afflicted, could not be very distant. The to its colonies, and cultivating a mutually termination of the eventful life of that beneficial intercourse; they fell under the monarch was regarded as the last hope dominion of the Spanish government-a of the advocates for revolution; but, government unfortunately blind both to thanks to a benign Providence, their ex-its political and commercial interest. pectations have been disappointed; we What a picture of the baneful effects of have witnessed the sceptre of France pass monopoly in trade and bigotry in religion into the hands of his legitimate successor has been exhibited in the case of Spanish without the slightest disorder, thus satis- America, how different the prospect which factorily exhibiting to the world, that the is now opened to these countries! the present dynasty of France rests on the removal of all restrictions on their trade most solid foundation. I am led to these with other parts of the world—a passage observations, to show how permanent are of two months wafting to the western likely to be the advantages of peace we hemisphere the manufactures of England, now enjoy, and that the country is ra- and thus laying the foundation, by means pidly advancing to a state which may be of an interchange of commodities, for viewed as affording an indemnity for the sound principles of trade, advantageous vast sacrifices she has made in the ac- to both; whilst we receive in return supcomplishment of that great purpose-the plies of produce, adapted both to the general peace and tranquillity of Europe. luxury of the higher classes and the inWith respect to the fallen state of Spain, dustry of the lower. Had the councils the declarations of the government of of Spain been guided by enlightened men, France regarding that country, may, I she never would have suffered so valuable think, safely be confided in. I believe a portion of the globe, inhabited by twenty Charles 10th to be sincere, when he one millions of people, to be held in a declares, that his object in maintaining a bondage disgraceful to civilized nations; military occupation of a part of Spain, is she would not have suffered the contest not for the purpose of territorial aggran- for liberal institutions, and an emancipadizement, but with a view of protection tion from colonial monopoly and oppres to his own dominions; and in proportion sion, to be prolonged for a period of fouras that danger subsides, in the same ratio, teen years, but have acquiesced in a change will he, no doubt, withdraw his army from corresponding with the improvement of Spain; and I think the House will admit the times. Spain, however, pursued a the conduct of the king of France, during different course, and fortunately an unthe short time he has occupied the throne successful one; but, while the struggle of that country, offers the most satisfactory was doubtful, England prudently remained pledge of the future. His accession to neutral. The contest being virtually the crown has been distinguished by a ended, his majesty's ministers have adopted liberal policy, exemplified, indeed, strongly decisive measures; they have taken steps in the restoration of the liberty of the to form a diplomatic intercourse with press, and other institutions, which are in those states, which will contribute to give unison with a progressive state of tran- them stability and a confirmed influential quillity and civilization. But, Sir, while station amongst the independent nations our relations with the continental powers of the world. If there are any among of Europe have acquired so auspicious a those whom I have the honour of addresscharacter, and great and unprecedented ing who were of opinion that measures as have been the benefits which Great for the recognition of those countries Britain has derived from this happy state were too long delayed; if there are any of peace, his majesty's ministers have not who doubted the friendly disposition of been inattentive to the opportunity, when his majesty's ministers towards those new they could consistently with existing cir-states, I think they will now readily accumstances, increase the advantages, and knowledge that parliament acted wisely extend the means of commercial inter- in confiding in the government; and when course, by forming a connection with the reflecting on the events which have ocnew Transatlantic States. Three centu-curred within the last six or nine months, ries have now elapsed since those states fell under European dominion, unfortunately not of the Protestant part of Europe, nor of a country like Great Britain, capable of imparting useful institutions they will also be of opinion, that the administration have selected the most suitable period for the opening of a diplomatic intercourse with those states-a period indeed, when the Spanish forces the lower order of the Irish population; I say, it is to be lamented, that those beneficial effects should be impeded in their rapid march by the obtrusive interference of misguided individuals; who by their acts are exasperating animosities, diverting the attention of certain classes of his majesty's faithful subjects from honest industry, and levying a species of tax existing circumstances, but one opinion will be entertained in this House, as to the course it will be fitting to pursue. For myself, I will take this opportunity of declaring, that my opinions are decided in that country have been vanquished in almost every engagement, and Spain no longer can lay claim even to the seeming title of a military occupation; when a system of government has been establish ed in Colombia, Mexico, and Buenos Ayres, exhibiting conclusive evidence of a knowledge of liberal systems of government, and evincing a desire to cultivate the advantages derivable from the ex-upon a portion of the people of that perience of a part of the globe deeply country, with no other object than to skilled in arts, and most advanced in ge- enable those mistaken individuals to atneral civilization.