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118 The business could not have been better done had the Central Agricultural Society paid for the doing. It was seen how easy it was for two or three hundred persons, out of a meeting of two thousand, by noise and clamour, and resort to brute force, to drive away all the peaceably inclined and respectable; and it was to prevent the recurrence of such tumult and violence that future meetings were confined to members of the association, whose numbers increased so much that it became ultimately necessary to build a hall capable of holding eight thousand persons and even then there were men who designated the assemblages therein held as "hole and corner" meetings!

On Tuesday, 4th March, the members of the Manchester Anti-Corn-Law Association admitted by ticket, in order that physical-force men might not again interrupt their proceedings, assembled in the Corn Exchange, which was filled on the occasion. On the motion of Mr. Alderman Kershaw, Mr. Harbottle was called to the chair, who said that since the disgraceful outrage at the previous meeting, the Association had received the adhesion of numerous trades, in Manchester, anxious to show that they did not sanction the opposition then offered to its principles. Mr, Cobden, speaking in atone of indignation, which gave effect to every word he uttered, gave evidence of the power that lay in him, so strikingly manifested in his subsequent energetic and long continued labours. He said:—

"There is nothing I like so much as free discussion, and settling the truth by the test of reason and argument. I shall never flinch from meeting any man, or any body of men, who, as reasonable beings, are disposed to take up the advocacy of the Corn Laws.(Cheers.) But I must protest, in the name of the working classes of Manchester, against the conduct of men who will prevent all discussion upon this important question (hear, hear), and I will venture to say, in the name of the men of this town, great body of the intelligent, hardworking, respectable that they are as deeply disgusted, and feel themselves as much