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gates said: 'My lord, we leave you with the consciousness of having done our duty, and the responsibility for the future must rest upon the government.'"

I was not present at this interview. I found, on my arrival in London, two or three days afterwards, that Lord Melbourne's reception of the deputies had excited the strongest indignation. His ignorance of the main bearings of the question, and his notion that the consumers of this country should pay a monopoly price for corn because, possibly, other countries might not take our manufactures in exchange, only created astonishment; but his manner, which was not reported, there being no short-hand that can give looks and tones, excited a feeling little short of disgust, especially when, with a smiling and incredulous air, he listened to the plain and straightforward, but feeling and pathetic description which Mr. Dixon gave of the distress prevailing in Carlisle. Mr. Walker, of Wolverhampton, gave instant expression to his own sentiments on the occasion, by declaring that, in his part of the country, both whigs and tories should be set aside, and that a new system of agitation would commence throughout the iron districts; and he was responded to, notwithstanding the etiquette and formality of Downing-street, in the presence of the prime minister, by an almost universal cry from the deputies, that the new agitation would extend to all the manufacturing districts. This feeling was more unequivocally expressed at a subsequent meeting of the deputies, when an allusion by Mr. O'Connell to the necessity of reorganizing the House of Commons, or, as he expressed it, of putting new machinery into it, was received with loud cheers. A deputation to Sir Robert Peel and Sir James Graham was not more satisfactory than that to Lord Melbourne. Sir James talked a great deal about land being thrown out of cultivation were the Corn Laws repealed, and about foreign nations taking undue advantages of us at any favourable opportunity. The possessor and