Mr. Chaplin is performing the function of drag on the
progres- sive elements in the Tory-Democratic Government,—especially apparently on Lord Randolph Churchill. Yesterday week, he made a great speech at Radcliffe against closure of debate by a bare majority, in which he is backed by the Times; and on Tues- day last, at Lincoln, he addressed an agricultural meeting on the increasing depression in agriculture, though without venturing to advocate a duty on the importation of wheat, which he evidently regards, nevertheless, as the only adequate cure. But without the consent of the people, Mr. Chaplin is aware that that heroic remedy cannot be applied, and he has probably no great hope that the people will declare themselves willing and anxious to pay more for their food. All he ventures to propose is an import duty on foreign manufactures to be applied in some way for the benefit of the agricultural interest, though he does not explain how. We suppose he would expend the yield of these Protective duties as a bounty to the wheat-growers. That is, he would make the people who consume those manufactures which they need, pay more for them than they now do, in order to compensate English farmers for growing corn which nobody wants, at a cost much greater than that at which it is raised in India and the United States, and for then finally selling it considerably below its oost-price !
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