that the laborer was to be ruined; that is, that the paupers were to be pauperized. These gentlemen were overthrown. The plain, honest, common-sense of the country swept away their cob-web theories, and they are gone. What is the result? From 1846 to 1857 we have received into this country of grain of all kinds, including flour, maize, or India corn—all objects heretofore not of absolute prohibition, but which were intended to be prohibited until it was not safe for people to be starved any more,—not less than an amount equal in value to 224,000,000_l._ That is equal to 18,700,000_l._ per annum on the average of twelve years. During that period, too, your home growth has been stimulated to an enormous extent. You have imported annually 200,000 tons of guano, and the result has been a proportionate increase in the productions of the soil, for 200,000 tons of guano will grow an equal weight and value of wheat. With all this, agriculture was never more prosperous, while manufactures were never, at the same time, more extensively exported; and with all this, the laborers, for whom the tears of the Protectionist were shed, have, according to the admission of the most violent of the class, never been in a better state since the beginning of the great French war. One other revolution of opinion has been in regard to our criminal law. I have lately been reading a book which I would advise every man to read—the “Life of Sir Samuel Romilly.” He tells us in simple language of the almost insuperable difficulties he had to contend with to persuade the legislature of this country to abolish the punishment of death for stealing from a dwelling-house to the value of 5_s._, an offence which now is punished by a few weeks’ imprisonment. Lords, bishops, and statesmen opposed these efforts year after year, and there have been some thousands of persons put to death publicly for offences which are not now punishable with death. Now every man and woman in the kingdom would feel a thrill of horror if told that a fellow-creature was to be put to death for such a cause. These are revolutions in opinion, and let me tell you that when you accomplish a revolution in opinion upon a great question, when you alter it from bad to good, it is not like charitably giving a beggar 6_d._ and seeing him no more, but it is a great beneficent act, which affects not merely the rich and the powerful, but penetrates every lane, every cottage in the land, and wherever it goes brings blessings and happiness. It is not from statesmen that these things come. It is not from them that have proceeded these great revolutions of opinion on the questions of reform, protection, colonial government, and criminal law—it was from public meetings such as this, from the intelligence and conscience of the great body of the people who have no interest in wrong, and who never go from the right but by temporary error and under momentary passion.