und in the house as well as in the
country; b\it he was convinced that all unfavourable impressions must
give way to the effect of repeated discussions; that which right reason,
humanity, and justice demanded could not fail to find an echo in the
breasts of Englishmen. On a division the motion was lost by two hundred
and seventy-six against two hundred and seventy-four. In consequence of
this result, the order of the day in the house of lords, for taking into
consideration the Catholic petition, was discharged on the motion of
Lord Lansdowne, "who feared to increase, in the present state of feeling
in Ireland, the disastrous conviction that a majority of both houses
in parliament was opposed to a consideration of the claims of their
Catholic brethren."

THE CORN-LAWS.

Ministers had pledged themselves to bring the corn-law question before
the house this session; and great anxiety was felt throughout the
nation on this subject. It had been originally intended to introduce the
subject simultaneously in both houses; but the illness of Lord Liverpool
prevented it being brought forward in the upper house. Mr. Canning
introduced the subject in the commons on the 1st of March, when he
expressed his surprise that so much of hostile feeling should have been
allowed to enter into the consideration of a question where none ought
to have been found, and that this asperity should arise where there was
no necessity to fly to extremes, and where the difficulties, in point of
fact, were less than they were stated in argument. Every body admitted,
he said, the necessity of protecting the agricultural interests; the
only question was the mode and degree in which the protection should
be administered. Of late years three modes of protection, without
prohibition, had been proposed: the first, that of Mr. Ricardo, which
imposed a duty of 20s. per quarter, to be diminished every year till
it should have reached a minimum of about 10s.; the second proposed
to begin with a duty of 16s., to be gradually lowered to 10s.; and the
third was to impose a duty of 15s, or 16s. once for all, without any
reference to the price. All these plans he been devised by persons
generally favourable to a free trade in corn; but to all of them there
lay the objection that when a pressure came it would bring with it
distress to the agriculturists. Experience, he said, proved, that to
impose a fixed duty without any reference to the variation of prices was