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 CHAPTER XXIV.

TERMINATION OF THE CONTEST.

A majority of ninety-seven in so large a House, when the question was only whether it should go into committee or not, offered no very strong gaurantee that the measures would pass unmutilated through the committee. Of the whole county members, 149 had voted against the motion, and 67 for it. Of the tories, 231 had voted against, and 112 for it. There might be a secession from the majority, in favour either of a higher scale of duties for the three years, or against the abolition of that scale after the three years; and if that secession amounted to 40 or 50, the measure either would be defeated, or carried by so very small a majority, as to encourage the Lords to throw it out. The division, however, gave an encouraging view of the state of opinion out of doors, for while the borough members, who voted in the majority, represented 286,373 electors, those who voted in the minority, represented only 31,268. The apprehension, on one view of the subject, and the hope inspired by the other, gave additional vigour to the Anti-Corn-Law agitation, which, throughout the country, had been uninterrupted by the declarations of the the ministers and the long-protracted debate.

Sir Robert Peel must have felt, that those who demanded that repeal should not be prospective but immediate, were his best supporters, and had availed himself of the first opportunity to remove from their minds the hostility which had been engendered by his hasty accusation of