of the landowners, that, whatever might be the distress amongst the manufacturing population—distress which they attributed to over-production, or any other cause than the real one—the farm labourers were enjoying the benefits of protection to agriculture. By this public examination, reported fully in the newspapers at the time, it was incontrovertibly proved that the wages of the agricultural labourer in the summer were barely sufficient to procure the common necessaries of life; that in winter even those could not be had without aid from private charity or from the parish; that clothes were worn year after year, till the numerous patches entirely covered the original fabric and that their wages did not rise with the rise of the price of food; and that, consequently, their condition was improved in cheap, and greatly deteriorated in dear years. It had been demonstrated that if the Corn Laws had previously raised the price of farm produce, the farmers had paid away in the shape of increased rents the whole of their increased receipts and the proof, widely diffused, by the newspaper press and by the tracts of the League, that the agricultural working class benefited nothing by laws which were passed professedly for their benefit, did much to procure for its lecturers a better reception in the agricultural districts, where landowners and farmers had encouraged their labourers to meet argument by brute force.
Another inquiry was instituted, not so immediately striking, but gradually exciting a wider discussion, and leading to more important results. On the 5th of May, Mr. Hume, more capable of extended prospection than men who regarded him only as a pertinacious worker in economical detail gave him credit for, obtained a select committee of the House of Commons, "To inquire into the several duties levied upon imports into the United Kingdom, and how far those duties are for protection to similar articles, the produce of this country or of the British possessions abroad, or whether the duties are for revenue alone." The
