§ The Earl of Gallowaypresented petitions from several places in the county of Wigtown, against the repeal of the Corn-laws. The parties who were agitating this question were seeking, the noble Earl said, to revolutionize the country. Every effort was made for this purpose. In the part of Scotland with which he was connected, lecturers had been sent from Manchester, and he could assure the House that they were busy enough in propagating their doctrines, and in arousing agitation against the Corn-laws, but he hoped their success would not be equal to their industry. To show the mad and absurd attempts which such persons made, he had received information that an association was about being formed which was to be called the Land Redemption Association. His informant had told him that they had published in some of their documents quotations from Genesis, to show that all land was originally given in common, and that therefore all were bound by laws both moral and divine to again resume the possession of that property to which each and all had an equal right. They also quoted some extracts from Blackstone and other authorities. The plan which they intended to pursue was, that all land being thus recovered from private persons should be vested by commissioners for national purposes. Such was the monstrous and wicked doctrines which these agitators propagated. To put down this growing evil, a firm and united government was wanted, and such a government this country at present had not. If the Government were united, and would boldly stand up and express their determination of maintaining the present system of Corn-laws, of settling the important and exciting question of non-intrusion, and use their best exertions to mitigate, if not entirely to prevent the evil of sabbath desecration, this would be doing more real good to the people than they could ever expect from all their truckling to agitating Radicals.
§ Lord Fitzgeraldsaid, that he had read with surprise a statement made on the subject of the Corn-laws in another place by a person filling a high station. The speaker had said that in his opinion the people of Ireland would not be affected 481 by a change in the existing system. When that subject would come to be discussed in the House, he thought that he, among others, would be able to show, that there was no part of the United Kingdom which would be so seriously affected as Ireland by such a change, and that there was no portion of her Majesty's subjects who would so severely suffer from it as the population of Ireland as contradistinguished from the proprietors of the soil there. If in this country it had been stated, that it was a landlord's question, he thought that, so far as Ireland at least was concerned, it was not a landlord's question, but one which affected the great body of the people, whose interests, and, he might almost say, whose existence, would be endangered by the agrarian revolution which would necessarily occur from the protection being withdrawn from agriculture. He thought it right not to let a single day pass without stating his dissent from the opinion to which he had alluded, and he hoped that when it went forth that such an opinion had been stated in Parliament, and had been made the grounds for recommending a change in the existing law, that there would be soon such a manifestation of opinion in Ireland as would remove so erroneous an impression.