sighted policy, to aim at making a nation like this great and
prosperous by violating the laws of justice. To those laws, enjoin what
they may, I am prepared to submit. But I will not palter with them: I
will not cite them to-day in order to serve one turn, and quibble them
away to-morrow in order to serve another. I will not have two standards
of right; one to be applied when I wish to protect a favourite interest
at the public cost; and another to be applied when I wish to replenish
the Exchequer, and to give an impulse to trade. I will not have two
weights or two measures. I will not blow hot and cold, play fast and
loose, strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. Can the Government say as
much? Are gentlemen opposite prepared to act in conformity with their
own principle? They need not look long for opportunities. The Statute
Book swarms with enactments directly opposed to the rule which they
profess to respect. I will take a single instance from our existing
laws, and propound it to the gentlemen opposite as a test, if I must not
say of their sincerity, yet of their power of moral discrimination. Take
the article of tobacco. Not only do you admit the tobacco of the United
States which is grown by slaves; not only do you admit the tobacco of
Cuba which is grown by slaves, and by slaves, as you tell us, recently
imported from Africa; but you actually interdict the free labourer
of the United Kingdom from growing tobacco. You have long had in your
Statute Book laws prohibiting the cultivation of tobacco in England, and
authorising the Government to destroy all tobacco plantations except a
few square yards, which are suffered to exist unmolested in botanical
gardens, for purposes of science. These laws did not extend to Ireland.
The free peasantry of Ireland began to grow tobacco. The cultivation
spread fast. Down came your legislation upon it; and now, if the Irish
freeman dares to engage in competition with the slaves of Virginia and
Havannah, you exchequer him; you ruin him; you grub up his plantation.
Here, then, we have a test by which we may try the consistency of the
gentlemen opposite. I ask you, are you prepared, I do not say to exclude
the slave grown tobacco, but to take away from slave grown tobacco the
monopoly which you now give to it, and to permit the free labourer of
the United Kingdom to enter into competition on equal terms, on any
terms, with the negro who works under the lash? I am confident that
the thr