sugar of our colonies as a differential duty to the extent of 50 per cent, would permit, and it was calculated that the gain to the revenue would be about 800,000. The protection of Canadian timber against Baltic was to be reduced from four hundred to a hundred and fifty per cent. "This budget," says the British Quarterly Review (No. II.), "was a measure presenting, many glaring faults and deficiencies, falling far short of the mark of justice and sound policy, but, with all its faults, it deserved to be characterised as the boldest, wisest, and best principled commercial and fiscal reform ever proposed by a British ministry. It had the transcendant merit of seeking to increase revenue by lessening taxation, to enrich the treasury by adding to the comforts of the people. Curious was the combination and interchange of sympathies on the part of the frightened and irritated monopolists. Canadian timber-merchants were scandalized at the possibility of Jamaica coffee being sweetened with Cuba sugar. Landlords were beside themselves with indignation at the meditated attack on lumberers, and West Indians were wild in the cause of dear wheat and crazy old ships."
A debate of eight nights was terminated on the 18th May. Lord Sandon had moved a resolution against the ministerial proposal to admit slave-grown sugar, and it was carried by a majority of 36, the numbers being 317 for, and 281 against it. The discussion embraced the whole question of free trade. Throughout the whole of it, and in the division with which it terminated, the conservatives and protectionists showed the folly that had repeatedly excluded them from office, when whig blundering seemed to open the door for their admission. They spoke and they voted against all amendment of our prohibitive and deeply injurious commercial policy, and Sir Robert Peel, so far from standing forth as a statesman fitted to lead and direct his party, exhibited himself as one humble enough to obey their behests. His declaration in favour of a sliding
