60
THE GRINDING OF WHEAT.
must not vote, lest it should be carried! 'By all means, gentlemen,' may Lord Melbourne be supposed to have said, 'vote according to your consciences in this instance, because it can do no possible harm, and will make you stand well with your constituents at Manchester, Dundee, and Dumferline. The landed interest is so strong in the house, thanks to the Chandos clause which we adopted, and thanks to open voting, which a majority of the cabinet oppose, that you may safely be permitted to add your voles to the small minority. Do as you like to please your constituents, when nothing can be done; do as I like when something may be done.' Thus, in few words, is the secret of the Corn-Law question being an open one; and the ballot one on which Members of the administration must not accord to the wishes of their constituents. Degrading as it is to those members, and degrading as it is to their several constituencies to suppose such an arrangement, we can put it in no other shape. They may vote for the repeal of the Corn Laws, because it cannot be carried while the house is constituted as it now is. They must not vote for the ballot, because it might be carried, and the repeal of the Corn Laws might follow. Out of 658 members, only 97 voted even for enquiry into the operation of those laws, which are shutting market after market against the introduction of our manufactured goods, which are raising up rival manufactures in every part of the world, and which are constantly reducing the wages of our industrious operative, while, at the same time, they make him pay fifty per cent, more for his food than it costs his foreign competitors. Out of 658 members, 97 only can be found to vote for extended trade, cheap bread, and universal comfort. What an argument this is for the ballot and a further extension of the suffrage! Many of Mr. Thomson's constituents are deeply dissatisfied that he did not aid his colleague in the debate. Mr. Philips made a manly stand, amid loud shouts of 'divide,' 'divide,' from the landed men, who came, half drunk, to silence, by their unmannerly cries, the representatives of the manufacturing and commercial interests. Mr. Thomson witnessed all this, and yet silently gave his vote, although, on a subsequent evening, he could speak at considerable length in support of Colonel Scale's motion for grinding foreign corn in bond."
On the 9th of May another division took place, proving that the slightest modification of the Corn Law would not be listened to. The motion was for the second reading of a bill to permit the grinding of wheat in bond for foreign export. The Marquis of Chandos, author of the famous "clause" in the Reform Bill, which gave a preponderance
