Page:Vindication of a fixed duty on corn.djvu/37

31 But, we are told, if a fixed duty were once suspended it never could be restored; and why not? the same power which suspended can restore its action, and as for a fixed duty being an "instalment" of an abolition, justice which pleads for the one would refuse the other, even though the claimant were Mr. O'Connell.

During the contest between the manufacturing and agricultural classes (the former aiming at the total overthrow of the protective duty, the latter clinging to protection with a tenacity proportioned to the violence of the attack) it has been too much forgotten that the rest of the community are deeply interested in the speedy and permanent settlement of this great question. The mercantile class in particular are anxiously, but patiently, awaiting it; it may be feared that their patience has been mistaken for indifference, and that the support which at the recent elections they generally gave to the friends of the present Government, has been interpreted as indicating their hostility to all the measures of fiscal reform proposed by the last. In the City of London, although some votes may have been determined against the ministerial candidates by disapprobation of the changes proposed in the "Budget," yet the opposition to them was mainly founded upon a want of confidence in the Ministry;