comparative scarcity the home-corn grower should not have a price which would cover the cost of production, they aimed a deadly blow at British native agriculture, which, after all, depend upon it, was the foundation of national power and prosperity, and the mainstay of national greatness.” The peroration of his speech consisted of a touching and beautiful picture of the corn lands of this country thrown out of cultivation, and agricultural labour superseded. “After the best reflection which he could bestow upon the subject [!] and viewing it in every possible light [!] he did not hesitate to declare his conviction, that a free importation of corn must produce the same effect in England that the law of agistment had produced in Ireland.... Let them but once diminish the consumption of British-grown corn, and from that moment the consumption of iron, of hardware, of cotton, and of woollens must decline. Then would come a fresh displacement of labour, and a fresh lowering of wages; and discontent, disturbance, and misery would prove its inevitable consequences.... Little could they estimate the wretchedness which sprung from change of habit, of house, of manners, of the mode of life itself. What change more cruel could despotism itself inflict, than a change from ‘the breezy call of incense-breathing morn,’ to a painful and grievous obedience to the sad sound of the factory bell—the relinquishment of the thatched cottage, the blooming garden, and the village green, for the foul garret or the dark cellar of the crowded city—the enjoyment of the rural walk of the innocent rustic Sabbath, for the debauchery, the temptations, the pestilence, the sorrows, and the sins of a congregated multitude? Where were their moralists, that their voices were not raised against the fearful consequences which the proposed change brought in its train? Talk to him of sending the Poles to Siberia, or the hill coolies from the Coromandel to the Mauritius! the authors of the intended change contemplated the perpetration, within the limits of their native land, of a cruelty far more atrocious. It was the first step towards making England, the workshop of the world, dependent for its daily food upon Continental supplies. He hoped that the proposition would not be successful. Were it to succeed, he should say with his friend Lord Ashburton, that _this was the last country which he should wish to inhabit_.”[14] And for these reasons he concluded by “not hesitating to give his cordial and decided opposition to the motion.” Was this the Sir James Graham who, only thirteen years afterwards, could venture to scatter sarcasms over the Earl of Derby and his supporters?