-Having now given a tempt to overawe the parliament of the sketch (and I fear an imperfect one) of united kingdom. Whatever difference of the happy state of our foreign relations opinion, Sir, may exist in this House generally, and the advantages which we with respect to a question which is now are likely to acquire from an intercourse made the protecting mantle for covering with the South American states, I must the errors and false notions of certain inalso notice the war which has unexpect-fatuated persons, I apprehend, that under edly sprung up in India; the measures which have, however, been taken, will, I trust, speedily lead to an adjustment of the differences; if not, we may safely confide in the tried valour of our army in that quarter, and look forward to anly adverse to further concessions; my early and satisfactory termination of hostilities. The House has been apprized of his majesty's intention to augment the army. A more efficient force in British India has rendered this necessary. The reductions also which took place in the military force of the country since the peace, regiments having been reduced from 1,000 to about 600 men, has pressed inconveniently upon the service in our distant possessions. The proposed augmentation will afford much relief upon those stations; and it is gratifying to reflect, that from the flourishing state of the revenue, no additional burthens on account of such increase will be imposed upon the people. With respect to the slave trade, from the perseverance, temper, and firmness with which that important subject has been espoused by his majesty's government, I think the House may safely confide in their continued exertions towards the completion of the wishes of the country. The state of Ireland is a topic which has been at various periods recommended to the attention of parliament, and has successively occupied its deliberate consideration. It is to be lamented, that, at a moment when British capital is beginning to diffuse itself throughout that fertile country, when the benefits of an unrestricted commercial intercourse between the two countries are daily exemplified, whilst measures are also in progress which cannot fail to ameliorate the condition of reasons for which I shall, upon a suitable opportunity, be ready to assign.-I trust the House will grant me its attention, while I advert to that part of his majesty's speech which relates to the improved and improving state of our agricultural interests, of our trade, commerce, manufactures, and negotiation, presenting a faithful picture which cannot fail to be most gratifying to the mind of every Englishman, to behold our country after a war of unprecedented length, carried on at an expense to the people to which history affords no parallel; not merely recovered from the state of unavoidable exhaustion attendant upon such an unexampled struggle, but actually raised to a degree of prosperity and glory unknown at any period. In proof whereof, I will advert to the increase of our revenue. The branch of Excise, which affords the best test of internal prosperity, alone has exceeded the amount of the preceding year, by upwards of 1,100 000%.; and the Customs, after deducting the repeal of duties within the year, to the amount of 1,250,000l., only falls short of that of the preceding year 166,4851.; consequently, there is an increase in this department of our revenue nearly equal to that in the Excise. These form a just and unerring criterion of the increasing prosperity of our foreign and domestic trade: but, indeed, it is unnecessary to have reference to such proofs-whatever July, 1823, and in 1824, as compared with a like period of twelve months preceding, in 1823, there is an increase in value of upwards of 1,200,000l. The sound policy of diminishing duties on the raw material, and acted upon by the right hon. the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has been most fully exemplified in the following articles. In consequence of that diminution, and the increased encouragement thereby given to the industry of the country, duties were paid upon nearly half a million of pounds weight of silk more than in 1823, and on sheep's wool upwards of five millions of pounds weight since the last session of Parliament. The consumption of colonial rum has also increased during the same period 165,700 gallons. With respect to our shipping interests, they are all in a state of rapid improvement. About two hundred more merchant vessels, yielding about 40,000 tons, have been constructed during the last twelve months in England and Scotland alone, as compared with the preceding year. The value of shipping, according to their respective tonnages, has risen from twenty to forty per cent.; and ships employed in the timber trade, the owners of which it was predicted would be ruined by the alteration of the Timber duties, and reciprocity of duties' act, have risen full 60 per cent in value; freights have increased 20 per cent, and there is plenty of employment. Of the increased trade of the country the port of London has had its full share. During the last year, as compared with the preceding, 2,800 more vessels entered the port from foreign and home ports; and if but due encouragement be given to an extension of the wet-dock accommodation, so highly essential to the trade of the metropolis, and the places of deposit for landing, the rates and charges of the port will undergo material reduction, and thus, by inviting the foreign merchant to avail himself of our capital, and the facilities offered to trade under our improved commercial code, we shall soon compete with our neighbouring continental rivals. The improved and improving state of the revenue of the country will, it is hoped, enable his majesty's government to proceed progressively with a diminution of taxation. The right hon. the Chancellor of the Exchequer most decidedly enjoys the full confidence of the country, and I am