Page:History of the Anti corn law league - Volume 2.pdf/35

 others reduced by its withering influence almost to ruin; great and little hamlets; manufacturing towns and agricultural villages; places, the existence of which, and their very names, were unknown to the League; places from whence little was expected but whence much had come— all united, and hence it was that the sum of £42,000, independently of the London collections, had already been subscribed, and that the greater part of this splendid protest against oppression was already in the hands of the treasurer. The remainder was forthcoming. The money had yet to do its work; not like the funds of the Carlton Club in brutalizing the electors—not to purchase a man's birth-right for a mess of pottage, but to send printed INSTRUCTION into the house of every voter throughout the kingdom, These silent missionaries, the tracts, would silently work their way. They would speak truths to the sight, and truths that would prevail. The lecturer's voice could not be heard in every village; but the tracts, suited to every capacity, would reach every house where an elector lived. Wherever five pounds had been raised, and a hundred bundles of tracts distributed amongst scattered voters, there was an organization which would have a powerful effect in every election contest. Everywhere were there organized anti-corn-law associations—everywhere registered members of the League. Even in the smallest boroughs the candidate would find total repealers exercising their moral influence; and no county candidate could go into a village without finding men thoroughly qualified to discuss the question, and determined to enunciate the doctrines of free trade, regardless of all local intimidation. The organization that could raise 50,000 could do more.

On the morning of Tuesday, February 1st, a meeting of deputies was held in the Town Hall, to consider the effects of the Corn Laws on the agricultural classes, the chair being occupied by Mr. B. H. Greg, who might have been described as an extensive landowner, had he not been a