became a part of the famous Treaty of Washington in 1871, and was finally settled by the arbitration of the Emperor of Germany. But it is much to the honor of the Peel Administration that a dispute which had for years been charged with possibilities of war, and had become a stock subject of political agitation in America, should have been so far settled as to be removed forever after out of the category of disputes which suggest an appeal to arms. This was one of the last acts of Peel's Government, and it was not the least of the great things he had done. We have soon to tell how it came about that it was one of his latest triumphs, and how an Administration which had come into power with such splendid promise, and had accomplished so much in such various fields of legislation, was brought so suddenly to a fall. The story is one of the most remarkable and important chapters in the history of English politics and parties.

May 26th,
Not much

During Peel's time we catch a last glimpse of the famous Arctic navigator, Sir John Franklin. He sailed on the expedition which was doomed to be his last, on 1845, with his two vessels, Erebus and Terror. more is heard of him as among the living. We may say of him as Carlyle says of La Pérouse, "The brave navigator goes and returns not; the seekers search far seas for him in vain; only some mournful, mysterious shadow of him hovers long in all heads and hearts."

CHAPTER XIV.

FREE-TRADE AND THE LEAGUE.

FEW chapters of political history in modern times have given occasion for more controversy than that which contains the story of Sir Robert Peel's Administration in its dealing with the Corn-laws. Told in the briefest form, the story is that Peel came into office in 1841 to maintain the Corn-laws, and that in 1846 he repealed them. The controversy as to the wisdom or unwisdom of repealing the Cornlaws has long since come to an end. They who were the uncompromising opponents of Free-trade at that time are proud to call themselves its uncompromising zealots now.

Indeed, there is no more chance of a reaction against Freetrade in England than there is of a reaction against the rule of three. But the controversy still exists, and will probably always be in dispute, as to the conduct of Sir Robert Peel.

The Melbourne Ministry fell, as we have seen, in consequence of a direct vote of want of confidence moved by their leading opponent, and the return of a majority hostile to them at the general election that followed. The vote of want of confidence was levelled against their financial policy, especially against Lord John Russell's proposal to substitute a fixed duty of eight shillings for Peel's sliding scale. Sir Robert Peel came into office, and he introduced a reorganized scheme of a sliding scale, reducing the duties and improving the system, but maintaining the principle. Lord John Russell proposed an amendment declaring that the House of Commons, "considering the evils which have been caused by the present Corn-laws, and especially by the fluctuation of the graduated or sliding scale, is not prepared to adopt the measure of her Majesty's Government, which is founded on the same principles, and is likely to be attended by similar results." The amendment was rejected by a large majority, no less than one hundred and twenty-three. But the question between Free-trade and Protection was even more distinctly raised. Mr. Villiers proposed another amendment declaring for the entire abolition of all duties on grain. Only ninety votes were given for the amendment, while three hundred and ninety-three were recorded against it. Sir Robert Peel's Government, therefore, came into power distinctly pledged to uphold the principle of protection for home-grown grain. Four years after this Sir Robert Peel proposed the total abolition of the corn duties. For this he was denounced by some members of his party in language more fierce and unmeasured than ever since has been applied to any leading statesman. Mr. Gladstone was never assailed by the stanchest supporter of the Irish Church in words so vituperative as those which rated Sir Robert Peel for his supposed apostasy. One eminent person, at least, made his first fame as a Parliamentary orator by his denunciations of the great minister whom he had previously eulogized and supported.

"The history of agricultural distress," it has been well

observed, "is the history of agricultural abundance." This looks at first sight a paradox; but nothing can in reality be more plain and less paradoxical. "Whenever," to follow out the passage, “Providence, through the blessing of genial seasons, fills the nation's stores with plenteousness, then, and then only, has the cry of ruin to the cultivator been proclaimed as the one great evil for legislation to repress. This is, indeed, the very meaning of the principle of protection. When the commodity which the protected interest has to dispose of is so abundant as to be easily attained by the common body of consumers, then, of course, the protected interest is injured in its particular way of making money, and expects the State to do something to secure it in the principal advantage of its monopoly. The greater quantity of grain a good harvest brings for the benefit of all the people, the less the price the corn-grower can charge for it. His interest as a monopolist is always and inevitably opposed to the interest of the community.

