peech of April 24,
1826[46] (upon the state of the silk manufacture), of which Canning
declared that he had never heard one abler, or which made a deeper
impression upon the House. In this he reviews his policy, going over
the most important financial measures of the preceding period. They
made a new era, and he dates the beginning of the movement from the
London petition, and the 'luminous speech' made by Baring when
presenting it. We followed public opinion, he says, and did not create
it.[47] Adopting the essential principles of the petition, the
government had in the first place set free the great woollen trade.
The silk trade had been emancipated by abolishing the Spitalfield Acts
passed in the previous century, which enabled magistrates to fix the
rates of wages. The principle of prohibition had been abandoned,
though protective duties remained. The navigation laws had been
materially relaxed, and steps taken towards removing restrictions of
different kinds upon trade with France and with India. One symptom of
the change was the consolidation of the custom law effected by James
Deacon Hume (1774-1842), an official patronised by Huskisson, and an
original member of the Political Economy Club. By a law passed in
1825, five hundred statutes dating from the time of Edward I. were
repealed, and the essence of the law given in a volume of moderate
size. Finally, the removal of prohibitions was undermining the
smugglers.

The measures upon which Huskisson justly prided himself might have
been dictated by the Political Economy Club itself. So far as they
went they were an application of the doctrines of its thoroughgoing
members, of Mill, Ricardo, and the orthodox school. They indeed
supported him in the press. The _Morning Chronicle_, which expressed
their views, declared him to be the most virtuous minister, that is
(in true Utilitarian phrase), the most desirous of national welfare
who had ever lived. The praise of Radicals would be not altogether
welcome. Canning, in supporting his friend, maintained that sound
commercial policy belonged no more to the Whigs than to the Tories.
Huskisson and he were faithful disciples of Pitt, whose treaty with
France in 1786, assailed by Fox and the Whigs, had been the first
practical application of the Wealth of Nations. Neither party,
perhaps, could claim a special connection with good or bad political
economy; and certainly neither was prepared to incur political
martyrdom in ze