mildly, when he told his colleagues that once the ports were opened, he would not undertake to close them—­yet what was this but saying to a protectionist Cabinet,—­there is great danger of a famine in Ireland—­we ought to open the ports or assemble Parliament, but I will not agree to one or the other unless you all become Free-traders; thus making the feeding or the starving of the Irish people depend on the condition, that the members of his Government were to change their views, and preach Free Trade from those benches, to which they had been triumphantly carried on the shoulders of Protection.  In truth, Sir Robert, more than most politicians, was in the habit of suppressing those portions of a question which he found inconvenient; limiting his statement to such parts of it, as suited his present purpose.  In his communications with his colleagues, he was very fond of such phrases as, “to lay aside all reserve,” “to speak in the most unreserved manner,” etc.; thus forcibly impressing one with his habitual love of reserve, even with his greatest intimates.  And in his speech of the 22nd of January, on the Address, he said, with suspicious indignation, that “nothing could be more base or dishonest” than to use the potato blight as a means of repealing the Corn Laws.

The great twelve nights’ debate on the repeal of these laws, commenced five days after the speech above referred to, was made.  The Premier, at great length and very ably, repeated the arguments he had been putting forward since the previous November, in favour of taking the duty off everything that could be called human food; he even proposed to repeal the duty on the importation of potatoes, by which, he said, he hoped to obtain sound seed from abroad.  Sir Robert, in this speech, may be said to have been in his best vein,—–­ full, explanatory, clear, assumptive, persuasive,—­often appealing to the kindness and forbearance of his hearers,—­always calculating a good deal on his power of bending people to his views by a plausible, diplomatic treatment of the whole question.  Addressing Mr. Greene, the chairman of the Committee, he said, with solemn gravity:  “Sir, I wish it were possible to take advantage of this calamity, for introducing among the people of Ireland the taste for a better and more certain provision for their support than that which they have heretofore cultivated.”  Surely, the Indian meal, which he so often boasted of having ordered on his own responsibility, was not a step in that direction.  To have purchased and stored for their use the wheat and oats of their own soil, would have been, one should suppose, the direct way of achieving this philanthropic desire.