House of Commons, Feb. 5.The speaker took the chair at a quarter before two o'clock, and immediately afterwards sir T. Tyrwhitt, usher of the black rod, summoned the house to attend his majesty in the house of lords. After being absent about ten minutes, the speaker returned, and passed through the house to his private room. He resumed the chair at a few minutes before four o'clock, at which time the attendance of members was very numerous on both sides of the house.

The speaker gave notice of several new writs issued, and others were moved for and ordered. Notices of several motions were also given. The clerk then read his majesty's speech, and Mr. R. Clive moved an address similar to that in the upper house, which was seconded by Mr. C. Duncombe.

Sir F. Burdett, did not rise to oppose the address, but merely to postpone the consideration of it till Thursday, in order to give the members time to consider more attentively its contents, which motion was seconded by Mr. Hobhouse.

Mr. Grattan addressed the house on the state of Ireland, and hoped other measures would be adopted than insurrection acts, and military force.

The marquis of Londonderry begged to assure the house, that in carrying up, as he hoped they would almost unanimously, the address to the throne, his majesty's government would not consider

any individual as pledged by that vote to any specific line of conduct, with reference to the important subjects noticed in the address. He could not agree to postpone the address till Thursday, but had no objection on that day to take into their more immediate consideration that part of the speech which respected Ireland.

After some farther observations from Mr. Hutchinson, Mr. Brougham, Mr. Hume, &c. the motion was put on the amendment-For it 58, Against it, 186-Majority for ministry, 128.

Mr. Hume then addressed the house on the subject of retrenchment, and moved an amendment to the address to that effect, which was supported by Mr. Tierney and others, and replied to by the chancellor of the exchequer, the marquis of Londonderry, &c. soon after 12 o'clock the house divided -for the amendment 89-Against it, 171-Majority, 82.-The original address was then carried without a division.

On the 7th measures were proposed by ministers for the immediate repression of the Irish rebels, and which consisted, 1st, in a revived application of the insurrection act; and, 2d, in a temporary suspension of the habeas corpus act. The new measures may be reconsidered during the present session; and repealed, or prolonged, according to the experience had of their efficacy, between their enactment and the close of the session.

On the 11th the royal assent was given by commission to the Irish insurrection bill, and the Irish habeas corpus suspension bill.

On the same day Mr. Brougham moved, "that it is the bounden

bounden duty of this house, well considering the pressure of the public burdens on all classes of the community, and particularly on the agricultural classes, to pledge itself to obtain for a suffering people such a reduction of taxation as would afford them effectual relief." In rising to bring before the house the state of agriculture, and the other distresses of the country, he was well aware that he had undertaken an arduous task. He was aware, also, that there were many gentlemen to whom it could have been much better intrusted; and if the hon. member for Essex (Mr. Western) had not been prevented by indisposition, although differing from him materially in opinion, he should have been well satisfied to have left it in his hands. He would call the attention of the house to what he considered the real situation of the kingdom. All men admitted the great amount of distress; the noble marquis had not denied it, nor could he very consistently, when most properly allowed and lamented in the speech from the throne. Some persons, nevertheless, were of opinion that the distresses were of a local, not of a general nature; and others thought that they were confined to a particular class-the farming interest. Now he had taken particular pains to ascertain the true condition of all parts of the empire; and, speaking of England, he had reason to believe that some dis tricts of the north (he did not say the north generally) were suffering less than the kingdom at large. He believed, however, that this more favourable state of things was confined to portions of Yorkshire (and especially to the neighbourhood of manufacturing dis

tricts), and to the more northerly divisions of the kingdom in an eastern direction, such as Durham and Northumberland. The crops in that part of the country, from the nature of the climate, and other local causes, were sometimes not so well got in as they were in other districts of the kingdom, which tended to keep up the price; but, on the other hand, when the crop there was supposed to be extremely abundant, and exceedingly well got in, it tended to produce a counteracting effect, and the prices were reduced. With this very trifling exception, he would undertake to say, that nothing could be more fallacious, than the idea which had fastened on some men's minds, that the distress was not general; and that the distress, in many parts of the country, was not severe, nay, terrible. Those per-. sons supposed the distress to be confined to the agricultural counties of Kent, Sussex, Norfolk, and Suffolk; and certainly, if he had not heard such an opinion promulgated, he would not have believed that any human being could have ventured on so extraordinary an assertion. The fact was, that the distress, the causes of which he would presently point out, was general. There was another set of persons who adopted an opinion equally erroneous: he alluded to those who contended that the existing distress was peculiarly confined to the agricultural interest. For his own part, he confessed his utter inability to believe that to be the fact. That distress of so severe a nature, and of such long duration, as that by whcih the farmer had been visited, should not in its effect sensibly touch every other branch of the community,

