Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/11

 hose of a fire-engine to bear upon the Free Tradespeaker. Those who were travelling through the country to endeavour to diffuse some knowledge of political economy had to encounter not only hostile opinions, but the argumentum baculinum. One of those lecturers told me that (at Dorchester, I think it was) he observed a stalwart man in the front row of the audience with a large cudgel of which he appeared to make rather an ostentatious, not to say menacing, display.

Of the argument which I drew up in the case submitted to me professionally on behalf of the Council of the Anti-Corn Law League, the Council printed at the time two thousand copies for distribution to Members of Parliament. Mr. Cobden was repeatedly applied to for copies, and he referred applicants to me. Among those who noticed my argument on the Land-Tax was a critic in a weekly publication, who described my argument as that of "a writer of Mr. Bright's school," and said, "it was with universal assent that all the tenures were at the Restoration simplified into the form of free and common socage."

So far was it from "universal assent" that the resolution by which the excise was substituted for the feudal dues was only carried by a majority of