Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/71

 1825, those who ventured to speak against the Corn Laws were assailed and insulted by the band of enraged monopolists who had so long revelled on the plunder of their country with all the fury of a band of robbers who had carried on their trade successfully and were threatened with resistance by some of their victims. In a letter to his constituents dated "London, March 18, 1837," General Thompson gives a description of the reception a motion for an alteration in the Corn Laws met with in the House of Commons in 1837 in the following words—and as Mr.Villiers made his first motion in the following year he might have a foretaste of what he was to expect:—

"'On Thursday Mr. Clay brought on his motion for an alteration in the Corn Laws. As soon as Mr. Clay had finished speaking, an agricultural member (Mr. Cayley) rose with the seconder, and endeavoured to stop proceedings by counting out the House. The number was found above forty, and the seconder went on. Their first movement having thus failed, the landowners mustered kin and clan, and finally came down to the number of above two hundred. The ordinary routine of a thousand-times-answered fallacies was put forward, and received as might be expected in an assembly where every man had made an oath that he had a pecuniary interest in the question before him. At the instance of friends about me, I made repeated attempts to offer reply, as also to explain my reasons for not voting upon the actual"