There were one or two amusing points in the statement.
Mr. Gladstone's commiseration for the fate of pepper in having been so long subject to a duty of 200 per cent., and having always been hustled out of the field by some more important article demanding remission, and his plea for pepper, that it is an article " largely consumed in Ireland," produced loud laughter, and cheers from all but the Irish members Then, too, in the part of his speech relative to the exhaustion of coal, when he explained that the misfortune to be apprehended must fall chiefly on land- owners,—since labour, if wages fall, may emigrate, capital, if profits fall, will emigrate, but land cannot emigrate, and rents must fall if population and capital depart,—the country gentle- men looked not only " rather blue and dejected," but a little in- dignant, as if under cover of science the Chancellor of the Ex- chequer had wantonly invented some new and refined species of torture for them, which they did not know how either to escape or revenge. Mr. Henley expressed the profound confusion of the country gentlemen when he said, with (for him) very unusual obscurity, that " it would be necessary to do great things if what the Chancellor of the Exchequer contemplated should be done, but the impression left upon his mind was that it was better to have something than nothing."
