The Sun.
London, England, 1844-10-28 00:00:00

people who cavil at this public appeal and say—" you
will not put salt upon the enemy's tail—it is much too
wise a bird. They have been at this work long ago,"
and they have the worst of it now.—(Hear, hear.)
What has been the conduct of the landlords of the coun-
try ? Why they have been long engaged in multiply-
ing voters upon their estates, making their
farmers take their sons, brothers, nephews to
the register—making them qualify as. many as the
rent of the land will cover ; they have been making
their land a kind of political capital ever since the
passing of the Reform Bill.—(Cheers and a laugh.) You
have then a new ground open to you which has 'never
yet been entered upon, and from which I expect—in the
course of not more than three years from this time—
that every county, if we persevere as we have in South
Lancashire, possessing a large town population, may
carry free traders as their representatives to Parliament.
—(Cheers.) Now, gentlemen, with just these prelimi-
nary remarks, I was going to notice a common objection
made to us during the last two or three months, that the
League had been very quiet of late—that we have been
doing nothing.—(Hear.) Many people have said to me,
" When are you going out into the agricultural districts
again ? I think they will be quite ripe for you now, for
most of your predictions have fallen true, and the farmers
will come and listen."—(Hear.) My answer has been,
" We are better employed at present at home, and the
landlords are doing our work very well for us at their
agricultural meetings."—(Loud laughter and cheers.)
What have been the features of the agricultural meetings
we have heard of in the last two months ? There is one
very striking circumstance, that from the Duke of
Buckingham downwards every president of an agricul-
tural association has always begun the proceedings of the
day by saying, " We must not introduce political topics
in the discussions of this association."—(Hear, hear.)
That means, " It is not convenient to us, the political
landlords, to talk about the corn-laws just now to the
farmers:!"—(Cheers)—and so they talk of everthing else
but the corn-laws, and a very pretty business they make
of their discussions.—(A laugh.) We hear in every case
in which I have read their reports of the deplorable state
of the agricultural labourers. Now, I beg to premise,
from my own personal observation and much inquiry,
that the agricultural labourers, as a class, are better off
now than they were when corn was 70s. the quarter, in
1839 and 1840.—(Hear, hear.) I watched the poor-law
returns during those years, when we had such deep dis-
tress in this district, and I found that able-bodied pau-
perism was increasing faster in the corn-growing coun-
ties of Sussex and Kent than they were in these manu-
facturing districts. When we called together the con-
ference of ministers from all parts of the country, the
accounts they brought from the rural villages were as
heart-rending as anything we had ever known in these
manufacturing districts.—(Hear.) You did not hear the
clamorous cry from the agricultural districts then, be-
cause they were drowned in the concentrated cry from
these populous regions; but they were suffering as much
as you were suffering.—(Hear.) And now, when in this
district employment and comparative prosperity have re-
turned upon us, we hear of the state of the agricultural
labourers, which has been always bad, always at the
lowest level of wretchedness, only because you have
ceased to occupy the public mind with your complaints
and your distresses.—(Hear, hear.) But if what they
tell us is true, that the agricultural labourers are so dis-
tressed, what becomes of their plea in the House of Com-
mons, that the corn-law was passed and kept up for the
benefit of the agricultural labourers ?—(Loud cries of
Hear, hear.") After what have heard from these
gentlemen, the squirearchy in the House of Commons,
I should have expected that they ought to have been the
last upon the institution of agricultural associations to
complain of distress, and of the dangers impending over
them in the future, to have said, " I have a nostrum in
my pocket that will quite prevent distress among agri-
cultural labourers. Have we not got the corn-law ?
Did we not pass it upon the pretence of remedying the
distress of the agricultural labourers ? Here it is. We
have the sliding scale, and depend upon it our agricultu-
ral labourers have nothing to fear."—(Hear.) But in-
stead of that, in no instance do they ever allude to the
corn-law, as either a cause of employment or as a means
of remedying the evil.—(Hear, hear.) They never al-
lude to any Act of Parliament of the kind at all; and
they seek wide and far for some other remedy for their
distresses.—(Hear, hear.) What are their remedies ?
