fully, and work for it vigorously, the time may come-nay, it will come, when that principle will be adopted by the Legislature of the country.'

The second reading was carried by 323 votes to 176. The division list was a curious one. In the majority were Mr. Bright's intimate friends, Mr. Cobden, Mr. Milner Gibson, and Mr. Villiers, with Lord John Russell, Lord Palmerston, and other Liberals, and Mr. Gladstone, Sir Robert Peel, and many fellowConservatives. Mr. Bright was in equally strange company in the minority, which included immovable Conservatives of the Newdegate type, though there were also with him staunch Liberals and Nonconformists. One of the minority tellers was none other than Lord Ashley, Mr. Bright's opponent of the year before in another field.

Another division took place on the order for going into committee, and a further one on the motion for bringing up the report, but the Government had large majorities; and the third reading of the bill was carried by 317 to 184 votes. Even on the question that the bill do pass, it was once more contested, and a division taken. The measure subsequently passed through the House of Lords, after great debate, and became law.

It is worthy of note that during the whole period in which Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright were in the House of Commons. together, there were only two occasions on which they were found in different division lobbies. One of these we have referred to above, and the other was in the division which took place in connection with the expenditure over the South Kensington scheme. The project was one in which the Prince Consort took a deep interest, and Mr. Cobden, having been one of the Commissioners for the Great Exhibition, and associated with the Prince, did not wish to separate himself from him in this matter.

CHAPTER V.

THE BATTLE OF THE LEAGUE.

The Corn Law Monopoly.--Manchester after the Reform Bill.-First movements for Repeal.-Cobden's Letters and Pamphlets.-Anti-Corn Law Association formed in 1836.-The Corn Law question in 1837-8.-Formation of the League-Mr. Bright on the Provisional Committee.-Mr. Paulton's Addresses.-The Manchester Chamber of Commerce petitions against the Corn Laws.-Meeting in 1839.-Mr. Bright's early appearances.-The movement in Manchester.-In Parliament.-The League and the Press. The Elections of 1841.-Cobden in the House of Commons.Lamentable Condition of the Country.

WE shall now briefly trace the course of that movement which, beginning in very humble guise, and subject in its early stages to the ridicule and contempt of the supporters of Protection, at last became so influential that it wrung from Parliament legislation destructive of a great and powerful monopoly. Of all acts of the Legislature of equal magnitude, the wisdom of that which abolished the Corn Laws has been the least seriously challenged.

Early in the century, and as one result of the war with France, the working classes of England suffered great privations. Taxation was abnormally heavy, and food exceedingly dear. In the year 1801 wheat stood at 1158. 11d. per quarter, and for the following seventeen years it averaged 84s. On the overthrow of Napoleon, and the declaration of peace, the ports were once more thrown open. The agricultural classes, however, now became alarmed, and appealed to Parliament for protection. The result was that in 1815 Parliament-composed chiefly of landlords-passed the Corn Law, an Act which proibited the importation of wheat, except under an enormous duty, until the price of home-grown reached 80s. per quarter. The consequence of this legislation was to raise the price of food to almost as high a figure as it had before attained. In 1816 corn reached 1038. 7d. per quarter; and in 1817, 112s. 8d. Great discontent was caused throughout the country, and riots occurred in many places. The oppressive impost was further aggravated by heavy Customs and Excise duties, which were especially and severely felt in Lancashire; and in 1820 the Manchester Chamber of Commerce was established, with the

object of discussing the grievances of the trading classes in that city, and appealing to Parliament for relief.

The effects of the Corn Law monopoly were thus periodically but painfully felt from the second decade of the nineteenth century; but those who desired to see beneficial changes effected in this as well as in other directions felt that the matter was hopeless, unless the necessary preliminary step could be first obtained of a reform of the House of Commons. With this accomplished, religious, social, and other reforms might be expected to follow. All energies were therefore bent towards securing a large measure of Reform, the result being the great Act of 1832. Manchester having now become enfranchised, that city, from the great number of anti-Protectionists in her midst, began to take the lead in the opposition to the Corn Laws. At the first general election consequent on the passing of the Reform Bill, there came forward as candidates Mr. William Cobbett, Mr. Mark Philips, Mr. J. Thomas Hope, and Mr. Samuel Jones Loyd. Mr. Hope was a Conservative, and Mr. Jones Loyd a Whig. Of the other candidates, Mr. Cobbett, in his addresses, made no allusion to the great question which had then begun to attract attention; but Mr. Mark Philips, who was an advocate of short Parliaments and the Ballot, further declared himself an enemy to all restrictions and monopolies, which, depriving alike the capitalist of his remuneration and the labourer of his wages, impeded the natural progress and prosperity of trade. It would be the duty of a reformed Parliament, he said, to abolish the East India, the Bank, and the timber monopolies, and that greatest of all monopolies which was upheld by the Corn Laws. Mr. Philips was, in short, a progressive reformer on almost all points. As Cobbett was distasteful to the great bulk of the Liberals on account of his silence upon the corn monopoly, and as he had also offended. the slavery abolitionists of Manchester, it was seen that Loyd must be returned with Philips, unless a second Liberal candidate were brought forward. This was immediately done by the Free-traders, the candidate selected to run in conjunction with Mr. Philips being the Right Hon. C. Poulett Thomson, Vice-President of the Board of Trade, an able and energetic reformer. Philips and Thomson were elected, the former by a large and the latter by a considerable majority. In some other Lancashire towns the efforts made to return progressists were not so successful. The elections generally gave a great majority for Ministers, but it was difficult to tell who were real reformers and who were not; and it was therefore resolved to

