commend you to
take into your early consideration, whether the principles on which you
have acted, may not with advantage be yet more extensively applied,
and whether it may not be in your power, after a careful review of the
existing duties upon many articles the produce or manufacture of other
countries, to make such further reductions and remissions as may tend to
insure the continuance of the great benefits to which I have adverted,
and, by enlarging our commercial intercourse, to strengthen the bonds of
amity with foreign powers."

Before proceeding with the address, Sir Robert Peel announced that on
the next Monday, he should propose the appointment of a committee to
consider the mode in which the house should deal with railway bills; and
that on Tuesday, the following day, he would make, in committee of the
whole house, a statement as to the intention of her majesty's government
with respect to the commercial policy of the country, and the corn-laws.

The address was moved in the commons by Lord Francis Egerton. Lord
Francis had long been a noted Conservative, and a supporter of the
corn-laws; but he now avowed himself favourable to free-trade. The
address was seconded by Mr. Beckett Denison. Sir Robert Peel rose to
explain the late ministerial crisis, and his own views and measures.
He attributed the cause which led to the dissolution of the cabinet, to
that great and mysterious calamity--the failure of the potato crop. At
the same time he confessed, that it would be uncandid to attribute undue
importance to that one cause. "That particular cause," he continued,
"appeared to me to preclude any further delay, and to require immediate
decision--decision, not only upon the measures which it was necessary
at the time to adopt, but as to the course to be ultimately taken with
regard to the laws which govern the importation of grain." Sir Robert
Peel continued to say he should have wished that another parliament
should have had the opportunity of considering this question; but in
the course of last autumn occurred that visitation of Providence, the
consequences of which it was still difficult to foresee--the failure of
the potato crop in Ireland, and in some parts of England--and it became
a question whether it was not desirable to take immediate steps to
meet the threatened evil. Government had instituted inquiries, and had
received much correspondence from foreign countries on the subject;
and from all the accounts