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was a proposition which he freely declared his inability to compre hend. It was so much beyond possibility-so far removed beyond the reach of reason, that he must express his decided denial of it. The contrary of such a proposition was so clear and evident, that, however an improved, or a supposed improved, state of the revenue might be urged against his view of the subject, still this statement of the national resources had no more effect in altering his opinion, than if no 'such figures had ever been brought forward. If any one large branch of the community suffered by the pressure of the times, it was a necessary consequence, arising from the intermixture of all parts of society, that other classes must also be injured: but what must be the effect, when the body who most complained of distress when that class of the community who suffered so generally, and for so very protracted a period, comprised neither more nor less than the whole of those persons who were engaged in the cultivation of the soil? Was it possible, when this was the case, that the home market should not be greatly contracted by a distress so general? The fact could not be doubted; and to counteract that depreciation little, in his opinion, would be effected by opening the sources of foreign trade. He was aware that foreign commerce presented many powerful stimulants to exertion and industry. He would not go over these, because he was convinced that, after all, it was the internal market for its manufactures, which was of most importance to this country; and to tell him that the home market could be in a flourishing state when

the chief customers of the manufacturer were ruined, was to assert a proposition which, on the first view, presented a contradiction in terms. He was convinced of the justice of this remark by informa tion which he had recently received from some of the manufacturing districts. Those who afforded him that information did not, indeed, state, that the manufacturing interest was so badly off, as might be. supposed, but they complained that the demand of the agricultural interest for their commodities was very much contracted; and they farther stated, that the profits generally received on manufactures, and on the stock employed by such manufacturers and traders as had turned their attention to the foreign market, were very much reduced indeed; that they had fallen greatly below the amount which characterised a period even of moderate prosperity. There had, very recently, been a meeting of the iron-masters and manufacturers of Birmingham and its neighbourhood, for the purpose of considering what steps it would be proper to adopt with reference to their greatly diminished profits. The gains of the best of them had been extremely scanty, and many of them had lost considerably. Their balances for the last Christmas appeared to be about 6 per cent. less than they were at the Christmas preceding. They turned their attention seriously to their situation, and the expedient first proposed was to contract the extent of production; or, in other words, to lessen the quantity of goods manufactured, so as to bring it on a level with the demand; and for that purpose to give up a considerable proportion of their fur

naces. This, in effect, was nothing more nor less than lopping off and annihilating a large proportion of the iron-trade. The resolution was not, however, agreed to. The parties interested were anxious not to reduce the trade; they wished, if possible, to carry on the manufacture as they had heretofore done. But the resolution they ultimately came to was to reduce very considerably the wages of their workmen. He only mentioned this, as one instance amongst many, to shew that distress pervaded every class of the community.

He held it to be perfectly true, that no man, or set of men, could, with a just view of the finances of the empire, with a proper regard for its general revenue, its prosperity, its wealth, and, above all, for the revenue of individuals, which was the only solid and safe foundation on which the revenue of the state could be built-he felt it to be a complete truism, that no man, taking a correct view of these different points, could think of persisting with impunity in the course which government had pursued for many years. He would only take three years, and these he did not select as a sample of the whole expenditure of the country; but he would take those three years as the period, during which the system to which so much mischief had been justly ascribed, had been raised to its utmost height. The years he alluded to were 1813, 1814, and 1815. The expenditure of those three years was, on an average, 132,000,000l. a year. In this sum he included the expense of managing and collecting the revenue, amounting to somewhere between 4,000,000l. and

5,000,000l. a year. He included that sum, because they would take a narrow and inadequate view of the expenditure of the country if it were omitted. It was money levied on the people for the serIvice of the state. It was expensive to the subject, as a matter of money; it was expensive to the constitution, in point of right. It had, in fact, every quality of revenue, whether considered in a financial or constitutional point of view; and, therefore, in stating the expenditure, it ought not to be passed over. During those three years, then, the annual average expenditure was 132,000,0002.; and if they added to that sum the parish and county rates, which averaged 8,000,000l. per annum, they had a total of 140,000,000%. yearly, for no less a period than three years. That sum was taken from the pockets of the people by taxes, which applied to those who possessed income, and by the operation of loans on those who had accumulated property. How was that immense sum spent? In describing the manner in which it was expended, he would not, in the first instance, use a harsh or disagreeable epithet. He would not speak of the disbursement of the public money in the way it deserved, until he had shewn, by a reference to the opinion of a committee formed under the auspices of ministers themselves, what epithet was due to it. The average expenditure of those three years was 140,000,000l. wrung from the income or savings of the people; and in one of those years, 1814, the almost inconceivable sum of 145,000,000l. (all items included) was disbursed. The expenditure, exclusive of the interest and charge

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