satisfied he will not disappoint the just expectations the country may have part of England you visit there are presented to your view a happy, contented, and industrious population; whether they are employed in the manufactories of our great staples, or in the cultivation of the soil, the scene is equally gratifying. What a pleasing contrast does the present state of the country form to that of the year 1820, a period within the age of the present Parliament. Yes, Sir, within the short period of five years I have heard gentlemen, whose opinions have justly been entitled to great weight and authority, declare, that England was a declining country; that in commerce, manufactures, and navigation, she was incapable to enter into successful competition with any foreign rivals; that the means by which she must sustain her public credit were rapidly diminishing. I take leave, Sir, to remind the House of the gloomy predictions with which it was assailed from certain of the manufacturing and shipping interests, at a period when the important improvements in our navigation law, warehouse system, duties, &c. were under the consideration of Parliament; predictions which had no other foundation than in the hereditary attachment to ancient prejudices, unsuited to the present times, and unsound in principle. And may I not now ask, triumphantly, how have those gloomy predictions been verified? Are those Members of this House, few indeed, who advocated a continuance of the restrictive policy, become converts at last to the liberal system of trade? Are they now prepared to co-operate in the encouragement of open competition, the discontinuance of monopolies and restraints upon our trade and navigation? If not, let me entreat their attention for a short time, whilst I detail to the House the happy effects which have resulted to the country, principally from the improved state of our commercial code. In the first place, Sir, the official value of the exports of British manufactured goods during the year 1824, ending in October last, being the latest period at which the public accounts have been made up, as compared with the preceding year 1823, exhibit an increase of no less than 4,500,000l. sterling, bringing the total value of exports in 1824 to 50,758,800., being by far the largest export ever made by this country. The Transit trade has also, under the beneficial influence of the improving warehousing system, experienced a marked increase: the Act only took effect in VOL. XII. E formed. The prosperous state and improving condition of our agricultural interest form a topic of pleasing reflection. I am anxious, however, to state my opinion, that such prosperity is not in any manner attributable to the existing Corn Laws, which I believe is admitted by all parties, ought to undergo alteration. I am an advocate for their repeal, and the substitution of a protecting duty equal to a fair equivalent of the poor-rates, tithes, &c. paid by our farmers as compared with other countries. I repeat, Sir, if the situation of the country in 1820 was correctly portrayed (the period to which I have first alluded), how pleasing is the present contrast! Our trade last year has increased to an extent unprecedented; and happily England no longer cherishes visionary notions of advantage from commercial monopoly. The men who guide our councils, the merchants who invigorate our national industry, concur in disclaiming the doctrines of prohibition and restrictions. I will venture, without flattery, to say of England what the people of Rome said of one of their Emperors with a great deal of flattery "Nil oriturum alias, nil ortum tale fatentes." Mr. Brougham regretted to state, that he was under the necessity, not only of expressing his dissent from, but also of entering his solemn protest against, some, and those not the least important, parts of the Speech which had just been read to them. He felt, however, great satisfaction in being able, before he stated them, to take notice, which he should do as shortly and clearly as he could, of those parts of the address to which he could give his most cordial and willing assent. In giving that assent, and in joining his congratulations to those contained in the address upon many of the points noticed in the Speech, he could not claim for himself any extraordinary stretch of candour. He was rather withheld, as indeed were many of the friends around him, by a feeling of modesty, from giving their due meed of praise to the measures alluded to, since those measures which were now the theme of so much praise and so many congratulations, were measures which the gentlemen on his side of the House years ago had urged, but in vain, upon those who at that time were intrusted with the administration of the country. He was rather restrained by this feeling of modesty, from praising the wisdom and vigour of the legislature in making the great mercantile reforms which had been recently effected; he was afraid, lest in bestowing any commendations of his upon them, he should seem to be bestowing commendation upon himself. He was, however, encouraged to get rid of his modesty; and to bestow upon them the honour that they merited, by the recollection that they were not so much his own propositions as the propositions of those friends with whom he had been in the habit of acting, both in parliament and out of parliament, ever since he had bad the honour of being returned to it. The principles, let it be said in parliament, and be heard with rejoicing and edification throughout the country-the principles were at end which had so long hampered the industry and cramped the energies of the people of England. Those doctrines of narrow, shop-keeping, huxtering policy, which wise men had for many years treated with contempt, both at home and abroad, but which for ages had been reverenced by the ignorant as the only base upon which commercial property could be firmly establishedthose doctrines which, for two generations