inquire why, with such an increased produce, we were still,
as regards bread corn, to a certain extent, an importing nation? This he
accounted for by the universally improved condition of the people, and
the enlarged command of food by the working classes. He drew an animated
picture, founded entirely on the representations of writers and public
men adverse to the Protective System, of the superior condition of the
people of 'England, happy England,' to that of other countries: how they
consumed much more of the best food, and lived much longer. This was
under Protection, which Lord John Russell had stigmatized, in his
letter, 'the bane of agriculture.' 'In the history of my noble friend's
illustrious family,' he continued, 'I should have thought that he would
have found a remarkable refutation of such a notion.' And then he drew a
lively sketch of the colossal and patriotic works of the Earls and
Dukes of Bedford, 'whereby they had drained and reclaimed three
hundred thousand acres of land drowned in water, and brought them
into cultivation, and thus converted into fertile fields a vast morass
extending over seven counties in England.' Could the system which had
inspired such enterprise be justly denounced as baneful?

To show the means of the country to sustain even a much-increasing
population, and that those means were in operation, he entered into one
of the most original and interesting calculations that was perhaps
ever offered to the House of Commons. Reminding the House that in the
preceding year (1845) the farmers of England, at a cost of two millions
sterling, had imported two hundred and eighty thousand tons of guano, he
proceeded to estimate what would be the effect on the productive powers
of the land of that novel application. Two hundred thousand tons, or, in
other words, four million hundred-weight, were expended on the land
in 1845. Half of these, he assumed, would be applied to the growth of
wheat, and the other half to the growth of turnips preparatory to the
wheat crop of the ensuing year. According to the experiments tried and
recorded in the Royal Agricultural Journal, it would seem that by the
application of two hundred-weight of guano to an acre of wheat land, the
produce would be increased by one quarter per acre. At this rate, one
hundred thousand tons, or two million hundred-weight of guano would add
one million quarters of wheat to the crop, or bread for one year for
one million of people. Bu