While the "distressed" towns, Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds, Nottingham—the list is
too long to repeat—are plucking Sir Ro- BERT PEEL by the sleeve, complaining of ruin and starvation, and begging for repeal of the Corn-laws, from a different quarter ap- proaches-Newcastle, also complaining, through its shipowners, of ruin, but begging for repeal of Mr. Husxissox's Navigation-laws., The remedy fancied by the patient here is different, but the disease has the same seat, and its symptoms are similar. Great outlay is needed to carry on a waning traffic, while foreign competitors, with less cost, pursue a rapidly-increasing commerce. Instead of ask- ing, with the vast majority of their fellow-sufferers, for the removal of those restrictions which increase their outlay—the duties which make dear their staple raw-material, timber, and enhance the cost of the raw-material of their crews, provisions—instead of urging the removal of those sources of' expense, they ask for "protection." Mr. WirxrAm Herr reminded them, that Continental countries could retaliate a "protection" afforded at their expense. But the. Newcastle shipowners will not fail to obtain protection on that account—for fail they will. It is a hard task for some of the most powerful protected interests to retain their privilege just now ; but it is a very different thing to keep a privilege in possession and to obtain a new one in time of trouble and austere inquiry. Sir Ro- BERT PEEL may hesitate before he surrender the protection of the corn-grower; but—always supposing him to retain his right senses— he will not hesitate an instant when he is asked to issue a new "protection." Protection! let manufacturing England catch the sound, and then see how many hours that Minister would keep his seat who should venture to repeat it.