back, had been the topic of unqualified scorn, and the theme of unmixed reprobation with all writers of enlightened understanding, but which had been regularly defended by each successive minister during that period as the real foundation of national greatness-those doctrines, he was happy to say, were now exploded for ever, and could never more be advanced to obstruct the welfare and prosperity of the country. For years the House had been told, that it was either a wild chimera, or a dangerous innovation, to talk of the doctrines of a free trade, and of the right of men to employ their capital and their industry according to their interests, their wishes-ay, or even according to their caprices. At one time, when it pleased the ministry to view them with contempt, these doctrines were described as a visionary code, specious in theory, but impossible in practice; and at another, when it pleased it to excite alarm against them, they were viewed with as much detestation and abhorrence, as if they had been a leaf taken out of that book which some men thought they could never sufficiently detest and abhor, he meant "The Rights of Man," by Thomas Paine. He had himself heard them treated as idle chimeras by one set of ministers, and as jacobinical innovations [54 by another, just as it was the fashion of have added, "in the interval between midthe day to treat them as objects of con- night and morning," which of all times for tempt or of abhorrence; and yet he, who meddling was certainly the worst and had seen them first contemned and then most objectionable. "The moment it is abhorred, had now the happiness to say, withdrawn," continued he, "confusion that they had reached the consummation and ruin will be at no great distance." of their glory, not merely in being adopt-"Thank God," said a third, in a fit of ed by ministers, but in being publicly re- pious enthusiasm, "we shall never live to cognized, not only in the Speech which see the day, when the principles avowed had just been delivered to them from a by the gentlemen opposite shall be sanchigh quarter, but also in the addresses tioned by those who hold the highest which were going to be returned to it by place in his majesty's councils, or when both Houses of Parliament. The House those who hold such principles shall dare would see that it required but little can- to act upon them as his majesty's minisdour in him to approve those parts of the ters." Ministers had, however, sancSpeech which referred to the late mercan- tioned such principles: they had carried tile reforms. Let them look, for instance, into effect all the detestable nostrums of at the recent modification of the navigation that side of the House: they had taken laws. Eight years ago he had himself an entire leaf out of the book of their opexpounded-very inadequately, he ad- ponents: they had even enacted measures mitted, but still he had expounded-the to legalize the damnable heresies of Adam very alterations which had lately been Smith and the Scotch economists, and to adopted. He claimed no merit for them, stamp with that odious name the opinions the invention was not his own, but that of their adversaries: nay more, the country of greater and much wiser men. He had, was now called to thank God for having however, proposed them, and by so doing ministers who had courage to support had drawn down upon himself the heavy such measures, though it was formerly disapprobation of a right hon. gentleman, called upon to thank God for having mia great guardian of the commercial in-nisters who had courage to oppose them. terests of the country. That right hon. gentleman was now no more. He had been blamed by that right hon. gentleman, the late Mr. Rose, for advocating such doctrines; he had ventured, how-dially and sincerely. He thanked God ever, to preach them more than onceineffectually, indeed, at the time, but, as it now appeared, with undeniable ultimate success. At the same time he had also proposed the changes which had recently been adopted with regard to the silk trade. They were assailed, on his first propounding them, with great and extraordinary severity. He was told over and over again, that nothing could be more speculative, nothing more absurd: he was informed, that though they might appear very plausible in theory, every person in the trade considered them inapplicable to practice he was even met by the taunt, that what he advanced might be very true, but that it looked very much like an ingenious sophism. "I trust," said one hon. gentleman, whom he now saw before him, "that I shall never see any ministry attempting to legislate upon such a subject." "God protect us," said another, "if any man should attempt to withdraw this corner-stone of our commercial policy. Let no man meddle with it by day or by night;" and he might Though he could not formerly concur in the gratitude which the country had been called upon to feel towards his majesty's ministers, he could now concur in it cor that measures had been taken by them to recognize the principles for which he, and those who thought with him, had long contended with so little immediate success. He thanked God that they were never more likely to be troubled even with the visions of those old, mean, absurd, senseless, inconsistent, shopkeeperlike, huckster-like, beggar-like doctrines, which had at last given way before the manly, generous, and philosophical principles, which the king's ministers had been compelled to adopt, by the almost unanimous sense of the country. He trusted that the House would allow him, now that he had pointed out the concessions which his majesty's ministers had made to doctrines which they had formerly reprobated, to express a hope that they would go on in the course on which they had entered. If they did not, their work would be only half accomplished. What they had done was chiefly to be prized as a pledge that a better policy than the past would be pursued in future. For example, they had adopted |