Page:History of the Anti corn law league - Volume 2.pdf/281

 baffled your bill in its understood promise to the agriculturists, and stimulated a degree of manufacturing prosperity which could not have existed had that promise been realized, yet the condition of great masses of the people continues to be such as demands attention and amelioration. The agricultural labourers are unhelped. The swarms of our city population are unhelped. Every daily paper records some death by destitution. Every charitable society testifies to the necessity for change. Not a near-sighted philanthropist but has his nostrum. But they all obtain more credit for the fact of the disease than for the efficacy of the alleged specific. They are all witnesses that the poor 'come off shorts' in the distribution of the food and wealth which their labour is the agency of creating. And for that the poor will take their testimony. The rest they set down as quackery. You, Sir Robert, know it to be quackery. You are aware, if not of the means of absolute cure, yet of the best remedy in the stores of legislation. Till that be produced, the mischief grows. Your bill can do no more for it.

"I have spoken, in general terms, of the 'landowners' as the lion in your path. Really, it is only a landowning clique. With such men as the Duke of Wellington and Lord Stanley, the money worth of the Corn Laws to their class is altogether subordinate to political or party considerations. With the Dukes of Richmond and Buckingham the case may be different. The landlords whom they represent make a great noise, and with the help of stewards, jobbers, and a host of sycophants and hangers-on, they muster their troops of dependent tenantry, and put on a big face of hostility. Is it much more formidable than what you so suddenly and virtuously confronted for Catholic Emancipation? And is there any comparison in the results to he anticipated?

"Do not fancy that the writer dreams of persuading you. I deem persuasion as unlikely as conviction is unnecessary. You are making a blunder, and I am exposing the blunder; that is all. To be the greatest of those who lead, has never been the praise or the ambition of your statesmanship; but you have commonly won the humbler fame of being the expertest of those who follow. In the present case, even this glory is likely soon, by over-caution and prolonged delay, to be in danger of forfeiture. This is a great pity on your own account; a yet greater on that of the industrious millions who must endure the consequences.

2em

On the 8th of January, 1845, a splendid and spirited meeting was held in the Free Trade Hall; Mr. Wilson was in the chair, and spoke briefly on the progress of the