ernment is obliged to give way; and, the reform being accomplished, the people are expected to admire the wisdom of their rulers, by whom all this has been done. That this is the course of political improvement must be well known to whoever has studied the law-books of different countries in connection with the previous progress of their knowledge. Full and decisive evidence of this will be brought forward in the present work; but, by way of illustration, I may refer to the abolition of the corn-laws, undoubtedly one of the most remarkable facts in the history of England during this century. The propriety and, indeed, the necessity of their abolition is now admitted by every one of tolerable information; and the question arises as to how it was brought about. Those Englishmen who are little versed in the history of their country will say that the real cause was the wisdom of Parliament; while others, attempting to look a little further, will ascribe it to the activity of the Anti-Com-Law League, and the consequent pressure put upon Government. But whoever will minutely trace the different stages through which this great question successively passed will find that the Government, the Legislature, and the League were the unwitting instruments of a power far greater than all other powers put together. They were simply the exponents of that march of public opinion which on this subject had begun nearly a century before their time. The steps of this vast movement I shall examine on another occasion; at present it is enough to say that soon after the middle of the eighteenth century the absurdity of protective restrictions on trade was so fully demonstrated by the political economists as to be admitted by every man who understood their arguments and had mastered the evidence connected with them. From this moment, the repeal of the corn-laws became a matter, not of party, nor of expediency, but merely of knowledge. Those who knew the facts opposed the laws; those who were ignorant of the facts favored the laws. It was, therefore, clear that whenever the diffusion of knowledge reached a certain point, the laws must fall. The merit of the League was to aid in this diffusion; the merit of the Parliament was to yield to it. It is, however, certain that the members both of League and Legislature could
