Footnote 25: The Government eventually proposed that the four seats taken from St Albans and Sudbury should be assigned to South Lancashire and the West Riding; but, on the ground that a Ministry on sufferance should confine itself to necessary legislation, Mr Gladstone induced the House by a great majority to shelve the proposal.
Mr Disraeli to Queen Victoria.
MR DISRAELI
House of Commons, 15th March 1852.
(Monday night.)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, with his humble duty to your Majesty, informs your Majesty of what occurred in the House of Commons this evening.
Mr Villiers opened the proceedings, terse and elaborate, but not in his happiest style. He called upon the House to contrast the state of the country at the beginning of the year and at the present moment. But he could not induce the House to believe that "all now was distrust and alarm."
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in reply, declined to bring forward in the present Parliament any proposition to change our commercial system, and would not pledge himself to propose in a future Parliament any duty on corn. He said a duty on corn was a measure, not a principle, and that if preferable measures for the redress of agricultural grievances than a five-shilling duty on corn (mentioned by Mr Villiers) could be devised, he should adopt them—a declaration received with universal favour on the Government side.
Lord John Russell replied to the Chancellor of the Exchequer in consequence of some notice by the former of the strange construction of a new Opposition to force a Dissolution of Parliament by a Minister who, three weeks ago, had declared such Dissolution inexpedient. It was not a successful speech.