ABSTRACT
In another Memorandum a month later he dealt among other alternatives with the free admission of all Empiregrown corn, and concluded that the increased preference against foreign countries would give them just cause of complaint.2 His final proposal was the immediate removal of duty on all grain from the colonies, the immediate reduction of duties on foreign corn, and the termination of those duties on 1 February 1849.3
The Protectionist party as a whole also treated the colonial aspect of the question as secondary, and fought their battle mainly on the simple ground that Peel had betrayed and ruined the agricultural interest. Yet there were not wanting doleful predictions as to the effect of the change from protection to free trade upon the colonies. Sir Howard Douglas, a former North American Governor, feared that the questions of the economists as to the value of colonies would in future be unanswerable; he seemed to share their view that the political connexion was in itself quite without influence on trade.4 Mr. Francis Scott, the Agent for New South Wales, anticipated the loss of Canada first, and then
