present motion was to obtain from parliament a recognition of the existence of a state of things in which its interference was absolutely necessary. It had been said that these resolutions embraced too wide a field; but in that opinion he could not concur. They were important, not only for the propositions which they included, but also for the propositions which they excluded. They were also closely and inseparably connected with each other; for the country was suffering at present both from the moral effects of mental ignorance, and from the physical effects of individual poverty. Poverty was too often the result of ignorance, and of the improvidence which ignorance created: on the other hand, it was often the cause of ignorance itself; for how could it be expected that a population suffering from hunger and distress would ever think of obtaining the blessings of education? Lord John Russell had pointed out the measures which he thought would prove the best combination for remedying the double evil under which the country was now suffering. He was well aware that any attempt to raise wages by parliamentary interference would only tend to aggravate the evil which he deplored. The measures which Lord J. Russell looked forward to as the means of mitigating the distress of the labourer were such as would free industry and labour from the restrictions under which they were suffering at present. He confessed that some of those restrictions—for instance, those by which you prevented parties who produced clothes by manufacture from exchanging their produce with those who produced corn appeared to him to have been framed almost with the intention of thwarting the designs of Providence. The noble lord then proceeded at great length to point out the impolicy of supporting the existing Corn Laws, for the protection, as some asserted, but for the ultimate destruction, as he contended, of the agricultural interest, and to show that the repeal of those laws would increase trade in every part of the country, and thus benefit all the
