pay a
high price for a stinted meal. We will compel those who would gladly be
your purveyors and your customers to be your rivals. We will compel them
to turn manufacturers in self-defence; and when, in close imitation of
us, they impose high duties on British goods for the protection of their
own produce, we will, in our speeches and despatches, express wonder and
pity at their strange ignorance of political economy."

Such has been the policy of Her Majesty's Ministers; but it has not yet
been fairly brought to the trial. Good harvests have prevented bad laws
from producing their full effect. The Government has had a run of luck;
and vulgar observers have mistaken luck for wisdom. But such runs of
luck do not last forever. Providence will not always send the rain and
the sunshine just at such a time and in such a quantity as to save
the reputation of shortsighted statesmen. There is too much reason to
believe that evil days are approaching. On such a subject it is a
sacred duty to avoid exaggeration; and I shall do so. I observe that
the writers,--wretched writers they are,--who defend the present
Administration, assert that there is no probability of a considerable
rise in the price of provisions, and that the Whigs and the
Anti-Corn-Law League are busily engaged in circulating false reports for
the vile purpose of raising a panic. Now, gentlemen, it shall not be
in the power of anybody to throw any such imputation on me; for I shall
describe our prospects in the words of the Ministers themselves. I
hold in my hand a letter in which Sir Thomas Freemantle, Secretary for
Ireland, asks for information touching the potato crop in that country.
His words are these. "Her Majesty's Government is seeking to learn the
opinion of judges and well informed persons in every part of Ireland
regarding the probability of the supply being sufficient for the support
of the people during the ensuing winter and spring, provided care be
taken in preserving the stock, and economy used in its consumption."
Here, you will observe, it is taken for granted that the supply is
not sufficient for a year's consumption: it is taken for granted that,
without care and economy, the supply will not last to the end of the
spring; and a doubt is expressed whether, with care and economy, the
supply will last even through the winter. In this letter the Ministers
of the Crown tell us that famine is close at hand; and yet, when this
letter was written, the