opinions of a vast body of the middle classes. He might not feel it right, with the responsibilities of his office, to do exactly that which he (Mr. Bright) or others wished; but coming from that county from which he derived his birth, and knowing the feelings, the wants, and the condition of the middle classes, he would be the last man to sneer at the efforts they were making for the abolition of this law. An honourable member opposite had lately given to the world a book in which he represented the monarch of this country as reigning over two nations—the rich and the poor; and there was a deal of truth in that. Others talked of the widening of the gulf which separates the very rich and the very poor. The Corn Law created nothing, it blighted almost everything. There was an abundance of capital, of labour, and of material in this country; but there wanted an honest distribution of it, and that honest distribution could only be given upon those just, true, and immutable principles which the great Creator had given for the regulation of the ordinary affairs of life. He knew that on going to a division his party would be in a minority; but he also knew that minorities in that House often became majorities; but if a man advocated a sound principle, and knew that millions out of doors supported it, let him not be deterred because the teller gave a majority against it, instead of in its favour. They had seen good principles growing and strengthening until everybody supported them, and bad principles fading away, and those who formerly adhered to them ashamed to recall them. If they wanted this law to be maintained, if it were resolved to continue a system so barbarous and unjust, their ancestors should have prevented Caxton from erecting his press in Westminster Abbey, they themselves should place an interdict upon the labours of William and Robert Chambers, proscribe Knight's Weekly Volume, and put down all newspapers, and, above all, put a stop to those locomotive engines which came up from Manchester to the metropolis in four hours and a hall."
Mr. A. S. O'Brien observed, that although Mr. Villiers had challenged him to rise and defend the publications of the Protection Society, he was too old a fish to rise at that fly. He merely rose to show that he was not unwilling to do justice to the great taste and skill displayed by the manufacturing classes in the arrangement of the bazaar recently opened in Covent Garden. The agricultural legislation of her Majesty's government was not sufficiently popular with the farmers to induce a county member to stand up in its defence. The last person, however, whom
