Page:History of the Anti corn law league - Volume 2.pdf/288

 do not purchase our corn and food by the averages which are published in the Gazette. No, we buy our bread from the bakers. They tell us that if we make bread cheaper in price we shall reduce wages. 'Well, then,' we reply, if you make it cheaper by baking or grinding more cheaply, you will cause wages to be lower than they are at present. So that these philanthropic gentlemen are convicted from their own coarse of conduct, of not really entertaining the belief that the wages of the labourer will be reduced by lowering the price of bread. (Cheers.) These worthles seem determined that nobody shall rob the poor except the landlorde. (Great laughter.) Oh! it is a shocking thing for millers and bakers to be getting this large profit oat of the hard earnings of the poor man, and it is a dreadful thing for people to take such advantage of the labourer; but yet my lord duke is entitled to increase the price of flour by an act of the legislature, and he has a right to call men fools who do not believe that to do it in that way is a benefit, though in all other modes he admits that it is a course. (Hear, hear.) However, the day is not far distant when this great delusion will be thoroughly exposed and understood. I am convinced that we are approaching the time when the Corn-Law repeal and the question of free trade must hare & practical issue. (Hear, hear.) The Morning Post is an honest paper, after all. (Laughter.) What did that journal tell the agriculturists but the other day? It said that the only difference between the policy which even Sir Robert Peel is prepared to pursue, and that of the League, is this, that Sir Robert's is a slow decay of gradual poverty saddened by disappointed hopes, while the policy of the other, namely, of the League, is prompt as the guillotine; but he says they are both forms of extinction—both are going in the same direction to a certain extent. I believe this is true. I am sure, from all that I have heard Sir Robert Peel say in Parliament, that he is, in his own mind, firmly convinced of the truth of the principles of free trade—(hear, hear)-but that he is prevented from doing all he would do by the power of the aristocracy of this country, which rules not only Sir Robert Peel, but the Queen upon her throne. (Cheers.)

Mr. Cobden was received with great enthusiasm. After referring to other questions analogous to the cause in which they were contending, he said:—

"What I wish to guard ourselves against is this—that Sir Robert Peel shall not mix ap our question of Free Trade with his dexterity in finanoe. (Hear, bear.) If he likes to shift the cards, and make ant interchange between tea, cotton, tobacco, malt, and the income-tax, and ply one interest against the other, it is all very well; let him do so; it