1889.
Al. 3b.

148

LIFE OF COBDEN. [mas

number of petitions against the corn laws should
referred to a Committee of the whole House. The moti
was negatived without a division. The next day he move’
that certain members of the Manchester Association ghoul?
be heard at the bar, in support of the allegations of
petition which they had presented three days befor
Though this was a Whig parliament, or becanse it was
Whig parliament, the motion was thrown out by a majority
of more than two to one in a House of more than fi
hundred members.
We cease to be amazed at this deliberate rejection o
information from some of the weightiest men in the king
dom, at one of the most critical moments in the histor}
of the kingdom, when we recall the fact that notwithstand
ing the pretended reform of parliament in 1832, four-ffth
of the members of the House of Commons belonged to the
old landed interests. The bewilderment of the governme®!
was shown by the fact that Lord John Russell and Lor
Palmerston went into the lobby with the Protectionist
while the President of the Board of Trade followed MI
Villiers. Yet Lord John had declared a short time befor®
that he admitted the duties on corn as then levied to bf
untenable. The whole incident is one of the most striki®
illustrations on record of one of the worst characteristics ©
parliamentary government, its sluggishness in facing que®
tions on their merits. In this instance, the majority foun’
before long that behind the industrial facts which they wer
too selfish and indolent to desire to hear, were political foro?
which they and their leader together were powbrless to resis
A few days later (March 12) Mr. Villiers brought forms?
his annual motion, that the house should resolve itself int’
committee to take into consideration the act regulating the
importation of foreign corn. Across Palace Yard wort
sssemblod delegates from the thirty-six principal towns i"