e very
threshold. On the last night of the debate the house was addressed by
Mr. Cobden, who complained that extraneous matter had been introduced
into the discussion to a greater extent than had ever been introduced
previously into any corn-law debate. The two main topics, he said, on
which it had turned, were the conduct of ministers and the propriety
of an appeal to the country. The people of England believed that the
discussion on the first topic was a quarrel got up for no other purpose
than to evade the real question, and to conceal from public observation
that there was no justification for the corn-laws. He assured their
opponents that the more they covered ministers with obloquy, the more
sympathy they would obtain from the country. In point of fact they
were making ministers popular: if Sir Robert Peel were to visit the
manufacturing districts, his march through them would, be one continued
triumph. Even Sir James Graham, who had rendered, himself unpopular by
certain measures, by his magnificent contribution to free trade, and
still more by the nightly attacks which had been made upon him during
this debate, had become an object of popular sympathy in Manchester
and Liverpool. As to the wish of the protectionists to appeal to the
country, nobody knew better than they did, that they had no chance of
obtaining a majority at the next election. Three months ago he had
said that the advocates of a free trade had no chance of obtaining that
majority; but now that the protectionists were a broken party, and
had lost all the talent and intelligence which formerly directed their
tactics, the case was altered, and it wras they who had now no chance of
success in an appeal to the constituency. Speaking of the intelligence
of the people on this subject, Mr. Cobden remarked:--"I will tell you
what my thoughts were, as T sat at home patiently reading these debates.
As I read speech after speech, and saw the fallacies which I had knocked
on the head seven years ago reappearing afresh, my thought was, What
fun these debates will afford the men in fustian jackets! All these
fallacies are perfectly transparent to these men; and they would laugh
at you for putting them forward. Dependence on foreigners! Who in the
world could have supposed that that long-buried ghost would come again
to light! Drain of gold! Wages rising and falling with the price of
bread! Throwing land out of cultivation, and bringing corn here at 25s.
a quart