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334 taxing, without any benefit to the revenue, should have been permitted to exist so long. The credit, so far as credit was due to any, was attributable to the published evidence and report of Mr. Hume's Import Duties Committee, documents which, as I have said in a previous chapter, excited very little notice when they first appeared. The measure, Sir Robert Peel said, would proceed on two general principles, first, of altering prohibition in all cases, and imposing only revenue duties; and, secondly, of reducing very materially the duties upon the raw materials of manufacture, and on articles only partially manufactured. Amongst the duties reduced were those on foreign woods for the cabinet-makers, and timber for the shipbuilders, oils and extracts for the manufacturers, iron and metallic ores, live cattle, bacon, hams, onions, potatoes, coffee, salted provisions, cocoa, &c. Fresh beef, previously prohibited, was to be admitted at a duty of 8s. per cwt,, and a great outcry arose amongst the graziers, although the supply would be confined solely to countries closely adjoining to us, and although articles of consumption which might be brought greater distances still were to remain heavily taxed, the proposed duty on bacon being 14s. per cwt., on hams 14s., and on salted pork 8s., while the old duties of 10s. on cheese and 20s. on butter were still to be exacted. The bill passed the Commons on the 28th of June, amidst loud cheering, the protectionists rejoicing that their interests had been so little scathed, and the free traders glad that something had been done in the right direction—something out of which more might arise.

But the price of bread rose in spite of the new Corn Law, an apt but melancholy illustration of the falsehood of the pretensions under which it was passed, as a measure of relief. "The famine was sore in the land." In June, authentic and heart-rending details were published of deep distress in Manchester, Huddersfield, Accrington, Stroud, Longtown, Prescott, Walsall, Ilkeston, Darlaston, Glasgow,