tention of following the right honourable gentleman's remarks, as with that of thanking him for the able manner in which he had developed his views, and for the general System which he proposed to adopt, with respect to our Domestic and Foreign Shipping. Mr. Hume repelled the outcry which had been raised against the principles on which the right honourable gentleman had been recently acting. Nothing, he said, could be more unjust than such an outcry: the evils under which the Shipping Interest now laboured, were not to be attributed to the change of system which the right honourable gentleman had introduced, but to the weight of taxation under which the country was labouring. Mr. Charles Grant said, that the great object which his right honourable friend wished to accomplish by his Statement of that night, was to prove to the nation, that the complaints made against him out of doors were utterly unfounded, and that the measures which he had introduced had not had any effect in diminishing the Commercial Marine of the country, but, on the contrary, had considerably increased it. The motion was agreed to.

CORN IMPORTATION ACTS-ORDER IN COUNCIL FOR OPENING THE PORTS.

November 24.

The House having resolved itself into a committee on the Corn Importation Acts, to which the Order in Council of the 1st of September, for allowing the Importation of certain sorts of Foreign Corn was referred,

Mr. HUSKISSON addressed the Committee. He began by observing, that as the Order in Council for the opening of the ports for the admission of oats, oatmeal, pease, beans, and rye, which had just been referred to the Committee, was issued, not only without the authority of law, but in direct contravention of existing statutes, and as his Majesty had called Parliament together at that early period, chiefly for the purpose of having that Order submitted for their consideration, he thus took the earliest opportunity of

submitting to the House the grounds on which his Majesty had been advised to issue that order. This was a duty which ministers owed to Parliament, to the country, and to themselves; and if it should be the pleasure of the legis lature to grant them the indemnity for which they sued, so far from its becoming a dangerous precedent, it would rather tend to strengthen and confirm those bounds by which the different authorities in the State were limited. They owed it also to themselves, as they would otherwise be subject to certain legal penalties, for having so advised the Crown; and they likewise owed it to those subordinate officers who acted under their orders in opening the ports.

The date of the Order in Council was the 1st of September. At that time, most of the members of Parliament were resident in the country, and had an opportunity, in their several districts, of observing the state of the harvest. That circumstance would render it the less necessary for him to go into any lengthened statement on the present occasion; for he was certain the recollection of those members would bear him out in the assertion, that never was there a period when the reports from the different parts of the country so entirely concurred as to the harvest, and he hoped that those reports would be sufficient to justify ministers in the course they had pursued.

With respect to the state of the crops at that time, he would say first, that wheat, taken as a whole, was deficient in quantity and quality, and the quality of course affected the value of the quantity. Barley, on the whole, would not make more than about two-thirds of an average crop. Oats were generally deficient, and beans and pease much more so; and such had been the appearance of those crops in the ground, that in the month of July the prices were rapidly rising. About the middle of June, when the price of oats ought to be at the highest, as the old stock would at that

time be almost exhausted, the average price was 22s, 11d. On the 4th of August, taking the average of the whole kingdom, it had risen to 27s. 3d., and had considerably exceeded that price in many districts. The House were aware, that the two weeks from that date were the only weeks which were left to be included in the general quarterly average. In the last of those two weeks it had risen 1s. 6d. above that price, at which, if it were the general average of the quarter, the ports would be open for the importation of foreign oats. Nevertheless, according to the general averages struck on the 15th of August (that being, as the House was well aware, one of the four quarterly periods for taking them), oats and the other species of grain could not by law be imported, nor could they have been so up to the 15th of November. With their information as to the general deficiency of the crop, and the consequent apprehended scarcity, Ministers waited to see what would be the price in the two weeks following, after the period when the general quarterly average had been taken. In the week ending the 18th, the general average price was 288. 2d.; in that ending the 25th it was 29s. 4d.; and in the last days of the month it rose to above 30s. On the 1st of September it was 30s. 7d., and was continuing to rise rapidly. The Committee would bear in mind that, in several districts, where oatmeal, and not flour, constituted a very large proportion of the food of the people, its price rose very much above that which had been quoted as the general average. Besides the knowledge of these facts, his Majesty's ministers had also the information, that the crop of oats was in general a failure in several foreign countries from which oats were usually imported. Knowing this, and seeing that great scarcity was to be apprehended at home, not merely from the deficiency of the oat crop, but from the general failure of leguminous productions through

out the country, owing to the great drought which prevailed, it became necessary to take steps to make a timely provision, not merely for the cattle, but for that large portion of the people who were dependent on oatmeal for food. But another circumstance which operated on the decision of Ministers was, that the accounts from Lancashire and from Ireland were of such an alarming nature as almost to excite despair; and if the drought had continued, if Providence had not lent its aid by a timely fall of rain, the potato crops must have been ruined. In that case they would have had to fall back on the scanty supply of oats which remained, and must have found themselves in a state of the utmost distress, for a supply of food for the great mass of the people. During the whole of his experience, never did the country exhibit an appearance more alarming. To add to the grounds of apprehension, the hay crop, in the richest parts of England, was in a condition to call forth fears of the utmost scarcity; and the fact was, that, at the season of the year in question, such was the miserable state of vegetation, that it was absolutely necessary to feed cattle with dry fodder, as in the depth of winter.

In such a condition of the country, with such prospects, could there be the slightest hesitation in taking any step that might be requisite for securing to the country a supply of the first necessary of existence? Could his Majesty's ministers, for a single moment, entertain a doubt that their first duty was, at whatever risk, to guard against the impending scarcity, by the admission of pease, beans, and grain? The statements he had made, verified, as they must have been, by the personal observations of honourable gentle men, fully warranted him in asserting, that had ministers waited till the 15th of November, when by law the ports might have been opened, the consequences would, in all probability, have proved most calamitous. From the rapid rise of prices before the 1st of September, their continued

elevation subsequent to that period, the condition of the crops at home, and the prospects of supply from abroad, he had not the slightest difficulty in saying, that the minister who hesitated to advise the admission of foreign grain, would have been equally unworthy of the favour of the monarch, and of that fair and liberal confidence which was reposed in the servants of the Crown, while Parliament was not sitting. He put it to the Committee, whether any minister deserved to be trusted by the Crown, or supported by Parliament, who could for a single instant hesitate to choose between a breach of the law on the one hand, or the risk, nay, the certainty, of famine on the other.

Having submitted to the Committee these observations, he trusted he had said enough to justify the measure that had been adopted, so far as it related to removing the prohibition, which would have excluded grain until the 15th of November, and he would have contented himself with having said thus much, had that measure been confined to simple removal. But there was another feature of the case which required notice. He alluded to the duty to be imposed on the grain admitted, or rather, he should say, undertaken to be paid thereon. A simple removal of the restriction on importation would not have been sufficient; they were, he thought, to let the importation be as much as possible in the spirit of the law which they were partially violating, and therefore certain duties were necessary to be paid. To have advised the levying those duties by virtue of an Order in Council, was what they would not have thought of; and had they entertained such an idea, he was sure that no Prince of the House of Brunswick would for a moment have listened to the advice. They therefore recommended, that the parties importing should give bond for the payment of a certain duty per quarter, not exceeding a fixed sum, should Parliament thereafter give its sanction to the amount then named, and in pursuance thereof bonds