Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/154

 obtaining Repeal from the Reformed Parliament, until he happened one night (February 19, 1839), about two years before he became a Member of the House, to be present as "a stranger" and witness the treatment which Mr. Villiers, when advocating Repeal, experienced from the Protectionists. From a speech of Mr. Villiers's at Salford, on the occasion of unveiling Mr. Cobden's statue, it appears that Cobden suddenly left the House, returned to Lancashire that night, and determined that he would never cease to agitate until the public should be apprised of the character of those laws and the difficulty of repealing them.

Mr. Cobden said, in his first speech in the House of Commons, August 25, 1841:—

"'What are these taxes upon food? They are taxes levied upon the great body of the people, and hon. gentlemen opposite, who show such sympathy for the working classes after they have made them paupers, cannot deny my right to claim on their behalf that those taxes should be a primary consideration. I have heard them called Protection; bat taxes they are, and taxes they shall be in my mouth, as long as I have the honour of a seat in this House. The bread-tax is a tax primarily levied upon the poorer classes; it is a tax, at the lowest estimate, of 40 per cent, above the price we should pay if there were a free trade in corn. The report upon the handloom-weavers puts down ten shillings as the estimated weekly earnings of a family. It moreover states"