Page:History of the Anti corn law league.pdf/248

232 distinguished friends in the anti-slavery contest, and to request the benevolent and universally respected Isaac Crewdson to take the chair. A committee of 44 ladies was appointed to make the preparations and to preside at the tea tables, amongst whom were, Lady Potter, Mrs. Brotherton, Mrs. Cobden, Mrs. Kershaw, Mrs. John Brooks, Mrs. D. Ainsworth, Mrs. Rawson, Mrs. Elkanah Armitage, Mrs. Burd, Mrs. G. Wilson, Mrs. Prentice, and others, all taking a deep interest in the question in which their husbands were so earnestly engaged. The meeting took place on the 25th of June. The Corn Exchange was elegantly fitted up for the occasion, and the party consisted of nearly 800 ladies and gentlemen. The chairman congratulated the meeting on obtaining the services of Mr. Thompson, and then introduced that gentleman, who was received with great applause, and spoke with his usual eloquence and power. At the close of his speech, he said " I congratulate you that you have as president on this occasion, a man so justly beloved as my honoured friend who sits before you, and also on the unprecedented number of the ministers of religion who are here with us. Are they with us in the full import of the word? Not merely with their bodies but their souls, their sympathies and their best efforts? Then they would not have been so with us, I am certain, without first considering deeply, conscientiously, and prayerfully the merits of this great question. Their presence assures us that this cause has aspects under which many have not yet viewed it. Their presence assures us that our cause has claims which may not be despised; that there are obligations resting on us which will urge us on in the work upon which we have entered; not upon the narrow grounds of political expediency, or temporary necessity, but upon the high and impregnable foundations of immutable truth and justice." The subsequent speakers were the Rev. William Shuttleworth, Dr. Bowring, Rev. W. Gadsby, Mr. Joseph Thompson, Mr.