One of the latest declared is allotments of land. To hear
the outcry that we have from the leaders of the country,
glorifying themselves with the idea of giving a patch of
land to the labourer, you would have thought they had
resolved all at once to make a present of a little slice of
their estates to the labourers around them—(Hear, hear)
—but what does it amount to ? It is proposed that each
cottage should have a garden attached to it ! The ge-
neral advice is, I see, that it should be not more than
half an acre, and some are recommending it to be a
quarter of an acre in extent ! It amounts to this, that
the landlords, benevolent souls, are going to allow the
peasantry that live upon their land to have a garden to
their cottages.—(Hear, hear.) Why, there was a law
passed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, ordaining that
no cottage should be built in this country without a gar-
den Leine- attached to it.—(Hear.) I do not believe
that law has ever been repealed to this day ; and the
landlords, after violating the law, are now takng credit
to themselves, and glorifying each other, that they are
going to allow their labourers to have a garden to their
cottages.—(Hear.) Now what is the mode in which
these gentlemen go to work to benefit the agricultural
labourers ? They call them together for a ploughing
match, then they bring them into the room and give
them a glass of wine, and they give a " reward' of
thirty shillings to the man who has ploughed the best I
Then they inquire who has served twenty-five years in
the same place, and perhaps they condescend to give
him thirty shillings as a reward for good conduct.—
(Hear.) Then the farmers. The farmers who sit at
the table have their names read over, and prizes are
awarded to one for successfully cultivating turnips, to an-
other for having produced a good fat ox, and to another
for having accumulated the greatest quantity of fat upon
a pig.—(Laughter.) And this is the way in which agri-
culture is to be improved !—(Hear.) What should you
think if a similar plan were adopted to protect you in
your business ?—(Bear.) Let us suppose that a number
of monopolists came down once a year—once a year
mind you—for the lesson is only given once a year, and
then only about two hours and a half long—that they
held a meeting, in which they would have a spinning
match or a weaving match.— (Hear.) And after they
had been into some prize mill to see this spinning and
weaving match, they sat down to dinner and Job Har-
greaves or Frank Smith is brought in, stroking his head
down all the while as he comes before the squirearchy—
(Laugh ter)—and making his very best bow, to receive
from the chairman thirty shillings as a reward for having
been the best spinner and the best weaver.—(Hear, and
laughter) And this being disposed of, imagine next the
manufacturer getting a prize of 5/. for the best piece of
fustian.—(Cheers.) And another, ditto, ditto, for the
best yard-wide ca ico.—(Laughter.) Then imagine a
shopkeeper rising from his seat at the table, while the
chairman puts on a grave face, and addressing him in
complimentary terms, presents him with 5/., fur having
kept during the past year his shop floor and his counters
in the cleanest state.—(shouts of laughter.) Then they
call up a manufacturer, end he has an award of 51., be-
cause the inspectors had found his mill to be in the best
working condition.—(A laugh.) Then the merchant
rises up, and gets his reward of 51., for having been
found by the inspectors to have kept his books in the
Lest order by double entry.—(Renewed laughter.) You
laugh at all this, and well you may. You cannot help
it. Where is the difference between the absurdity, the
mockery, of bringing up men in round frocks to a dinner
fable and giving them thirty shillings because they have
ploughed well, or hoed well, or harrowed well; bringing
up farmers to give them prizes for having the cleanest !
field of Swedish turnips, or for having managed their i
farm in the best way ? Where is the difference, I ask,
Fetseeen offering these rewards and the giving out here
of inch rewards as I have just now alluded to ?—(Hear,
bear.) Let cs suppose, if you can keep your counte-
'lances, that such a state of things existed here, and
what must be the concomitant order of things ?—(Hear,
hear.) It would argue, in the first place, that the pro-
prietors who were so treated were an abject and a ser-
vile class.—(hear, hear.) It would argue that the
trader who could condescend to Le treated so, would
himself be little better than a slave.—(Cheers.) And if
.you needed such stimulants as these to make you carry
on your business as you ought to do, how do you think
you would be found in the race of industry as compared
with other countries, where they were not quite so
childish as to be fondled and dandled by a body of
Members of Perli'atnent ?—(Hear, hear.) Why, there
would not be a country on the face of the world that you
could coif pee with—that is evident. You would, like
them, be going to these same Parliamentary men who
were your nurses, in order that they might pass an Act
of Parliament to protect you in your trade.—(Hear,
hear.) But the landlords themselves, they do not give '
themselves praises, but they hold up their conduct as
something deserving of reward, of public admiration,
because they can come forward and tell us that they
make the most of their land forseeth.—(Hear, hear.)
I was reading just now, in this morning's paper,
a report of Lord Stanley's speech at the Agri-
cultural Society's meeting on Tuesday, which by the
magic power of steam has been carried to London, and
brought back to us here in Manchester, in te o days.—
(Hear.) Lord Stanley tells us what must be done with
Janet. Ile srays :—" And Ire peat what I have aim ally
said oft a former occasion in this room, that there is no
investrncf:t in the world in which a landlord can so
safely, so usefully,
or t o profitably invest his capital, as
in the improvement of his own farm, by money sunk in
draining, on security of the land which belongs to him-
self."—(Hear, nd cheers.) Well, what dogs this amount
to ? That it is the interest of the landlord to make the
most of his land.—(Hear, and a laugh.) And he goes
on to say, and he takes some little credit to himself and
to his father for what had Leen done with his land here
in Lancashire. He says :—" In this last year we have
laid down in deep draining sornee here about three hun-
dred miles of drains, at an expense ef bt tween 5,00 a
and 6,000/. ; and, I think, employed about a million and
a half of draining tilee."—(Hear.) I believe my frit nd
Mr. Bright here—(Cheers)—who has been building a
mill, has during the same time been laying down about a
million and a half of bricks in erecting it—(Laughter
and cheers)—but you would be astonished, would you
not, and 1 am sure the squirearchy would be rather
puzzled, if Mr. Bright were to get up here and talk of
that as something for which he might glorify
himself,
having first of all declared it was the
most
T cheers and
rofitablein:
vestment any man could make
laughter.) By the way,
hliswmisihllim.on y—
and a half of bricks
friend Lou here would
d
calculate how much duty
pay to the Government, which duty my Lord Stanley
and his fellow-landlords have managed to
ow
exempt drain-
ingl tiles from.—(Hear, and applause.) x
men, I do not want to say anything rude or un'ci!ir and
J will not apply my remarks personally to Lord Stanley,
but I will say this, that the whole course of the conduct
of these gentlemen in their exhibitions—the landlords—
when they parade to the world what they condescend to
do with their land, is just a gratuitous piece of imperti-
Deuce to the rest of the community.—(Loved cheers.)