Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/165

 Minister's knowledge and wisdom and the ignorance and folly of all who condemn the Corn Laws, I will call attention to one word in particular. The noble lord says:—

"'To leave the whole agricultural interest without Protection; I declare before God that I think it the wildest and maddest scheme that has ever entered into the imagination of man to conceive.'"

By the word whole here prefixed to agricultural interest, the noble lord makes the usual assumption that, the agricultural interest comprehended the farmers and the labourers in the same sense as it comprehended the landlords—certainly a strong assumption, since an opinion has prevailed somewhat extensively that rent and profits, and rent and wages do not vary in a direct but in an inverse ratio.

Lord Fitzwilliam's resolutions condemning the Corn Laws were rejected in the House of Lords, March 14, 1839, by 224 to 24. Mr. Villiers's motion in the House of Commons, made March 12, 1839, after a debate of five nights, was rejected by 342 to 195. The result was the organization of the Anti-Corn Law League. The Council of the League was formed of the executive committee of the Manchester Anti-Corn Law Association, which the League