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the recess, only furnished them with an opportunity of triumph. It had
originated in the late cabinet of which the Duke of Wellington was a
member; but notwithstanding this, he moved an amendment, prohibiting the
removal of foreign corn from bond until the price of wheat should
have reached sixty-six shillings per quarter. This proposal, though
at variance with the principle of the bill, which provided for the
admission of corn at all times on payment of a duty proportionate to the
average market price, was supported by the high Tory party and peers,
who preferred their own interests as landowners, so that ministers were
left in a minority of one hundred and twenty-two to one hundred and
thirty-three. The consequence of this amendment was, that, when the
bill returned to the commons, ministers rejected it altogether; it being
fatal, they said, to the principle of the bill, and inconsistent with
its application. As for the supporters of the amendment they were
abused both within and without the walls of St. Stephen, as men who had
sacrificed the public good to forward the purposes of mere faction.
Even Mr. Canning, imagining that the opposition was directed personally
against himself, described the Duke of Wellington as a tool in the
hands of more crafty intriguers. He could not, he said, exclude from
his consideration that even so great a man as the Duke of Wellington had
been made an instrument in the hands of others on that occasion. As to
the members by which that amendment was carried, he asserted, that he
believed it impossible that such discordant materials could have been
brought together by a conviction of its merits. He looked upon the
union not as arising from the merits of the question, but from some
deep-rooted design to produce another effect in the other house, or that
house, or elsewhere. There was no reason, however, to believe that this
step arose from the spirit of faction as a whole; and Mr. Canning's
language was, to say the least of it, indiscreet; language, which pique
and provocation might account for, but which neither sound sense nor
good feeling could justify. In consequence of the failure of this bill
it became necessary to prevent a recurrence of that alarm which had
arisen last year on account of scarcity. A temporary bill was therefore
prepared and suffered to pass both houses, permitting the release of
foreign corn from bond, on the same scale of duties as that proposed by
the measure wh