THE DERBY LESSER LIGHTS. [From the Times, July 17.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 767, 8 December 1852, Page 4

THE DERBY LESSER LIGHTS. [From the Times, July 17.]

Tbe French Academy bas recently offered a prize for the best essay on English Parliamentary eloquence. We recommend the intending 1 competitors to study with attention the speeches made at the nominations for Cambridgeshire, South Lincolnshire, and Hertfordshire, in order that they may fully appreciate the kind of discourse with which, on, these happily rare occasions, our country gentlemen are in tbe habit of indulging' their bucolic audiences, and, if the result be not to raise their opinion of the art of oratory as practised among us, it cannot fail to console them for the compulsory silence which Louis Napoleon has imposed upon them. "Lord Derby, and after him the deluge," says Lord Maidstone ; but the two. phenomena are contemporaneous. The deluge is come already — a deluge of unmeaning verbiage, of garbled statistics, of hopeless fallacies, and helpless misstatemeuts. We have really to apologise to, our readers for calling attention to sentiments uttered by men of little note, and absurdities which have ■ only to be stated to be exploded ; but, as this is the last election in which Protection is likely to

come forth in all her glory, we think it well to embalm' in our columns a few choice specimens of the* rhetoric of onr squires, before unrelenting fate shall close for ever the topic on which they have dilated with go much unction for so many years. First, then, there is Mr. Yorke, astonished at the injustice of not allowing our farmers to grow tobacco/ which oar soil and climate cannot produce, and which in a few years scourges even virgin soil into barrenness.' Then follows a lamentation on the fall of profits, which Mr. Yorke says all political economists agree is an infallible sign of decaying trade, instead- of being the necessary result of increasing capital and advancing civilization. If, however, Free Trade is to be preserved, Mr. Yorke can see no reason why the profits of trade should any longer be exempt from taxation, in order, we suppose, to accelerate the decay in commerce, the existence of which this lynx-eyed economist has detected. Tben comes Lord George Manners, who is ,of opinion that (he land has been cajoled to' take upon itself great burdens. Seeing that " the land," — that is, those who live upon rent, — has always had a clear majority in Pailiatnent, we should like to know who was the Dalilah who persuaded this foolish Sampson voluntarily to put out his own'eyes, and grind at' the mill ior the benefit of the commercial Philistines ; and we fear we must answer that, if the land has been cajoled, it, hns been, cajoled by itself, and is therefore not likely to have been deceived very greatly to its own injury. Lord George would take the taxes off rent, and lay them on articles of general consumption, that is on wages." If the poorest part of the community declines to take these burdens on itself Lord George thinks to convince them with the following argument :'-— The man who has nothing but his labour to dispose of suffers least from the imposition of duties, because his wages must have reference to (he cost of necessaries so long as the " godltk'e Poor Law " exists. Cold comfort, certainly. Tender are the mercies of the younger sons of peers. At the expense of a slight fall in rents, the poor have been raised a little above-pauper-ism. This state of things is found intolerable, and taxes are to be laid upon them till (hey are brought down to a condi.ion in which it is a toss O - "up whether they had better, go into the workhouse or not. AH beyond this pittance is to be resumed. Next comes Mr. Ball, a Dissenting minister, it is said, and thus propounds his text : — Of all frauds ever practised on the poor man, the greatest was that of persuading htm that cheapness was en advantage to him. He is the producer of all articles, and therefore to him cheapness is injurious. We certainly supposed from the tenor of their speeches, that these Cambridgeshiie worthies lived in a very primitive state of society, but we could not have believed, save on the authority of one of their own members, that in that Arcadian region the division of labour and the distinction of trades were utterly unknown. South Lincolnshire comes next : and here we have the advantage of listening to a Minister. Sir John Trollop tells us that Government will lighten the burden of taxation, and place it on the shoulders best able to bear it ; — this is, we presume, the labouring cla*>ses. Protection is gone, but be trusts we may have a large loaf, not from foreign parts, but our own soil. How foreign corn is to be excludid without exclusive laws we are not inlotrned, ard must leave to the sagacity ol our readeis to divine, consoling them with Sir John's assurance that the electors are well aware what are the measures he intends to introduce. Lord Burghley deplores that the value of our impo ts is much larger than that of our exports, and asks how the balapce of fcrty millions against us is to be made up. We wonder he did not go on to say tliat we are drained of our gold ; but, with £20,000,000 in the hanky even Lord Burghley bad to decline the tempting topic. In our anxiety to do justice, however, to the wise men of Cambridge and Lincoln, we have almost omitted the undeniable claims of the statesmen of Hertfordshire. Hear Mr. Halsey's argument against Free Trade. If there were no Customs' duties and no Excise laws, Free Trade would be fully carried out, and the only question would be whether it was good policy or no. But there aie Customs' duties and Excise laws, and therefore Free Trade is not good policy. The wisest man of the party was Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, 1 who, evidently despairing of devising a satisfactory treatment of the economical question, carefully forbore to allude to it at all, and contented himself with a smart and not unfair attack upon the exclusive family predilections of the late Whig Ministry, between whom and the Earl of Derby be dexterously assumed there was no alternative. When the time shall arrive, as it assuredly will, when it shall no longer be the interest of any class of the community to dispute the truths of political economy any more than the laws of nature — when even our country gentlemen have discovered that it is as absurd to attempt to override the one as the other, and that the House of Commons might as well occupy itself in devising means to counteract the law of gravity as the amount of prices or the rateof profits, these Protectionist "flies in amber" may possibly be discovered by some curious antiquary, and exhibited for the public amusement with the same sort of cpmpassionate curiosity as that with which we read of the " vortices " of Dcs Cartes or the judicial astrology of Kepler. Happy will it be' for mankind when public writers are' relieved from' the necessity ot defending and vindicating the most undoubted truths, and suffered to turn < an undivided attention to those portions of political" -science which have never been illustrated by the genius of Smith or fathomed by the penetration of Ricardo. Meanwhile the cause of common sense has gloriously triumphed in East Surrey ; and we trust we are not over-sanguine in expressing our belief that the nomination for the county of Middlesex to-day will be the commencement of a contest equally decisive and equally ' satisfactory. Free Trade is safer in the hands of its friends than those of its enemies ; and tax- ; ation is more likely to be fairly distributed by the friends of all than by the baffled advocates of a class.