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 and immediate application, he gave the following warning to the House:— "He would ask the House to beware how they persevered in the present system. The honourable gentleman who had just sat down seemed to treat with some derision the notion that this was a question of rent in which the farmers and the labourers had no stake. He (Lord Howick) told him that it was a question of rent, and of nothing else. He (Lord Howick) could not do otherwise than wish well to the land, because all his interests were involved in it; but he said that, if those who were connected with the land looked well into the matter, they would see that even upon the narrow ground of self interest they ought to put an end to restrictions. Let them look at the continued succession of disappointed hopes of agricultural prosperity which had mocked their expectations, and the repeated series of agricultural distress with which they had been afflicted. He was persuaded that their own interests required an alteration of those laws; but, whatever might be their own interests, he was persuaded it was their solemn duty not to maintain them. We knew that by divine authority there was a malediction on those who withheld from the labourer his hire, and his persuasion was that the guilt was as great in the legislator who should maintain these laws as upon the private and individual extortioner, who deprived the labourer of his wages. In that guilt he, for one, would not take a share, and he called upon the House to beware how they lent themselves to it. All experience proved, that if justice were too long withheld, more than justice would be demanded, and he thought there were significant symptoms that we were now not far from that end. It was true the government was all-powerful in that House, and in the constituency by which that House was returned; but he was a friend to the political institutions of the country, and should look with alarm at any sudden or violent disturbance of those institutions,