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328 free trade. Lord John Russell and his party, in supporting their fixed duty, made free-trade speeches. Both parties were forced to take their stand only on the allegation that there were "peculiar burthens" on land, which required some equivalent. Then the conviction of one-half of the community that the repeal of the Corn Laws was a matter of absolute necessity was not the mere recognition of a truth. Everywhere men were up and active, determined to succeed. The anti-corn-law petitions presented during the session, up to the 2nd of March, were:—

A simultaneous agitation in nearly three thousand places was a proof that thoroughly free-trade principles were not only widely recognised, but had led to prompt action. The country had responded to the call of the League. That body had gained confidence by its distinctly specified object and its singleness of purpose. To add to its one demand that there should be NO CORN LAW, demands that there should be also annual parliaments, universal suffrage, vote by ballot, equal electoral districts, and payment of members—to merge one point in six, five of them inseparable and to be taken in all, or not taken at all; an especially to take into partnership, as it were, in the movement, a body of men, whose violence had disgusted even the most thorough of the radical party, would have been to abandon all the ground that had been already gained by the League. With these views, at the adjourned