A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.
IT requires more strength and coherence to stand a charge than to make one. The impetus acquired in moving to the attack is in favour of the assailing body. The Tories seem marvellously inattentive to this physical fact. They are on the defensive : the Whigs are advancing to the charge, to the tune of " Corn-rigs are bonnie " ; and yet the Tories are not drawing up in close order to receive the onset. For ex- ample, Sir ROBERT PEEL has occupied the ground of a shifting scale of duty on corn, but his most influential supporters are found straggling in various directions. Mr. GARNET, the Tory candidate for Salford, declares in his address—" A moderate fixed duty ap- pears best calculated to attain this desirable object, and I should use my best exertions to obtain the enactment of a law on this basis." The Times reprints without note or comment a speech by Mr. WALTER, in which he declares in favour of a fixed duty. And at a meeting held in Manchester, on Saturday last, Sir GEORGE MUR- RAY remonstrated against the inference drawn from an expression used by him to the effect that his " opinions incline to the adop- tion of a moderate fixed duty on corn," that be entertained any doubt or hesitation on the subject. " The only mode," said Sir GEORGE, " of reconciling the interests of commerce and of the consumer with the due protection of the agriculturist, intelligible to him, was a moderate fixed duty."
Is it not high time, if the Tories do not wish to have their ranks broken through and dispersed, that they should come to an under- standing as to what they are really agreed in wishing to have done with the Corn-laws ?
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