Peel, too, was then in the very midst of his
lesson-taking; and as he deeply studied Mr Hume's Import Duties Report,
before he brought out his new Tariff, we need not consider it to be very
discreditable to him, that he read the pamphlets of Colonel Torrens
before he tried his diplomatic commercial policy.

At all events, one of the chief arguments with which Sir Robert Peel and
Mr Gladstone justified the great omissions of the new Tariff, was the
fact that the Government was engaged in negotiations with other
countries in order to obtain treaties of reciprocity. The utter failure
of these efforts Sir Robert Peel has repeatedly confessed, accompanied
with a sigh over the inutility of the attempt; and the last time that he
adverted, in the House of Commons, to the authority of Colonel Torrens
(he was citing the _Postscript_ to the _Letter_ addressed to himself) it
was with the kind of manner which indicated want of confidence in the
guide who had misled him. Whether or no, however, he had relied on that
authority in his negotiations with other countries during his futile
attempts to obtain commercial treaties, this much is certain enough,
that Colonel Torrens did what he could to strengthen the old notion,
that it was of no use for us to enlarge our markets unless other
countries did so also at the same time and in the same way; and in
condemning all reduction of import duties that was not based on
"reciprocity," he certainly added all the weight of his authority to
prop up a system whose injurious influence has affected the very
vitality of our social state, and whose overthrow will yet require no
small amount of moral force to effect.

We are far indeed, from undervaluing treaties of reciprocity; but to
make them a _sine qua non_ in the policy of a country whose condition is
that of an overflowing population, a deficient supply of the first
necessaries of life, and a contracted market for its artificial
productions, is an error of the first magnitude. Therefore, though not
attaching primary importance to the _Budget_ of Colonel Torrens, or
believing that it could ultimately have any great effect in retarding
the effectual settlement of the great question, it was not without some
feeling of satisfaction that we perused the able article in the last
_Edinburgh Review_, in which his delusions are completely set at rest.
We quite agree with the writer (Mr Senior, it is said) that "if the
_Budget_ were to remain unanswered