The Sun.
London, England, 1844-02-29 00:00:00

would be a constant recurrence of new demands.
Having once got the world to wear calicoes, they
must wait till they were worn out and they might then
begin again.—(Hear, hear.) It would be rather a
jocose circumstance, if, at some future day, a Man-
chester manufacturer should be seen upon these
boards, weeping, like Alexander, the conqueror of
old, not because he wanted another world to conquer,
but because he wanted another world to clothe.—
(Laughter.) At all events, in the midst of all his
grief, he would have the consolation of thinking that
if the whole world were clothed, he himself surely
deserved to be fed.—(Cheers.) He did not hear any
one complaining that' they had got too many clothes.
(A voice from the gallery " I've not."—Laughter.)
Cheap as clothing was, he had never heard any one
lamenting that it was too cheap. The landlords
occasionally lauded themselves upon being patriots
and benefactors, boasting that they had made two
blades of grass grow where only one grew before.
On a similar ground he himself, as a manufacturer,
might claim to be considered as a patriot ; for he could
make two shirts for a less price than one used to cost
formerly. But he denied that either landlords or
manufacturers, as such, had any title to these appella-
tions. They both acted from one motive, and that
motive was an enlightened self-interest.—(Hear,
hear.) He had before mentioned the word ma-
chinery. This was another favourite topic of
the aristocracy. They gave shrewd hints about
machinery being at the bottom of all the evils of the
country. He (Mr. Ashworth) maintained that
machinery was one of the greatest blessings which
this country enjoyed.—(Cheers.) Machinery was
the best guarantee for employment, the surest source
of its permanence, and it also afforded the highest
rate of wages.—(Hear, hear.) Moreover, by ma-
chinery, the body was exempted from physical exer-
tion, and the mind, which ennobled man, was deve-
loped to an extent which would otherwise be impossi-
ble.—(Cheers.) That was a subject upon which he
might dilate for hours; but he would content him-
self with noticing the facts. In proof of
what he had stated, he would advert to
the result of his experience in his own county. In
Lancashire machinery had been invented, and sys-
tematically carried out, to a greater extent than it
had been either in any other county in England or
in any other part of the world. If, therefore, machi-
nery had displaced human labour, and impoverished
the people, Lancashire ought to be the poorest county
in the British dominions.—(Hear, hear.) So far,
however, from machinery having displaced human
labour in that county, it had called for human labour
to double the extent of the people of Lancashire, and
more than double their progeny for fifty years past.—
In every county in England and Scotland where the
same system had been carried out, the same results
had uniformly followed; work-people had been called
for to a greater extent than before, and wages had
kept pace with the increase of employment. On the
contrary, in those counties where the spade
and the plough were the only machines
employed, they found what was called super-
abundant labour.—(Hear, hear) One half of
the population of Lancashire had been attracted
thither from other places. From what places could
they come ? The only counties which could supply
hands were the agricultural counties. Hence, those
who flocked to Lancashire and the other manufac-
turing counties, had left agricultural pursuits. Now,
in examining this question, as he had done for some
years past, he had made some observations in two
parishes in an agricultural district, not far from some
of their manufacturing towns. He found that in
these two parishes, in the course of seventy years,
there had been, in round numbers, for every two
funerals three christenings ; and yet the population
remained the same, the number of houses remained
the same, and, in some parts of those parishes there
was only the same number of houses as appeared to
have existed at the period of the Doomsday survey
in the time of William the Conqueror.—(Cries of
" Hear, hear.") Perhaps the meeting would inquire,
what, then, became of the people ? As far as he
was able to compute, about 1,000 persons must have
been drawn from those parishes to some other part of
the country. In almost every house which he entered,
the people eagerly inquired, "Do you know my bro-
ther ? Do you know my cousin ?" observing that
they lived in Manchester, in Bolton, in Preston, or in
some other manufacturing town. It appeared, there-
fore, that about 1,000 people in all had left these two
parishes, and betaken themselves to manufacturing
employments.— (Hear.) If, then, manufacturing
towns were all engulphed in one common ruin—an
event, the prospect of which, it would appear from
the monopolist papers, had filled the minds of some—
he did not know what would become of all these
people when they were found among the ruins.—
(Hear, hear.) It might happen, however, that if
they survived the shock, they would be heard, some
fine morning, inquiring of the landlords where they
might lodge ?—(Laughter.) The absence of these
people from their parishes had been the means
both of swelling the rent-roll of the
landlords, and easing the burdens of the
remaining inhabitants. But the agricultural dis-
trict to which he had referred was not the only part
of this country which had benefited by manufactures
