The Sun.
London, England, 1844-11-25 00:00:00

LEAGUE MEETING AT
ROCHDALE'.

A meeting of the League was held at Rochdale on
'Wednesday night, in the New Hall, Baillie-street,
Preceded by a tea party, which was most numerously
and respectably attended. Indeed, so great had been
the application for tickets, that it was found necessary
at the tea party to divide the company into two
rooms—the tables being removed afterwards so as to
make room for the whole company in the Hall, to
take part in the meeting. The gentlemen invited to
be present, and who had accepted invitations to ad-
dress the meeting, were—George Wilson, Esq.,
(Chairman of the Council of the League), Richard
Cobden, Esq , Wm. Sharman Crawford, Esq., John
Bright, Esq., and John Brown, Esq. (late candidate
for the county) ; and, in addition to these gentlemen,
we noticed the following influential parties residentin
Rochdale;—Mr. George Ashworth (magistrate), Mx,
George Ashworth jun., Mr. James Littlewood, Mr.
H. Scholefield, Mr. John Petrie, Rev. Mr. Thorburn
(independent minister), Messrs. Holgate and Roberts
(attorneys), Mr. Robert Heape, Mr. Benjamin Heape,
Mr. Jacob Bright, Mr. Pagan, Mr. Turner, Mr.
Frederick Lane, and' Mr. Gibson.

