Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/156



"proposed that the case of those millions should be heard at the bar, had the proposition scouted and spurned; and that, when they had denied them a hearing, they proceeded to misrepresent their motives.'"

One of the difficulties Mr. Villiers had to contend with I can well understand from having experienced it myself when employed in an inquiry into the condition of the farm labourers in Wilts, Dorset, and Somerset, in the winter of 1844-5. The difficulty was that the Anti-Corn Law movement incurred the disadvantage of being represented—or misrepresented—as a purely manufacturers' agitation, got up and set agoing for the purpose of lowering the wages of their workmen, and thereby enabling them to compete on more equal terms with other nations. I remember making Mr. Cobden very angry for a moment by telling him that some of the persons I met with in Wilts, Dorset, and Somerset, in December and January, 1844-5, puzzled me extremely at times by saying that Mr. Cobden sometimes said the Repeal would raise wages, sometimes that it would lower them.

Mr. Cobden was in the position of a counsel who is employed in a case of vast importance, beset with complications and difficulties; and he