notwithstanding the accession of its friends to office; and by this return made another emphatic declaration in favour of the principles of free trade. The election, however, of Mr. Thomson for the largest manufacturing constituency of the kingdom, placed him in a position to occupy, beneficially to the public, the time between the death of Huskisson and the advent of Cobden. In the memoir of his life, his brother, Mr. Poulett Scrope, says:—"Many valuable alterations were effected by Mr. Thomson in the customs' duties. Besides the entire abolition of the duty on hemp, an absurd and mischievous burthen on all British shipping, a great reduction was made in the duties on dye stuffs used in our manufactures, and on medicines consumed largely by the poor. He likewise introduced, for the first time, a methodical and rational classification of all the customs duties retained in our tariff. At a later period he carried out still further this simplification of the duties on import, and their reduction, where the revenue would admit of it. The attention of fiscal reformers had hitherto been directed, principally, if not wholly, to a few of the larger articles, such as sugar, coffee, timber, wool, and cotton. But Mr. Thomson saw clearly, that, while considerations of revenue or of party policy might forbid the sound principles of finance being at once applied to these, it was yet in the power of government to afford extensive and very sensible relief, both to a variety of branches of native industry, and to the consumer at large, by reduction of the heavy duties on some hundreds of small, and apparently insignificant articles, which brought in little to the revenue, while the high duties on them were a grievous obstacle to their use in the arts or manufacture, and their direct consumption.* * * * The records of the Board of Trade, and the evidence of the able officers permanently employed there, such as Mr. Macgregor and the late Mr. Deacon Hume, attest that the more recent alterations of the Tariff effected by Sir Robert
