confidence—whoever were placed at the helm of government, he felt perfectly satisfied that, before many years were over, they would reform their Corn Laws and revise their commercial system. Whether those who proposed such measures were those who now turned out the government because they proposed them, or whether it should be those ministers who now risked power and place in proposing them, was to him a matter of complete indifference, and he believed that was the case with his colleagues. They were attached to the principles and the measures they had proposed, and they would give their earnest support to those measures from whatever quarter they might come." It was amusing enough this tone of martyrdom to principles, which most men believed to have been assumed to make a good election "cry;" but it was obvious enough that the whig ministers were preparing themselves for a bolder course when "out" than they followed when "in." When they were entrenched within the walls of office they only thought of acting on the defensive and preserving their position. It was now to be seen whether they would make common cause with the people; but it was remarked that, even in their straits, they talked of a reform or a revision but never of a repeal of the Corn Laws. It had taken three years' agitation of the question to bring them to an eight shillings' duty. A further and a more energetic agitation for five years more, and five years more of intense suffering on the part of the people, were required to bring them to the recognition of thoroughly free-trade principles.
The League had not been disheartened by the defeat of the whig ministers, for they had rather stood in its way than helped it; and their tardy conversion had been only half-way to its principles. The union of every class of monopolists in support of the one great monopoly was only an to incentive renewed and additional activity. It had added Mr. J. S. Buckingham to the list of its lecturers,
