NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE House of Commons spent four nights last week in talking about the Corn-laws, and four nights this week, without the smallest practical result. The three nights spent in the fruitless discussion on the proposal merely that the scale of duties should not slide, was followed by a five-nights palaver on the question
whether there should be any duty at ail; and thus the general ques- tion of the Corn-laws was reopened. The illogical succession of the two propositions, which we pointed out a fortnight ago, seems to have had its full effect : the decision of the point at issue in the second debate was implied in the result of Lord Jortx RUSSELL'S move ; and the certainty that the minority was to be still smaller hung oppressively over the speakers, as the doom of the fatalist weighs like lead upon his action. To that, no less than to the triteness of the subject, is to be attributed the dreary staleness of
every thing : assumptions, arguments, statistics, followed each other, all as familiar as the well-known objects in every man's road to business. Speakers lugged them out mechanically, and replies of some kind were brought out as mechanically, with little regard to appositeness.
The formal proposition was, that the duties on corn should " now cease and determine " : the substantial question raised by Mr. VILLIERS was, whether there ought to be any fiscal re- striction on the amount of bread-stuff which may be at the com- mand of the people; and some secondary questions arose in the course of the discussion. The claim to allow the' people unlimited access to corn was supported by reference to the prevailing distress; and it was met, not very directly, by the objection that the land has peculiar burdens, and that the removal of the restric- tion is unnecessary, for that the Corn-laws do not produce the distress, or they operate to that effect only in part ; and then again the debate turned upon these points. Sir ROBERT PEEL gained some show of success in his management of the sophism, that as in four cheap years, when there was no need of importing corn, the foreign exports were large, and in four dear years the borne consumption actually increased, so neither can cheap bread be necessary to enable the people to consume manufactures and thus enlarge the home market, nor does the export of manu- factures depend upon a foreign corn-trade. But, however dexterous Sir ROBERT may be in "dressing up a statement for that House," this sleight-of-hand with figures does not get rid of the one great fact, that multitudes lack bread, and that if there were more bread in the land they would have more to eat : either the Corn-laws are inoperative, or at this moment they to some extent or other with- hold bread from the hungry. Sir ROBERT'S contentment with oc- casional flushes of prosperity, now in the home market, now abroad, is no proof that it is desirable to have prosperity alternate between the two, upon any conditions, and that they should not both at the same time be within reach of the merchant. As Mr. MILNER GIB- SON remarked, the question is not whether our manufacturing pros- perity makes more or less progress under existing circumstances, but whether it makes the utmost possible progress—as much as it would without the Corn-laws.
The subsidiary dispute, as to the existence or amount of special burdens on land, received more attention than it has yet obtained in debates on the Corn-laws ; an earnest that it may hereafter be brought more prominently and continually into notice than is ad- vantageous to the claim. Mr. MAXWELL STEWART made some way iu showing, that, instead of special burdens, the land has special exemptions : but the work was almost one of supererogation; for nobody, even those who admitted or insisted on their existence, could clearly define what constitute burdens on land. In fact, claims for "vested interests" have so long been unquestioned of from scrutiny by the dogged bigotry or favduritism of Parliament, that they are often, like many a title to the landed possessions themselves, palpably defective or altogether non- existent : the box to contain the title-deed is there, duly labelled and ostentatiously ranged in its place, but the deed itself, when called for, is unintelligible to the possessor, or the box is empty.
But who expected that the particulars would be so rudely called for ?
The eight nights' debates have left the main question precisely where they found it ; except that they have done the Minister the favour of damping excitement, and moderating the expectations and disappointments of friends and foes, by sheer weariness. Mr. WAKLEY shrewdly remarked — following up the remark with a long speech of his own — that much fancy must have been expended in clothing so simple a question in so many words : but we seek in vain throughout the oceans of words for the " much fancy." Debaters are of two kinds,—those who consider themselves bound to produce an oral essay on each sub- ject that turns up in Parliament, and those who pique themselves on the knack of making a " reply " : now, conceive some score or two of essays, in succession, on one dry and very trite subject— the drug of public meetings for the last three years—composed by gentlemen whose primary qualification to deliver them is the assumed possession of so much landed property ; with the corre- sponding " replies," after the hackneyed fashion taught by practice in " the House" ; the series diversified here and there by personal abuse of some gentleman for inconsistency, because in 1824 he stumbled on the conclusion that one side of the shield was 'white, but in 1842 he had discovered that the opposite side was yellow; or with roars of laughter at some gaucherie, some unintentional double entendre;—and there you have a description of the debates which occupied the rulers of England for eight nights in the face of an anxious people. The " two great parties of the state" practically confessed themselves incapable of entertaining large elementary questions of a nation's welfare.
The talk done, the House proceeded to business—to divide ; and Mr. VILLIERS found himself at the head of a band of 90, opposed to 393. The minority is larger than might have been ex- pected, considering that it was pledged, by the form of the motion, to absolute Free Trade opinions with an instant practical applica- tion. The Free Trade party in the House of Commons, sifted of mere Budget Free-traders, and such economists as Mr. MACAULAT and Mr. CHARLES HULLER, who cannot vote so far as they can talk, deposits the respectable number of ninety. To that strength may have contributed the glaring admission of weakness on the other side, in the absence of any thing like a reason for any corn- tax: all pleas for the Corn-law resolved into this one assumption —for even of it there was no evidence—that repeal would produce inconvenience to those who enjoy an advantage from the act-of- Parliament interference with the natural market.