But it is easy even now, when we have almost forgotten the days of protection, to see that the corn-grower is not likely either to recognize or to admit this conflict of interests between his protection and the public welfare. Apart from the natural tendency of every man to think that that which does him good must do good to the community, there was, undoubtedly, something very fascinating in the theory of protection. It had a charming give and take, live and let live, air about it. "You give me a little more than the market price for my corn, and don't you see I shall be able to buy all the more of your cloth and tea and sugar, or to pay you the higher rent for your land?" Such a compact seems reasonable and tempting. Almost up to our own time the legislation of the country was in the hands of the classes who had more to do with the growing of corn and the ownership of land than with the making of cotton and the working of machinery. The great object of legislation and of social compacts of whatever kind seemed to be to keep the rents of the land-owners and the prices of the farmers up to a comfortable standard. It is not particularly to the discredit of the landlords and the farmers that this was so. We have seen, in later times, how every class in succession has resisted the movement of the principle of Free-trade

when it came to be applied to its own particular interests. The paper manufacturers liked it as little in 1860, as the landlords and farmers had done fifteen years earlier. When the cup comes to be commended to the lips of each interest in turn, we always find that it is received as a poisoned chalice, and taken with much shuddering and passionate protestation. The particular advantage possessed by vested interests in the Corn-laws was that for a long time the landlords possessed all the legislative power and all the prestige as well. There was a certain reverence and sanctity about the ownership of land, with its hereditary descent and its patriarchal dignities, which the manufacture of paper could not pretend to claim.

If it really were true that the legitimate incomes or the legitimate influence of the landlord class in England went down in any way because of the repeal of the Corn-laws, it would have to be admitted that the landlords, like the aristocrats before the French Revolution, had done something themselves to encourage the growth of new and disturbing ideas. Before the Revolution, free thought and the equality and brotherhood of man were beginning to be pet doctrines among the French nobles and among their wives and daughters. It was the whim of the hour to talk Rousseau, and to affect indifference to rank, and a general faith in a good time coming of equality and brotherhood. In something of the same fashion the aristocracy of England were for some time before the repeal of the Corn-laws illustrating a sort of revival of patriarchal ideas about the duties of property. The influence was stirring everywhere. Oxford was beginning to busy itself in the revival of the olden influence of the Church. The Young England party, as they were then called, were ardent to restore the good old days when the noble was the father of the poor and the chief of his neighborhood. All manner of pretty whimsies were caught up with this ruling idea to give them an appearance of earnest purpose. The young landlord exhibited himself in the attitude of a protector, patron, and friend to all his tenants. Doles were formally given at stated hours to all who would come for them to the castle gate. Young noblemen played cricket with the peasants on their estate, and the Saturnian Age was believed by a good many per

sons to be returning for the express benefit of Old, or rather of Young, England. There was something like a party being formed in Parliament for the realization of Young England's idyllic purposes. It comprised among its numbers several more or less gifted youths of rank, who were full of enthusiasm and poetic aspirations and nonsense; and it had the encouragement and support of one man of genius, who had no natural connection with the English aristocracy, but who was afterward destined to be the successful leader of the Conservative and aristocratic party; to be its savior when it was all but down in the dust; to guide it to victory, and make it once more, for the time at least, supreme in the political life of the country. This brilliant champion of Conservatism has often spoken of the repeal of the Corn-laws as the fall of the landlord class in England. If the landlords fell, it must be said of them, as has been fairly said of many a dynasty, that they never deserved better, on the whole, than just at the time when the blow struck them down.

The famous Corn-law of 1815 was a copy of the Cornlaw of 1670. The former measure imposed a duty on the importation of foreign grain which amounted to prohibition. Wheat might be exported upon the payment of one shilling per quarter customs duty; but importation was practically prohibited until the price of wheat had reached eighty shillings a quarter. The Corn-law of 1815 was hurried through Parliament, absolutely closing the ports against the importation of foreign grain until the price of our home-grown grain had reached the magic figure of eighty shillings a quarter. It was hurried through, despite the most earnest petitions from the commercial and manufacturing classes. A great deal of popular disturbance attended the passing of the measure. There were riots in London, and the houses of several of the supporters of the bill were attacked. Incendiary fires blazed in many parts of the country. In the Isle of Ely there were riots which lasted for two days and two nights, and the aid of the military had to be called in to suppress them. Five persons were hanged as the result of these disturbances. One might excuse a demagogue who compared the event to the suppression of some of the food riots in France just before the Revolution, of which we only