i, } REPLY TO THE MANCHESIEE ADDRESS. 207

bility to conscience and to glory, & responsibility to the wa
®Xisting world, and to that posterity which men of their 23%
*Minence cannot avoid for glory or for ghame—a responsibility
 to g tribunal ab which not only ministers, but kings
tnd parliaments, but even nations themselves, must one
day angwer?!
“ Never at any period of our history did this constibutional
 and moral responsibility attach more strongly to a
Minister than at the present moment, when the country is
Struggling, amidst distress and embarrassment the most
alarming, against a system of monopoly which threatens
the ruin of our manufactures and commerce. That this
System, with its disastrous consequences of a declining trade,
& sinking revenue, increasing pauperism, and a growing
disaffection in the people, owes its continuance to the
Support of the present Prime Minister more than to that of
his entire party, few persons who have had the opportunity
of observing the manner in which he individualizes in his
Own person the powers of government, will deny.
“That the withdrawal of his support from this pernicious
System wonld do more at the present moment than all the
efforts of the friends of Free Trade to offect the downfall
of monopoly has been proclaimed upon high authority from
his own side of the House. If the right hon. Baronet,’
said Mr, Liddell, member for North Durham, in the debate,
Fob, 3, chad shown any symptoms of wavering in the
Support of the Corn Law, which he had himself put upon
8 sound footing last year, uch conduct would have been
Productive of » hundred times more mischief than all the
denunciations of the Anti-Corn-Law League! With such
®Vidences of the power possessed by the First Minister of
the Crown, I should have been an unworthy representative
of the people, and a traitor fo the suffering interests of my
' These are the closing words of the Third Latter on a Regivide Peace.