Mr. Leonard CourtneSr, the Chairman of Committees, made a good
speech in the Bradford Chamber of Com- merce on Monday against the attempts of Parliament to interfere with trade, which were almost always, he said, 'failures. In a dwindling trade, the rate of wages would naturally fall, and no interference of Parliament could keep them up ; on the contrary, in an expanding trade, wages would naturally rise, and no interference of Parliament could 'keep them down. Trade is too complex and intricate a busi- mess for the Legislature to interfere with to any good purpose. It needs constant adaptation to changing eircumstancee, and to this legislation is incompetent. He strongly opposed the idea of trying to set the French tariff right by any legislative attempt at retaliation; but it would not seem that he found his Bradford audience quite as cordial in their Free-trade principles as he could have wished, One of the least agreeable results of a democracy is, that the people will not believe that, if they choose to will it, they cannot bend laws of Nature to their own wishes.
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