They are conscious that they have earned their hate and they always dread their vengeance. It was so in the ancient States, it is so still.

6

I believe that in free communities want and necessity create a kind of social bondage under which feelings of a similar kind may be engendered. It is useless to deny that such indications have of late been apparent I sincerely trust they may not prevail. What was the answer the other day, as we have seen it reported, of the poor peasant when he was asked whether the repeal of the Corn Laws would do him harm. Harm, Sir!' said he, how can I be worse off anyhow than I am?' This was the man who was receiving for his labour the average pittance of 78. or 9s. a week, and who had to forego what was essential to health, to strength, to decency in appearance, in order to provide for his wretched wife and children and preserve them from the confinement of the Workhouse. Feelings engendered by such circumstances cannot but work mischief. And yet such are the circumstances of very many of the working people in different parts of the country.

In the name, then, of those who love peace, who would have order, who dread confusion, I now entreat this House gravely and deliberately to take this question into their consideration: the question of the Laws that enhance the cost of food to a people hourly increasing and hourly becoming more distressed.

If you hesitate to do so, think for a moment whether you will be able to maintain these LawsLaws revolting to justice and policy, felt to be so by

ourselves and pointed at by all the States around us as a nuisance to them and a satire upon the pretended freedom of our Constitution. Will you continue to make this experiment against the order of nature?-for this is what you are doing in attempting to confine the people of this island to the food grown within its limits when all experience of nature and the provision of nature shows that you need not, and that you cannot do so. The opposite line of conduct is found in the history of the peopling of the world : it is when the population exceeds the means of support that man goes forth to find the means of life in a distant land; it is as he advances in civilization that he finds that he can employ his labour in fabricating that which can be exchanged for food with a people differently circumstanced.

vent.

And this is the state in which we now find ourselves; and it is this natural and traditional means of obtaining food that the Corn Laws attempt to preThe necessary fruits of the experiment we have witnessed this year in the spread of destitution, disease, and death. To render Laws with such results endurable, you must show them to be inevitable. But can you believe this to be possible, in opposition to the deliberate judgment of those whose names are the most revered among us, who have denounced the principle of such Laws as impious, impolitic, and wrong? Hear the words of Burke on the subject

God hath given the earth to the children of men; and He, undoubtedly, in giving it to them, has given them what is

abundantly sufficient for all their exigencies,-not a scanty, but a most liberal provision. The Author of our nature has written it strongly in that nature, and has promulgated the same thing in His word, that man shall eat his bread by his labour; and I am persuaded that no man, or combination of men, for their own profit, can, without great impiety, undertake to say that he shall not do so, and that they have any sort of right either to prevent the labour or to withhold the bread.

The authority of Dr. Johnson may be quoted on the same side. In a conversation with Sir Thomas Robinson upon a law that was proposed respecting the admission of Irish produce into England, when Sir Thomas Robinson observed that those laws might be prejudicial to the corn interest in England, Dr. Johnson said: 'Sir Thomas, you talk the language of a savage. What, Sir, would you prevent any people from feeding themselves, if by any honest means they could do it?' And Dr. Chalmers has declared that the Corn Laws infect the whole air of British society; and that there will be no peace until they are repealed.

I fear that I have occupied the House too long: I will now leave the question in your hands trusting that you will avail yourselves of the accident that has given you a second opportunity of considering it, and that you will consent to the Motion that I have now to make That the House resolve itself into a Committee to take into consideration the Act 9 Geo. IV. c. 60, regulating the importation of foreign grain,

VII.

MANCHESTER, April 15, 1841.

On April 15, 1841, a public meeting attended by nearly 2,000 members of the League, was held in the Corn Exchange, Manchester, to confirm the resolutions passed at the meeting of delegates from the chief towns of England, held earlier on the same day to consider what course should be pursued by the League with regard to Mr. Villiers's Annual Motion. Mr. Villiers made the speech of the evening. Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright, not then in Parliament, were present, together with many other leaders of the movement, and both spoke. Mr. James Wilson's resolution, that deputies from all the Anti-Corn-Law Associations in the kingdom should be invited to assemble in London at the time when Mr. Villiers brought forward his motion on the Corn Laws, having been carried, the Rev. S. Beardsall, seconded by the Rev. W. Mountford, moved in accordance with Mr. Villiers's speech, That the constantly increasing physical sufferings of the labouring population, arising from want of employment and the scarcity of food, are inimical to the progress of religion and morality, and this meeting earnestly appeals to ministers of the Gospel, and to philanthropists, and Christians of every denomination, to lend their aid in the effort to abolish the unjust tax upon the importation of the first necessaries of life—a tax which impiously thwarts the bounteous designs of Providence, who has prepared abundantly upon the face of the earth for the wants of all His creatures.'

I THANK you for your very cordial reception. It is far more than my feeble efforts in the cause merit, though it is consistent with the readiness that I have always observed among the people to appreciate any service honestly intended to them by their friends.

I view this meeting with great satisfaction as offering further evidence of the interest that the people are now taking in the subject of the Corn Laws. And as the humble advocate of reason in Parliament, I am specially alive to the importance of public mani

festations of such interest; for experience has both taught me how little good can be done in that assembly without the influence of the people, and led me to expect success even in this case, with a manlyspirited and intelligent co-operation from without. This co-operation I think I have now secured. The country at last appears to be awakened to the true cause of the great evil that pervades it; and people in every quarter are denouncing the error and injustice of a system that allows one class to rob another and the strongest to rob them all.

It is cheering to see the great principles of liberty invoked to redress the wrongs of industry and commerce, as they were in former times applied to relieve the mind and body of man from bondage. And, based as our cause is on truth, with justice and the common good for our end, I have no more doubt of the ultimate success of those principles in this case, than I have of the triumphs that we have achieved in the cause of civil and religious liberty.

Since I last had the honour of addressing an assembly in this great town, the cause of Repeal has made immense progress. Had it remained stationary, I should not have despaired; but there are signs, and unmistakable ones, that we are advancing rapidly. The truth on this question is now penetrating the recesses of power, and the strongholds of Monopoly are beginning to be shaken. The appalling distress that for three years past has been bearing down the productive classes of the country has compelled public attention to the warnings and declarations of