Page:History of the Anti corn law league - Volume 2.pdf/66

 to pay for that corn with the produce of their wages. They went to the shopkeeper; the shopkeeper was enriched by the custom of the labourer. The shopkeeper went to the wholesale dealer; each shopkeeper went to the neighbouring shopkeeper, and they again enriched each other. The wholesale dealer went to the manufacturer; the manufacturer could unly supply the demands of the wholesale dealer by setting to work more operatives. Such was the beautiful order in which Divine Providence regulated this world. There was a circle of continuous links, which could not be injured in any one point, but it would, like electricity, pervade the whole chain. (Great cheering.) Now, he had said that the working class, the shopkeeper, the merchant, the manufacturer, and the farmer, were interested in this question. But there was another class, which fancied itself secure, which was more deeply interested in the question than any other—and that was the landed aristocracy. (Hear, hear.) They called them (the Anti-Corn-Law League) their enemies. If they knew their position, they would call them their friends and their saviours. (Hear, bear.) For let them but continue this war with the people, let it only be continued on that most odious ground the bread monopoly, and not all the virtuous patriotism of your Radnors, your Kinnairds, your Clanricarden, and yoar Ducies, would save the landed aristocracy from the fate which it would inevitably bring upon them. Why, what were lhe ominous symptoms now? The town population arrayed against them, their own farmers and farm-labourers dropping from their side. They came ap to London in the present session of parliament, after spending a troubled and uneasy autumn with their tenants and their labourers. The landlords dared not face their tenants during their last recess. (Hear, hear) When they did get up dinners, they skulked into large towns like Devonport or Plymouth. They came up to London, knowing that they had left disaffected dependents at home; and what did they find in this metropolis? Why, this mighty metropolis, including most fashionable quarters, putting itself at the head of the Anti-Corn-Law League. Let their go on, and in a short time they would find themselves like the French nobility previous to the revolution man isolated, helpless, powerless class—a class that in their own inherent qualities, in their intellectual and morel powers, were inferior to any other classes of society. (Great cheering.) Their greatness und their power consisted In the favourable opinion of their fellow-citizens. They not only clang to feudal abuses, but they actually tried to put a restraint upon the supply of food for the people. They were warring against the progression of the age. They fancied that the system which still existed here was necessary; that their feudal system was necessary to the existence of the community. Why, their feudal system had gone in France, it