birth; the
resignation of the ministry, and its subsequent resumption of office,
when Lord Stanley and Lord John Russell had found it impossible to form
an administration. It is sufficient to say that, as soon as Parliament
met, Sir Robert brought forward a bill to reduce the duty on corn to
four shillings, a price only half of the lowest fixed duty that had ever
been proposed before, that reduction, too, being a stepping-stone to the
abolition of all duties, at the end of three years, beyond a shilling a
quarter, which was to be retained, in order to acquire an accurate
knowledge of the quantity of grain imported. The diminution, however, of
this duty was not the whole object of his new measure. It included other
arrangements which would serve as a compensation to the agriculturists,
by relieving them from some of the peculiar burdens to which the land
was subjected; and it contained, farther, a reduction or abolition of
import duties hitherto levied on many other articles, especially on such
as "formed the clothing of the country," on the fair ground that if the
removal of protection from the agriculturist were "a sacrifice for the
common good," the commercial and manufacturing interests might justly be
required to make a similar sacrifice for the same patriotic object.

Though opposed in both Houses with unusual bitterness, the ministry
carried their measure, which, indeed, in all probability, even if the
destruction of the potato crop had not come to accelerate the movement,
could not have been long delayed, the continual and rapid increase of
the population adding yearly strength to the arguments of those who
denounced the imposition of any tax which had the effect of increasing
the price of the people's food. But, however inevitable it may have
been, we are not the less compelled to regard it as indirectly bringing
about a great constitutional change, or rather as consummating that
which had been commenced by the Reform Bill. Till the year 1832 the
territorial aristocracy had exerted a predominating influence in the
government of the state. The Reform Bill, which deprived the wealthier
land-owners of the greater part of their power at elections, struck the
first blow at that influence. The abolition of the Corn-laws inflicted
on it a still more decisive wound, by its extinction of the doctrine
that there was any such peculiar sacredness about the land and its
produce as entitled them to protection beyond that enjoy