[13] The following striking passage from the writings of the celebrated Dr Channing of America, was quoted by Sir Robert Peel in the speech under consideration.  “Great Britain, loaded with an unprecedented debt, and with a grinding taxation, contracted a new debt of a hundred millions of dollars, to give freedom, not to Englishmen, but to the degraded African.  I know not that history records an act so disinterested, so sublime.  In the progress of ages, England’s naval triumphs will shrink into a more and more narrow space in the records of our race—­this moral triumph will fill a broader—­brighter page.”  “Take care!” emphatically added Sir Robert Peel, “that this brighter page be not sullied by the admission of slave sugar into the consumption of this country—­by our encouragement—­and, too, our unnecessary encouragement of slavery and the slave-trade!”—­Noble sentiments!

So much for foreign sugar.  Now for—­

II.  FOREIGN CORN; and we beg the special attention of all parties to this portion of the manifesto of Sir Robert Peel:—­

“Look at the capital invested in land and agriculture in this country—­look at the interests involved in it—­look at the arrangement that has been come to for the commutation of tithes—­look at your importation of corn diminishing for the last ten years—­consider the burdens on the land peculiar to this country[14]—­take all these circumstances into consideration, and then you will agree with Mr McCulloch, the great advocate of a change in the Corn-law, that ’considering the vast importance of agriculture, nearly half the population of the empire are directly or indirectly dependent on it for employment and the means of subsistence; a prudent statesman would pause before he gave his sanction to any measure however sound in principle, or beneficial to the mercantile and manufacturing classes, that might endanger the prosperity of agriculture, or check the rapid spread of improvement.’"[15]

[14] “We believe,” says Mr McCulloch himself in another part of the pamphlet, (Longman & Co., 1841, p. 23—­6th Edit.) from which Sir Robert Peel is quoting, “that land is more heavily taxed than any other species of property in the country—­and that its owners are clearly entitled to insist that a duty should be laid on foreign corn when imported, sufficient fully to countervail the excess of burdens laid upon the land.”

    [15] Speech, pp. 9, 10.

Now for the “Sliding Scale.”

“I just here repeat the opinion which I have declared here before, and also in the House of Commons, that I cannot consent to substitute a fixed duty of 8s. a-quarter on foreign corn, for the present ascending and descending scale of duties.  I prefer the principle of the ascending and descending scale, to such an amount of fixed duty.  And when I look at the burdens to which the land of this country is subject, I do not consider the fixed duty of 8s. a-quarter on corn from Poland, and Prussia, and Russia, where no such burdens exist, a sufficient protection for it."[16]