of specie, in the coffers of the Bank of England, did he come forward and propose a remedy by means of an alteration in the Corn Laws? No, neither then nor in the immediately succeeding sessions did he propose any such thing."
And thus, because in 1839, when the stock of corn was so low, Lord John Russell did not propose to relax & law which hindered importation, Sir James Graham would not, in 1845, when the continuance of prosperity, which had been mainly the result of two good harvests, depended upon a month's uninterrupted sunshine, so improbable at that time of the year. But Sir James had another reason for excluding foreign corn—high prices of food would teach the people frugality in its use! "I am not one of those" he said, "who think that it is an evil, that at a time when there are serious apprehensions of a deficient harvest, there is imposed upon the consumer the necessity of caution and frugality; that was the operation of the existing Corn Law." Who were those on whom frugality was thus imposed? Not those who had bread enough and to spare, for they would not lessen their consumption by a single ounce. It would be imposed on those who already had not enough, and on those who had barely enough. and parliament was to separate with the assurance that if the Corn Law effected no other beneficial purpose, it was an efficient teacher of frugality in the use of food!
In this debate, Mr. T. M. Gibson and Mr. Villiers eloquently and indignantly protested against the continuance of the landlords' monopoly, but the prospects of the harvest were not yet so bad as to remove the impression from the minds of ministers that they might yet weather another session, and warnings went unheeded. On the 9th August parliament was prorogued.
The following were the imperial averages of wheat for the weeks ending
| June 28 | 47s. 11d. |
| July 5 | 47s, 11d. |
