Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/67

 as great as either of these philosophers (Descartes and Leibnitz), and hardly more extravagant."

General Thompson's "Letters of a Representative to his Constituents," during the sessions of 1836 and 1837, are a most valuable and at the same time picturesque record of the state of the question of the Corn Laws during the two years immediately preceding the year 1838, when Mr. Villiers made his first motion and his first speech on the Corn Laws.

In a letter dated 13, Hanover Terrace, Regent's Park, 1st August, 1835, to the Secretary of the Hull Reform Association, General (then Colonel) Thompson, who had been returned to Parliament for Hull on the 20th of June, 1835, by 1428 votes against 1423, says:—

",—As the only communication I have received from Hull since the abandonment of the petition against the election has been through the newspapers, I feel apprehensive that we may have been waiting for each other; and so proceed to put an end to it.

"On the subject of that petition and its consequences, I have no hesitation in stating my personal conviction that I have been laid down and robbed at the door of the House of Commons, with the single object of holding out an example of the punishment to be inflicted on an individual who is bold enough to allow himself to be returned to Parliament