but chiefly, the landed occupiers of this country. And, gentlemen, if corn be the product of other land not subject to those burdens, it surely would not be just to the land of this country, which bears them all, to admit such corn at a low duty!" Sir Robert Peel then quoted from a pamphlet which had just before been published by Mr M'Culloch, the following striking passage:--"Considering the vast importance of agriculture--that nearly half the population of the empire is dependent upon it, directly or indirectly, for employment, and the means of subsistence--a prudent statesman would pause before he gave his sanction to any measures, however sound in principle, or beneficial to the mercantile or manufacturing classes, which might endanger the prosperity of agriculture, or check the rapid spread of improvement." "Gentlemen," continued Sir Robert Peel, "I need not say that I fully concur with this sentiment; and I certainly think that a prudent statesman _would_ pause before he meddled with it.... I do think that if you disturb agriculture, and divert the employment of capital from the land, you may not increase your foreign trade, (for that is a thing to doubt, under existing circumstances,) _but will assuredly reduce the home trade, by reducing the means to meet the demand_, and