Page:History of the Anti corn law league - Volume 2.pdf/172

 'Prosperity to the West Riding, and may its agricultural, manufacturing, and commercial classes become convinced that their true and permanent nterests are indissolubly united, and have their surest basis in freedom of trade and industry.' (Cheers.) His lordship having briefly painted, in glowing terms, the happy results of unfettered commerce, said:—I do not wish, gentlemen, upon such an occasion, to employ any serious or solemn terms, when at least our meeting, in its aspect, is entirely festive, though none can doubt the sober seriousness of your determination. ('Yes, yes, we are determined.') But what I want our opponents—the opponents of free industry—to lay to heart is, whether, in the course they are pursuing, they are not fighting against nature itself, and against the laws which guide and bind the universe? (Cheers.) For what, gentlemen—what is the obvious meaning, what is the inevitable inference of those arrangements which mingle on the surface of our globe—so much of want here, and so much of abundance there here such utter destitution, there such prodigal profusion? Writers of fiction and fancy have been pleased, sometimes, to attribute voices to the winds, and to people with sounds the echoes of the hills; but the real words which Nature sends forth through all her wide departments are 'work' and 'exchange.' (Greet cheering.) His lordship then illustrated this position by a reference to America, whose inexhaustible granaries could stay the advances of our own pauperism, and supply the hungry of England with bread. The English traveller in foreign climes found many grounds for exulting in the superior advantages of his own country; but his exultation was checked when he contrasted the fearful pressure, the destitution, and sometimes famine, which visited so many homes and families. He then expressed his warm sympathy with the League, and counselled them not to undervalue their opponents. He concluded as follows:—Yes, gentlemen, I know not what new forms of tactics the enemy may assume. Farmers may secede from useful agricultural societies. (Hear, hear.) The Anti-League may be rallying up to scatter the light chaff of your arguments with the heavy flail of their logic. (Loud laughter.) You may be accused of setting fire to ricks, or, resorting to another element, may they threaten you with submersion in rivers (laughter); but you will look upon all these ebullitions of hostility as evidences and omens that you are gaining ground, that you are making way, that you are making yourselves felt. And it is that I may be sure of indicating the principle which I believe embraces all our efforts, and of rivetting our allegiance to the cause which I believe the exigencies of our country, and the circumstances of the world make emphatically the cause of the day, that I propose to you to drink—"Prosperity to the West Riding, and may its agricultural, manufacturing, and commercial classes become convinced