—labourers from the remotest parts of Ireland and
England had flocked to the manufacturing towns.—
(Hear, hear.) Not a few had found their way there
from that favoured county, Buckinghamshire, a con-
siderable number of whom were now employed in
his (Mr. Ashworth's) service. There was one inci-
dent in connexion with this subject which he would
relate to the meeting. A Noble Lord, a friend of the
Duke of Buckingham, who came into his part of the
country some years ago, happened to discover, on en-
tering his (Mr. Ashworth's) works, that some of the
workpeople came from Buckinghamshire. He en-
tered one of their cottages. Whilst speaking of these
cottages, he could not help observing that they were
not like the cottages in the agricultural counties,
where a hole was dug in the side of a hill, and co-
vered with mud and thatch, and afterwards the whole
was called a cottage. This gentleman found the work-
people generally living in good houses, but he now spoke
more particularly of the one at which he called—
a straw built house, two stories high, with three bed
rooms.—(A. voice, " No bed.")—(Laughter.) He
would here observe that the manufacturing popula-
tion were somewhat delicate in their habits, and one
thing by which they were distinguished was their
attention to the cultivation of propriety and delicacy
of feeling among their children.—(Cheers.) As an '
illustration of this he need only mention that they
deemed it indispensable to have three bed-rooms
whenever they could obtain them.—(Cheers.) His
Lordship inquired about their comforts and earnings,
and amongst the rest he inquired if they would not
like to go back to Buckinghamshire. " No," said
one, " Got away, 'last," for he spoke very short to his
Lordship.—(Laughter.) " No, got away, 'last, and
all the horses of the Duke of Buckingham shan't
draw moi back again."—(Great laughter.) His
Lordship inquired how it was he felt attached to the
place. The man answered, " I could not get 901. a
year there."—(Cheers and laughter.) He (Mr.
Ashworth) supposed that was the money which he
and his family earned. He would conclude his obser-
vations respecting the Buckinghamshire peasantry by
stating that the Noble Lord went away quite satisfied,
and said that he " would go and have a joke with the
Duke."—(Great laughter.) He would ask whether
the agriculturists had ever suffered from want of
hands ?—(Hear, hear.) He had inquired, and he
never had seen any man who said that he was short
of labourers in agricultural districts; on the contrary,
he found every farmer and landowner speaking of the
burden of the poor-rates, and of the number of la-
bourers in the workhouse. They could not suffer
very much, for agriculture required no more hands
now than in 1821, so that in carrying out the manu-
facturing interest, Lancashire and Yorkshire, and
the manufacturing districts generally, provided occu-
pation, comfortable and permanent, for a large class
of those countrymen, and those who were left behind
did not suffer by their absence. Possibly some of the
audience who were accustomed to read the monopo-
list hireling writers, might wonder how it was that
those agricultural laboureis found their way to the
North, and dared to encounter those mill-Molochs.—
(Laughter.) They had been told how the manufac-
turing labourers were treated by those Molochs of
mill-owners. How, then, must the agricultural la-
bourers have been treated when they ran away
from the landlords to the millowners?—(Laugh-
ter, and great cheering.) Surely they must
have been very ill-treated.--(Hear, hear.) One
test remained. This could be proved. If those who
cried out against the manufacturers had 'all the sym-
pathy which they professed, let them go home and
outbid the manufacturers in wages—(Cheers)—and
let them try whether those who fled from them to
the mills would go back to their " Arcadian abodes "
for 7s. a week.—(Cheers and laughter.) He would
not detain them much longer.— (Cries of " Go on.") lie
had endeavoured to give them an outside view of
manufactures. If they wanted to know more about
the matter let them follow him home. It was not a
day's journey from them; and many of them were
accustomed to travel up the Rhine and the Rhone to
observe the customs of distant lands, whilst they knew
nothing of the things that were actually at their own
doors.—(Hear, hear.) It was-true He must admit,
that they heard sometimes of trouble and strife in the
manufacturing districts ; but whenever they did they
mw
tghhotu rely e
al y a uu ps
ee n. iwrt thheaut r to hs
torsieo t
imv
ei s o
a wr t
su n
se
tso
pwpeorde notup
the sources of their prosperity—when their com-
merce failed—when their capital was exhausted, and
the:people'lailed offood---did they think it unreasonable
that the people should be exasperated ?—(Hear)—and
he would ask them, could they find in the whole world
a population which passed through such trials and
troubles as the mill population of the north, with so
little outcry ?—(Cheers.) Our manufacturing sys-
tem exhibited as fine a specimen of moral and asso-
ciative strength as could be found in any part of the
world, and on a larger scale. It wat, sustained by

' men in his situation of life, not by the aristocracy—
the aristocracy never assisted manufacturers. the
manufacturing interest was created and upheld by
men of diligence in business—by men of skill,
energy, and enterprise.—(Cheers.) They embarked
their capital, which they knew they could never re-
cover but by industry and attention on their own
