194 History of the Radical Party in Parliament. [1822- of feeling among the Ministers and their party on the subject, and Canning's free-trade policy was one cause of the dislike with which he was regarded by some of his colleagues. Here, however, he was stronger, because Peel was more in accordance with him, and no open division had taken place. There was scarcely a responsible politician who did not admit that the necessities of the time called for some modification of the law, and in form, if not in spirit, the Cabinet were united. The matter was to have been introduced to the House of Lords by Liverpool on the ipth of February, but his illness intervened, and it was left to Canning to open the business in the Com- mons. Canning, however, was himself unwell, having caught, at the funeral of the Duke of York, a chill which laid the foundation of the illness which was so soon to prove fatal. On the ist of March he was well enough to attend, and he then made a statement of the proposals of the Government. The principle of protection to native agriculture was retained, but the scale of duties and the prices at which it should apply were considerably modified, and there was to be no actual prohibition, only such rapid increase of taxation as would, in reality, stop importation. The price of sixty shillings per quarter was fixed as the first point at which high duties should begin. At that price the duty was to be twenty shillings, to decrease two shillings for every rise in price of one shilling -per quarter, until at seventy shillings there would be left nothing but a permanent one shilling registration fee. On the other side, the duties were to increase two shillings for every fall of one shilling in price, until at fifty-five shillings per quarter the impost would be thirty shillings ; and this was practical prohibition. The relief and it would have been a material one to the consumers lay first in removing the clause by which the old Act was not to come into operation until the price was eighty shillings, a figure which it had never reached, then in the reduction of what was the average price aimed at, and the encouragement which a reduced scale would give to foreign trade. There were amendments proposed by the landlords to increase, and by the free-traders to reduce,
