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406 Why, I recollect the meeting which was held in the Chamber of Commerce here, when statements were sent forth, some five years ago, which startled the whole kingdom, by the accounts which they heard of the rivalry that was springing up in foreign countries, of the diminished amount of the value of our exports, and of the danger our foreign trade was incurring. But this was a very small part of the evil of the Corn Laws, although those statements were enough to startle the whole land, and almost every paper was filled with the report of that meeting. We were alarmed at these accounts of the rivalry of foreigners, of the Belgians, the Americans, the Swiss, and the French; and we looked a little further into the question. This further investigation led us to further discoveries: it was found that the sudden fluctuations in the price of corn, and the extraordinary imports which took place at particular periods, in consequence of the operation of the sliding scale, rendered it imperative upon us to ship large amounts in gold at particular periods, and so to derange, to a fearful extent, the monetary transactions of the country, thereby deranging all commercial transactions, and inflicting bankruptcy upon the merchant and manufacturer, and suffering and ruin upon the operative."

Mr. Bright proceeded to advert to the retaliating tariffs of other nations, the distress inflicted upon the population of our own land by the diminution of trade, the constant struggle for daily bread, and the consequent competition in the labour market diminishing wages, the wretched culture of land under protection, the exemption of landowners from their fair share of taxation, the miserable condition of the protected farmers and farm labourers, the insecurity of property in the agricultural districts; and claimed for the League the merit of being the best friend to the farmers, and to the community generally, that they had ever known. After commenting on an article of seventy pages in the Quarterly Review, and of tracts published in defence of the landowners' monopoly, he said:—

"I wish that they would let their tracts go out side by side with the anti-corn-law pamphlets, eight bales of which are sent off this night by the League—(cheers)—that the people might read one and then the other. I have no doubt that the mind of any man in his senses would come out right from the perusal. (Great cheering.) Now the League has arrived at a point when it is requisite that we should be exceedingly