GEORGE WILSON, Esq., in taking the chair, ad-
verted to the progress of the League, and the nume-
rous fallacies it had lived to argue down. He con-
cluded his speech by saying—The battle of free trade
must be fought on free-trade principles alone, and the
man who should strike his opinions on the day of
trial, under any pretence, was little better than a
monopolist.—(Loud applause.) They had petitioned,
memorialised, and sent deputations in vain to Govern-
ment for the repeal of this law ; they had now
changed their course of action ; they were now deter-
mined to work out their object through the registra-
tion courts, and calling upon their friends who could
afford it to secure a vote, they would become inde-
pendent of Ministerial caprice, or the patronage of
lofty names ; they were determined to rely upon their
own strength, and when the day of contest should
come, they would thus be able to measure strength
with their antagonists, and obtain for the people of
this country the second charter of their liberties—
unrestricted commerce.—(Loud cheers.)
Mr. COBDEN, M.P., was received with loud and
protracted cheering. He spoke as follows :—Mr.
Chairman, ladies, and gentlemen—l was saying to
my friend Mr. Bright that I never spoke so badly any
where as at Rochdale, and I never came here yet that
I did not give you a very bad speech, and a very
short one; and I can promise you that I shall do no
more to-night, and I can tell you what is the reason.
When I have to speak, I like to fancy, at all events,
that I have somebody to be convinced, or somebody
opposed to me : I always had the impression that at
Rochdale your minds were pretty well made up on
the subject of the corn-laws, and your kind reception
of me to-night convinces me more and more that I
have no work to do here.—(Applause). It makes no
matter what our errand may be; in going to some
place to beg money one has to brace up one's nerves,
and get up a face for the occasion ; but when we come
to Rochdale to beg money—though lam happy to
sky we have not come to beg to-night—(Applause)—
I am always sure to be told that the money has been
all subscribed and collected in Rochdale for days
before hand.—(Applause). And now, when our ob-
ject, as my friend in the chair has said, is to induceas
many people in Rochdale as possible to become free-
ho:ders, and qualify themselves to vote in this and the
neighbouring divisions of counties, I am told that
somebody in the room has a book in which there are
already down somewhere about 100 names of persons
intending to become freeholders, so that our work is
done before we begin to talk about it.—(Applause).
Our chairman has told you correctly that the labours
of the League have hitherto been those of prepara-
tion ; that is, they have been trying to convince the
minds of their fellow-countrymen that free trade is a
good thing, and the corn-laws very bad ones. But
something more than that must be done before we can
convince the House of Commons ; for we have not all
our own way there as here; there is plenty of anta-
gonism there to raise a man's spirit for him.—(Ap-
plause). lie will bear all sorts of voices and sounds,
except those pleasant and agreeable ones with which
you treat me here. We sometimes receive the
treatment you would expect to receive amongst a
body of newly-caught New Zealanders.—(Laughter
and applause.) Now you cannot change that
opinion by any argument ; you may, perhaps,
convince some of them, but I never knew any con-
verts made by argument; if they are convinced, they
still don't change. Only one argument goes down
in that House ; it is, as Mr. Gisborne once said, a ma-
jority ; no other argument but a majority goes down
there.—(Applause.) Now, we want to alter the ma-
jority in that House ; and that is to be done out of
the House, and not in it. It is to be done not merely
by converting some of those who make Member* of
Parliament, but by adding as many as possible to
those who are qualified to elect representatives.
Hitherto we have been an Anti-Corn-law League,
instructing the people, and agitating them about
free trade; now, I really think we are going to take
my friend Sharman Crawford's business out of his
hands, and advocate an extension of the suffrage.—
(Applause.) We want to persuade our fellow-coun-
trymen to buy the property that will qualify them to
vote; and I most sincerely wish that every head of a
family in this country was worth the money neces-
sary to buy that vote. But that is much easier done
than many people suppose. Another meridian has
dawned upon us within the last few months. We
pledged ourselves some time ago to contest the
boroughs and try what we could do to gain them ;
but it never occurred to us that we could win counties
in this country. And yet with 252 county Members
in the House,sand not six of them voting for free
trade, it has occurred to us that unless we can make
some change there, we shall not be likely to get a
boroughs.
o rc o
has a y
been majority in that House.—(Hear,
many nstances, as
hear.) Now I be-
lieve
ou thehs
. u
Therent counties may
ewoa great misapprehension,
won
in
I have before said, much easier than the little pocket
g
both as to the nature of the county representation,
i
and the means by which votes may be had for a county.
We have all that superstitious notion about land-
owners and land, so that people in the towns have
tacitly agreed to allow that to a certain number of
lords and squires, who dress in top-boots, and waste
most of their time in hunting or worse idleness, be-
longs the county representation—that this representa-
tion belongs to a totally different class from the town
representation. Now, this is the old superstition de-
rived from feudal times, which it behoves us to get
rid of.—(Applause.) What is the county representa-
tion ? Not the representation of acres, or cattle, or
sheep. The very voters who compose the county
constituencies go to vote for or against our interests
in towns ; there can be no interests in a
county apart from the interests of the towns
within that county ; for counties without the towns
contained in those counties would be about as valu-
able as the unreclaimed land in New Holland.—
(Applause.) The counties belong to the towns, and
not the towns to the counties; and to the towns
ought to belong the county representation.—(Ap-
plause.) I believe England is the only country in
the world having a constituency form of-government
where the distinction has been kept up of votes for
counties and rotes for boroughs ; in all other coun-
tries with which I am acquainted, the votes are given
from sections of country, or by a population of par-
ticular districts ; but in no other country is the ab-
surdity continued of sending one description of re-
presentatives for the towns and another for the
counties. We have derived this from our own feudal
system • it sprung up at a time when there was a ge-
neral belief, and when probably that belief was founded
on something like fact, that there was an antagonism
between the interests of towns and the interests of
counties ; in fact, when our representative system
first dawned in this country there was an antagonism
between towns and counties. The towns were the
residences of men who had attained a certain amount
of freedom, having escaped from the clutches of their
feudal: lords ; the counties were still ii their hands;
and whilst the towns sent up their citizens, their bur-
gesses, to vote in Parliament, the feudal lords and
the counties sent up their knights of the shire to vote
in Parliament also; and they were at times very
much at war with each other, having separate and
distinct rights. But all that is gone by; nobody
pretends now that the people in eounties can have
different interests from those in boroughs ; and what
I want to bring to your conviction is, that as there is
but one common interest in county and town, you
have an undoubted right to take an interest in the
representation of the counties; and, in fact, it cannot
be a representation of the county unless it represents
the large towns in the county.—(Applause.) Now,
there has been another great misapprehension ; people
have had an idea—" Oh, its out of my power to be
an elector for the county ; it costs so much to be 'an
elector for the county, I shall never be able to get a
vote."—(Hear.) They have a notion that it must be
a rich man with an estate to vote for a county, or some-
body at least renting fifty acres of land. Now a
vote for a county may be much more easily gained,
and much more cheaply kept, than a vote for a
borough. How few of you, in this borough, now,
can afford to take and keep a 101. house ; that is, how
few to what there ought to be.—(Hear, hear.) But,
how many more of you can manage to lay out 401. or
501. in buying a cottage, and getting 7 or 8 per cent.
for your money. It is your own ; the purchase-
money is invested instead of putting it into the
savings' banks; you get your interest and your vote
besides; and you have not to pay something addi-
tional every year, but the investment is paying you
something additional every year instead.—(Applause.)
Now, seeing how much easier it is to have a county
vote than a borough vote, we come here to agitate, to