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238 therefore, we are bound to be teachers of politics, and to guard the important subject against errors and abuses. Our object is to teach the politics which flow from piety, the politics of equitable benevolence, the politics of the gospel, and the politics of Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour." He drew a fearful picture of the probable consequences of a continuance of our present suicidal policy, and concluded in the following impressive terms:—"Our warm desire is to see realised the beautiful passage of the Book of Job, 'So the poor hath hope, and iniquity stoppeth her mouth.' We likewise indulge the hope, that the facts which will be detailed by the Christian ministers, who can bear testimony to the state of the manufacturing and labouring poor; will, by their statements, be presented to the public notice in a manner which will obtain the merited attention of all classes, and in every part of our country. We cherish the hope that the evidence supplied by this meeting will avail to dissipate the pernicious errors which are current in some important circles, and which led one of the highest order of the peerage to say in Parliament that the efforts to obtain the abrogation of the Corn Laws proceeded from a few rich manufacturers, who wished to avoid giving just wages to their workmen. May the God of mercy grant, my honoured brethren, that your conversation, your resolution, your holy example in the walks of daily life, your influence, your prayers, may be efficacious, for the averting of evil, and the acquisition of blessings above all we ask or think."

The Rev. J. W. Massie, who had recently become pastor of an Independent church, in Salford, and who soon became an active and influential promulgator of the principles of free trade, said that 650 ministers had accepted the invitations sent them, and at least an equal number had signified their approval of the conference, and thus, he said, in some thirteen or fifteen hundred localities, in fifteen hundred communities, and through fifteen hundred agencies, they would bring this great moral question before hundreds of thousands of their suffering fellow countrymen; so that they felt that if at this moment, the conference were to be separated, and its different members scattered, they would carry with them an unity of sentiment and action which would not be lost, and which would give a stimulus to public opinion, in certain quarters, which it was very desirable to see properly moved.