an indication of active commerce, distress
should prevail among the agricultural and manufacturing classes in some
parts of the United Kingdom. It would be most gratifying to the paternal
feelings of his majesty to be enabled to propose for your consideration
measures calculated to remove the difficulties of any portion of
his subjects, and at the same time com patible with the general and
permanent interests of his people. It is from a deep solicitude for
those interests that his majesty is impressed with the necessity of
acting with extreme caution in reference to this important subject. His
majesty feels assured that you will concur with him in assigning due
weight to the effect of unfavourable seasons, and to the operation
of other causes which are beyond the reach of legislative control or
remedy." This qualified admission of the existence of national distress
gave great offence in both houses of parliament. In the lords, Earl
Stanhope moved as an amendment to the address, "That this house views,
with the deepest sorrow and anxiety the severe distress which now
afflicts the country, and will immediately proceed to examine into
its cause, and into the means of effectually providing the necessary
relief." His lordship said that a more inappropriate and unsatisfactory
speech had never been addressed to any public assembly. The speech said
that distress existed "in some parts" of the country: he asked, in
what part it did not exist? The kingdom, he asserted, was in a state of
universal distress, embracing alike agriculture, manufactures, trade,
and commerce. These great interests had never before at one time been at
so low an ebb, nor in a condition which demanded more imperatively the
prompt and energetic interference of parliament. The speech ascribed
the distress existing, so far as it had admitted it, to unfavourable
seasons. This of course operated upon grain; but was the effect of
unfavourable seasons usually visible in a reduction of price? Did a bad
harvest make corn cheap? The evil was so notorious that nobody but his
majesty's ministers doubted its existence, and they could not deny it,
if they only cast their eyes around, and saw the counties pouring on
them every kind of solicitation for relief. Why then was inquiry evaded
or denied? It was not true that the causes of distress were placed
beyond the reach of parliament, it was parliament that had produced
them, and yet ministers now wished parliament to disre