Sir Robert Peel, and the leaders of the party which now succeeded to power, appear to have been guided by those views in the free-trade measures which they subsequently introduced. They regarded, and with justice, the Reform Bill as, in the language of the _Times_, "a great fact"--the settlement of the constitution upon a new basis--on foundations _non tangenda non movenda_, if we would shun the peril of repeated shocks to our institutions, and ultimately of a bloody revolution. Looking on the matter in this light, the next object was to scan the composition of the House of Commons, and see in what party and interest in the state a preponderance of power was now vested. They were not slow in discerning the fatal truth, that the Reform Bill had given a decided majority to the representatives of boroughs, and that a clear majority in these boroughs was, from the embarrassments which monetary change had produced on the landed proprietors, and the preponderance of votes which that bill had given to shopkeepers, vested in the moneyed or consuming interest. Such a state of things might be regretted, but still it existed; and it was the business of practical statesmen to deal with things as they were, not to indulge in vain regrets on what they once were or might have been. It seemed impossible to carry on the government on any other footing than that of concession to the wishes and attention to the interests of the moneyed and mercantile classes, in whose hands supreme power, under the new constitution, was now practically vested. Whether any such views, supposing them well founded, could justify a statesman and a party, who had received office on a solemn appeal to the country, under the most solemn engagement to support the principles of protection, to repudiate those principles, and introduce the measures they were pledged to oppose, is a question on which, it is not difficult to see, but one opinion will be formed by future times.
Still, even when free-trade measures were resolved on by Sir R. Peel's government, it was a very doubtful matter, in the first instance, how to secure their entire success. The great coalition of the chief producing interests, which had proved fatal to the Whig administration by the election of 1841, might again be reorganised, and overthrow any government which attempted to renew the same projects. Ministers had been placed in office on the principles of protection--they were the watches, planted to descry the first approaches of the enemy, and repel his attacks. But the old Roman maxim, "_Divide et impera_," was then put in practice with fatal effect on the producing interests, and, in the end, on the general fortunes of the empire. The assault was in the first instance directed against the agricultural interest: the cry of "Cheap bread," ever all-powerful with the multitude, was raised to drown that of "Protection to native industry." The whole weight of government, which at once abandoned all its principles, was directed to support the free-trade assault, and beat down the protectionist opposition. The whole population in the towns--that is, the inhabitants of the places which, under the Reform Bill, returned two-thirds of the House of Commons--was roused almost to madness by the prospect of a great reduction in the price of provisions. The master-manufacturers almost unanimously supported the same views, in the hope that the wages of labour and the cost of production would be in a similar way reduced, and that thus the foreign market for their produce would be extended. The West India interest, the colonial interest, the shipping interest, stood aloof, or gave only a lukewarm support to the protectionists, conceiving that it was merely an agricultural question, and that the time was far distant when there was any chance of their interests being brought into jeopardy. "_Cetera quis nescit?_" The corn-laws were repealed, agricultural protection was swept away, and England, where wheat cannot be raised at a profit when prices are below 50s., or, at the lowest, 45s. a quarter, was exposed to the direct competition of states possessing the means of raising it to an indefinite extent, where it can be produced and imported at a profit for in all 32s.