part, harmony with their work-people, and the
honest co-operation of both for mutual advantage.—
(Loud cheers.) It was their interest that the work-
ing classes of their countrymen should be kept up
with comfort, and prosperity, and independence.—
(Hear, hear.) If the capitalist and the workmen
were left to themselves, a good understanding of
their mutual interest would always prevail, and
side by side they would labour industriously to
carry out what was for the permanent pros-
perity of both.—(Heir, hear.) The manufacturers,
therefore, andlthe [middle classes, had a duty and a
burden imposed upon them to maintain the moral and
social system of the country, and to keep up the
rights of the working classes as well as their own.—
(Great cheering.) They had taken their stand on
the broad principle of justice. He had endeavoured
to show that, in coming forward on this occasion,
they did so in the spirit of justice ; and they called on
those who composed the audience—the middle classes
of this metropolis—to stand by their countrymen in
these events.—(Great cheering.) They asked for the
abolition of all monopolies. They disclaimed protec-
tion for themselves, and they required to be released
from the evils which the protection of others inflicted
upon them.—(Cheers.) They demanded the total
repeal of the corn-laws. They asked for nothing
less—they would be satisfied with nothing less.—
(Great cheering.) Of the citizens of London, they
asked for their co-operation—they asked that in this
great cause which they had undertaken, and in which
they had made large sacrifices themselves, the citizens
of London should be prepared to do the same.—(lm •
mense cheering.)
Mr. M. Gummi then came forward, and was
greeted with repeated cheers. He said—Sir, in open-
ing the proceedings of this evening, you drew a com-
parison between the present meeting and that which
was held on the last occasion when the Anti-Corn-
law League was assembled in Covent-garden theatre.
Sir, Whatever may be said upon that comparison, I
hold, at least, that the meeting which is now within
these walls is as great and imposing an assemblage—
(Cheers)—and I say that nothing but a deep interest
being felt in the corn-laws by the public of this me-
tropolis, could show such a number as I now see before
me.—(Hear, hear.) lam delighted also that at the
last meeting the theatre was filled' to repletion. I
am glad that every crevice was occupied. lam glad
also to hear that Ireland has appreciated the manner
in whicha British audience—(lmmense and repeated
cheering for several minutes)—l am glad, I say, to
hear that Ireland has appreciated the manner in which
a British audience has received the great man for whom
there now exists so deep a sympathy, and on whom
the affections of his countrymen are so intently fixed.
—(Renewed cheering.) I was delighted also as a
member of the League that the representative of the
opinions of the great body of the Irish people, was
here in person to tell us that Ireland desired the
repeal of the corn-laws.--(Great and continued
cheering.) Now let me ask once more what can be
the reason that men are found to make the sacrifice
(for sacrifice it is) of attending public meetings for
the continued discussion of the same arguments on a
public question ? Why is it that men are willing to
leave their firesides, and that whole families will
attend on winter evenings to listen to speeches on a
.
question which they are told dull and insipid, and
containing considerations which cannot interest the
public mind ? Why are the meetings countenanced,
not only by men, but by a large portion of their
fairer fellow subjects ? It is because they see in the
corn-law question something more than an idle
speculation of political economy. It is a question
which affects civil rights.—(Cheers.) It relates to a
policy which restricts the supply of food.—(Cheers.)
The ladies of England see that they are advocating
the cause of humanity, the cause of the widow and
the orphan, and that they are advocating the means
by which a greater portion of food maybe placed within
the reach of the industrious and the needy.—(Cheers.)
These are the reasons why men make sacrifices, and
ladies are put to the inconvenience of attending these
meetings. We believe that free trade is the right of
free men, and that a free citizen is entitled to freedom
of exchange.—(Much cheering.) I believe that
nothing but State advantage or State necessity, can
entitle the Legislature to impose a duty on the im-
portation of foreign goods.—(Cheers.) The Anti-
Corn-law League has been called a society attacking
property ; it has been called an aggressive body ; I
deny the truth of this statement. I say, . that the
Anti-Corn-law League is not an aggressive body;
it is a defensive body. The first attack, the first
violence is committed by those who interfere with
the freedom of exchange, by those who impose that
yoke upon us ; we are but assembled together to
throw off that yoke, and to vindicate the right's, the
inherent rights, to which we are •entitled.—(Loud
cheers.) We have been told that the societies On the
other side are for the protection of agriculture. I ask,
what have they to do with agriculture ? They are
societies for the suppression of agriculture—(Cheers)
—they are not concerned with the affairs of agricul-
ture.—(Cheers.) What is agriculture ? Agricul-
ture is the art of cultivating the earth, in order to
make it produce the largest quantity of those vege-
tables which are consumed by human beings as food.
