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378 political freedom; they know that that freedom can only be obtained through the electoral body and the middle classes, and yet they incessantly abuse the parties whom it is your interest to conciliate and convince. For four years past they have held before your eyes an object at present unattainable, and they have urged you to pursue it; they have laboured incessantly to prevent you from following any practical object. They have vilified the substance and extolled the shadow. They have striven continually to exasperate you against those who alone will or can aid you to overturn the usurpations of the aristocracy. They have succeeded in creating suspicion and dissension, and upon that dissension many of them have lived. They have done their utmost to perpetuate your seven or eight shillings per week, and by their labours in that cause they have enjoyed an income of three or four times that amount."

"My fellow-townsmen,—You have been in a fever during this week. Your conduct, unopposed as you have been, has been peaceable, and such as my intimate knowledge of you led me to expect from you. We are all liable to err; you have committed an error, but it is not a fatal one—it may be retrieved. I believe you to be intelligent men, or I would not address you. As intelligent men you know you cannot remain out; you cannot permanently raise wages by force; you cannot get the charter now. What are you to do then? . It is more noble to confess your error than to persist in it, and the giving up of an error brings you nearer the truth. When you resume your labour do not give up the hope of political improvement—that would be even more to be deplored than your present movement. Cherish it still a brighter day will come—and you and your children will yet enjoy it. Your first step to entire freedom must be commercial freedom freedom of industry. We must put an end to the partial famine which is destroying trade, the demand for your labour, your wages, your comforts, and your independence. The aristocracy regard the Anti-Corn-Law League as their greatest enemy. That which is the greatest enemy of the remorseless aristocracy of Britain must almost of necessity be your firmest friend. Every man who tells you to support the Corn Law is your enemy—every man who hastens, by a single hour, the abolition of the Corn Law, shortens by so much the duration of your sufferings. Whilst that inhuman law exists your wages must decline. When it is abolished, and not till then, they will rise.

"If every employer and workman in the kingdom were to swear on his bended knees that wages should not fall, they would assuredly fall if the Corn Law continues. No power on earth can maintain your wages at their present rate if the Corn Law be not repealed. You may doubt this now, but consider the past I beseech you—what the past tells