Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/72



question, but was unable to obtain a hearing. Thank God! I have many better places. If I had been a jobber in a railroad or a dabbler in some monopoly, wishing to make a similar explanation, I should have been heard with reverential sympathy, to the extent that human organs could supply. Sir William Molesworth entered upon a demonstration of the mode of operation of the competition generated by the limitation of food, which was perfect in its way, but confined to a portion of the field. Mr. Hume was received with groans and hideous laughs when he attempted to open the case of that part of the community who have not three hundred pounds a year in land; and when he proceeded to connect the question with the new Poor Law, the sounds that issued from the landed benches had a touch of the New Zealander. If there is a horrible sound on earth, it is the laugh of two or three hundred aristocrats all sworn to a contrary interest, when an honest m.an presents himself before them to plead the cause of the industrious and the poor. And now I turn to the people of England—to that portion of them who do not believe that to swear to a pecuniary interest is the way to constitute a judge—to the portion who are born to work and to suffer, and not to receive rents and to spend,—a portion with whom I believe I possess some influence, from whom I enjoy some confidence, whom I have at all events endeavoured faithfully to serve, whose cause I have pleaded till the hair that was dark has turned grey, whose cause I would and could plead now, if we had a tribunal where physical force and sworn interest were not opposed to our having a hearing.

"Mr. Hume's speech is of great importance, because it