Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/147

 I shall be told by the critics, as I have been told by them before, that I am digressing from the strict subject-matter, namely, the struggles of the opponents of the Corn Laws; and perhaps I shall be asked what have Robert Blake and Thomas Scot in common with Charles Pelham Villiers and Richard Cobden? My answer is that as Robert Blake and Thomas Scot strove against the Divine Right of the Stuart Kings, Charles Pelham Villiers and Richard Cobden strove against the Divine Right of the Landlords, whose manifesto may be summed up in the words of a certain Irish- English peer whose English peerage dates from 11th August, 1815, and is therefore coeval with the Corn Laws. The wisdom and far-seeing intelligence of this noble lord, who had considerable landed estates and held for some years the post of prime minister of a country, the energy and intelligence of the inhabitants of which have made it famous and powerful over the world, in spite of such prime ministers as he, prompted him in the debate in the House of Lords, March 14, 1839, on Lord Fitzwilliam's Resolutions condemning the Corn Laws, to give utterance to these words:—

"'To leave the whole agricultural interest without protection, I declare before God that I think it the wildest and"