strengthen the hands of the Government against the landowners by petitions for the repeal of the Corn Laws. Other practical reforms were also demanded.

Ministers, however, declared that it would embarrass them to have these questions at once brought to the front for settlement, and many reformers became reconciled to this view. But on the 17th of May, 1833, an effort was made, notwithstanding, to enlist the support of Parliament against the Corn Laws, when Mr. Whitmore moved that, instead of producing equality of prices, and thereby a permanent good, they had produced a contrary effect, and tended injuriously to cramp trade. Lord Althorp, Chancellor of the Exchequer, deprecated agitating the question at that moment, when they would not have an opportunity of setting it at rest, owing to the quantity of other business before Parliament. The Ministerial plea was accepted, and the matter was shelved for that session. The 'not-the-time' plea has always been a favourite and potent argument with statesmen when they have desired to stave off legislation upon some pressing question. But the people were not allowed to slumber over the subject of the Corn Laws. Amongst the energetic denouncers of these laws was Mr. Archibald Prentice, proprietor and editor of the Manchester Times, who wrote, There ought to be a systematic opposition to the continuance of the bread tax. Let half a dozen persons in each of the surrounding towns meet together, and resolve to agitate the question in public meetings. The matter only needs a beginning.' Manchester did indeed say something on the topic, by a public meeting held early in 1834, attended by several members of Parliament and other influential gentlemen. A committee was, formed for the purpose of considering how the cause of Corn Law repeal might best be forwarded, but at that time nothing could be done. The people had scarcely as yet begun to be educated on this question.

In the House of Commons a motion was brought forward for a committee, with the view of substituting a fixed duty on corn in lieu of the fluctuating scale. The landowners were at once up in arms. Mr. Feargus O'Connor said the ruin of Ireland would follow the admission of corn duty free; but Mr. Poulett Thomson (though unsupported by his colleagues) took a larger and prophetic view of the subject when he said, 'Let them wait until one of those fluctuations should, under Providence, occur, through a failure of the harvest in France, and then a change of the Corn Laws would be called for in much less respectful language than he should ever wish to hear addressed to that

House.' Mr. Hume's motion, however, was negatived by 313 to 155 votes. Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn Law Rhymer, in a stirring address to the people of England, called upon the masses to repudiate at once and for ever the idea of a fixed duty, which he described as 'graduated iniquity.' He strongly advocated a union of all the great towns. Put not in the banns for a new marriage of reptile-spawning fraud and time; but with the word Restitution, pronounced in thunder, startle your oppressors from their hideous dream of injustice and ruin made permanent.' As trade was tolerably good, and the pinch of poverty was not felt, this appeal, and others like it, failed to have any appreciable effect. Towards the end of the year 1834 the Whig Ministry was dismissed, and Sir Robert Peel installed. as Premier. But early in the following year the Whigs once more returned to office, and the Corn Law repealers saw their cause pushed still further back by the plentiful supply of corn there was in the country, which led to a demand from the agricultural members for an increased protection rather than no protection at all.

The year 1835 also witnessed an abundant harvest; and with wheat at four shillings and sixpence a bushel, there was little desire to agitate for the repeal of an unjust law—a law which operated with terribly injurious force in periods of deficient harvests. At this time, Mr. Prentice printed in the columns of the Manchester Times several well-written letters from an unknown correspondent. From these letters he concluded that there was a new man rising up, who, if he held a station that would enable him to take a part in public affairs, would exert a widely beneficial influence amongst the people. Shortly afterwards a pamphlet was published entitled England, Ireland, and America. A copy was sent to Mr. Prentice, 'from the author,' and the handwriting showed it to be by his anonymous correspondent. It was further revealed that the writer was Richard Cobden. The meeting of the two men is thus described by the historian of the League: 'I found a man who could enlighten by his knowledge, counsel by his prudence, and conciliate by his temper and manners; and who, if he found his way into the House of Commons, would secure its respectful attention; but I had been an actor amongst men who, from 1812 to 1832, had fought in the rough battle for Parliamentary Reform, and I missed, in the unassuming gentleman before me, not the energy, but the apparent hardihood and dash which I had, forgetting the change of times, believed to be requisites to the success of a popular leader. In after