What has that to do with putting duties on foreign
importation---what has that to do with the ascending
and descending scale—(Loud cheers) —of graduated
duties ? We are not an aggressive body ; they—
the Corn-law Leaguers, the protection societies—are
aggressive bodies. We do not profess to interfere
with agriculture, but they do propose to interfere
with
)We contend that English-
men become merchants if they choose,
havetradea.--rig(hHte t trade.—(Hear, hear.
and to have the reward of their industry. We also
contend that they have a right to cultivate the earth,
monopoly of the market, ma
and to have the full reward of their enterprise ; but
we deny that any one class has a right to interfere
with the other, or that either class has a right to de-
mandrket or
fellow-countrymenth e e exclusive
uws vt
he
privilege
food.—(Hear, hear.) That, indeed, is the whole
question.—(Hear, hear.) I say it is a false
pretence to put forward, that these central
a of onsuoppopllyyion
societies are societies for the protection of agricul-
ture. I say, emphatically, that they are societies for
the destruction of trade.—(Hear, hear.) They are
societies for the maintenance of political ascendancy.
—(Cheers.) They have nothing to do with the im-
provement of agriculture, they have nothing to do
with arts or sciences, they have nothing to do with
anything generous, or with anything deserving the
consideration of the benevolent-minded man.—
(Hear, hear.) they have simply to do with the at-
tainment of selfish interests and the maintenance of
political power.—(Cheers.) Now if these societies
really have the good of society at heart, it is remark-
able
that the men who take the most leading part in
these societies are not men who have distinguished
themselves by any proposal for the improvement of
agriculture. Where are the inventions, the scientific
works, with which they have favoured the world, in
reference to the improvement of British agriculture ?
It is remarkably the case, that these works have pro-
ceeded from agriculturists who advocate the cause of
free trade—(Cheers)—and who repudiate the notion
that they are to rely on any other resources than
those furnished by their own industry, and their own
enterprise.—(Cheers.) I do not for a moment pre-
tend to deny, and I am glad to follow the remarks of
your excellent Chairman, that these gentlemen are
entitled to meet together, and to advocate their opi•
nions fairly and freely. I agree fully in the right of
discussion. If these gentlemen consider the Corn-
laws necessary for the community, they are just as
much entitled to their opinions as we are to ours.
But what I have a right to complain of is this ; that
they call their societies by wrong names—that they
mislead the public—(Hear hear)—that they call so-
cieties which only concern themselves, societies for
the protection of agriculture.—(Cheers.) It seems
that they are determined to maintain the present
amount of interference with trade. They say they will
not cease to restrict trade to the degree to which it is at
present restricted. Now I should like them to see
these great meetings. I should like them to have an
opportunity of judging for themselves what is the
feeling that is growing up in the minds of their fel-
low-countrymen on this question.—(Hear, hear.) I
should like them to consider whether it will be safe
much longer to continue a system of interference with
the civil rights of men without having any plea of
national advantage, without having any excuse of
State necessity, but simply the excuse—We have.done
it before, it has given us political advantages and
political power, and therefore we will continue it—
we will perpetuate the evil.—(Hear, hear.) I ask
those gentlemen who are such advocates of order and
social harmony and peace, to consider whether it is
safe to persist in a system of injustice when that in-
justice has been found out ? I would ask them to
consider whether it is safe to persevere in doing this
violence to the industry of the country, when men are
becoming conscious of their rights, and are determining
daily, with increased power, never to cease till those
rights, are vindicated and fully obtained. A distin-
guished nobleman has lately come forward, and has
written a letter to you in the public papers on this
subject—that nobleman was the Duke of Northum-
berland, and it was extremely wittily observed by the
Times, the Duke of Northumberland would have been
a very dangerous man if he had not had the power of
writing a letter and putting in the Post.—(Laughter,
and cheers.) But having written this letter, and
stated the grounds on which he supports the corn-
laws, he ceases to be a dangerous man. The illus-
trious Duke tells us that we must not let in a foreign
supply of corn, and that if we do we must neces-
sarily have a compulsory emigration.—(Hear, hear.)
Now, I have heard, that in a ship at sea, when pro-
visions are short, it occasionally happens that they