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368 day the Manchester Guardian contained an announcement that there was some improvement in trade, much to the astonishment of Manchester people who had experienced none. A London merchant on receiving the paper said: "If Peel had paid a million of money for this account it would not have been misspent." Sir Robert did regard it as a God-send. With the paper in his hand he quoted from it triumphantly; a division was pressed for, and there were 147 against, and 91 for the motion. On the following day, upon the motion that the house should go into a Committee of Supply, Mr, Milner Gibson moved as an amendment, that it should resolve itself into a committee to take the distressed condition of the country into consideration. Mr. Gibson, Dr. Bowring, Sir J. Easthope, Mr. Hume, Mr. Fielden, Mr. Mark Philips, and others, gave fresh proof of the necessity of inquiry, with a view to instant relief. An adjournment was asked for, but Sir Robert Peel, all the other ministers remaining silent, being taunted with this silence, launched out into a bitter invective against the obstruction of public business, which drew upon him a bold reply from Mr. Cobden, who said: "The public business referred to was the voting of the militia estimates, to put down, he supposed, the starving people. He believed they might be better employed in finding them food. If a person had a malice of a fiend he would rejoice at the mode in which they were proceeding. The new Poor Law would not save their estates. Their present policy would create an amount of poverty that would break through stone walls. The people were now lying by the sides of hedges and walls, but when the winter came where would they go? If they were driven from the ditch-sides by the terrors of the bastiles, they would become banditti, or they must be put into the workhouse. Would the right honourable baronet resist the appeals which had been made to him, or would he rather cherish the true interests of the country, and not allow himself to