The Sun.
London, England, 1844-12-12 00:00:00

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they have it, Middlesex will be perfectly safe befzirrN4aft o'
.
next election. But besides qualifying yo, f''.. •p, 4'
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you must take care that your opponents hay: : .g. il:',. .:1-- i=
.1 ,
votes on the list. Your neighbours may tell yr, w el -c--<„ et Iktf:
you return home, " Notwithstanding all t 4 ~
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i
Cobden has said, the landlords will beat you a I ''. ...1110-4414.
see how they can split up their property, an. .
their estates, or give life-rent charges upon then:CM-NAM:
As Mr. Villiers has said, the estates are not theirs in
many cases. I believe that four-fifths of the parch-
ments are not at home—(Laughter)—and if they
are, who will they trust with a bona fide rent•charge I'
The difficulty which I foresee is this. Judging by
the accounts which I have read of the labourers con-
dition in Dorsetshire and 'Wiltshire, I should think it
very likely that when the revising barrister comes
round, he will find one-half of the landlord's voters in
the workhouse, and the other half in the gaol for
poaching. No, the landowners have done their worst.
They want money, men, and zeal in their cause. I
believe we have struck the right nail on the head. We
have never yet proposed anything which met with so
unanimous a reception in the country as on this sub-
ject; it has taken us two hours a day in Manchester
to answer the communications received from all parts
of the country in reference to it. Many palm;
may be disposed to say that this is not quite legitimate—
that we cannot go on manufacturing votes. We say
the law and the constitution prescribes it, and we
have no alternative. It may be a very bad system to
require that 401. or 501. should be laid out on the sur-
face of the earth ; but the law prescribed this plan,
and they did not want to violate the law, but to con-
form to it both in spirit and in fact. There is nothing
in this that savours of trick or finesse of any kind; the
voter must have a bona fide qualification. It Will not
do now to resort to the old system of making fictitious
votes ; there is now a register ; there was none under
the old law. Some may tell us that we should not
disclose our plans. We reply that we have nothing
to gain by secresy. There are hundreds of thou-
sands of our fellow-countrymen whose hearts will
beat with joy when they read the report
of this meeting.—(Cheers.) We speak to the sym-
pathetic multitude, whose hearts are with us through-
out the length and breadth of the land. Scotland.
tells us that if it had the 40s. freehold, it could gain
twelve counties ; Ireland looks to us ; and shall Eng-
' land, with a nominal franchise of 40s. a year, not be
able to beat down the miserable, unintelligent, inca-
pable oligarchy, which is misgoverning the country ?
No, I will not believe it. We will cry aloud, not here
alone—but from every pedestal on which we may be
placed throughout the country, though there is no
pinnacle like this to speak from—we will say every-
where, " Qualify, qualify, qualify," not simply for the
sake of the industrious millions, but for the
sake of the aristocracy themselves, and for the sake of
their dependants and miserable serfs, the agricultural
labourers; qualify especially for the benefit of the
landed interest, who, if left to their own thoughtless
and misguided conduct, will bring this country down
to the condition of Spain or Sicily, and at the same
time bring themselves down to the same beggary
with which the Spanish grandees have breught
themselves; to avert this calamity from them, the
ignorant and besotted few, we say, " Qualify, qualify,
qualify."--(The Hon. Gentleman concluded amidst
loud and long continued cheering.)
Mr. BRIGHT then came forward, and said—lt is
about twelve months since I took the liberty, upon
this platform, of expressing my opinion that mono-
polists were greatly deceiving themselves if they
fancied that the return of prosperity to the manu-
facturing districts would save them from the con-

tinued agitation of the Anti-Corn-law League. I
stated then, that distress in the manufacturing dis-
tricts aided us, by the discontent which it occasioned,
but that returning prosperity did so also, by the sub-
scriptions which the friends of the League poured
into the exchequer. Now the past year has ex-
hibited more than 90,0001. subscribed by the free
traders of this country, thus proving zeal in the cause ;
and it does something, too, to prove their continued
confidence in the council of the League—(Hear,
hear, and cheers)—and the increasing zeal which
is now found to exist in the manufacturing counties
is precisely on a par with what we have every reason
to believe exists in the metropolis.—(Cheers.) From
this great fact, I am led to the conclusion that the
question which has been raised, and which is not
merely a cry got up for factious or momentary pur-
poses, but is intended to sink deeply into the minds
of the people, and thus become a part of their exist-
ence, almost of their religion—(Cheers')—is a cause
which seizes as fast a hold of the feelings, as it does
on the reason, of our countrymen.—(Hear, hear.) —I
was a corn-law repealer before I had investigated the
question, and thousands of my countrymen are like
myself in that respect. Our natural impulses, our
natural sympathies, revolts against the barbarous
proposition, that the national prosperity can be
increased by a scarcity of food, and that the
great masses of the people among whom we
live can feed the better the scantier the
table be at which they do feed.—(Hear.) But in-
vestigation has confirmed the opinion which, perhaps,
was first held from the force of ardour, as well as from
feelings of sympathy.—(Hear, hear.) Investigation
had proved to us that the effect of the corn-laws on
the foreign trade of the country is most disastrous—
(Hear, hear)—that it raises hostile and vindictive
feelings on the part of foreign nations—(Hear)--that
it closes the ports of foreign customers—(Hear)—by
hostile tariffs ; that it diminishes the means of em-
ployment ; and diminishes the wages and comforts of
the working population.—(Cheers.) It was found
that our home trade was affected to a still more
ruinous extent. In the districts from which we come,
for we are men who might formerly have been said
to have had our home in Lancashire, although we
are now nearly as much in London—(Hear,
hear)—in that district we find the indus-
trious population prostrate and suffering from the
operation of the corn-laws.—(Hear, hear.) There
is one good, however, which has arisen from that suf-
fering. The sympathy which formerly existed be-
tween the employer and employed has been greatly
extended and greatly strengthened.—(Cheers.) We
have seen those men by whose labour the wonderful
manufactures of this country are carried on, prostrate,
and almost destroyed by the operation of this law--a
law passed by a powerful class—a class against whose
invasion of the rights of property the working people
were wholly unable to defend themselves—(Hear,
hear)—and we, the middle classes, in reality as
powerful a class—we have not stood forth as we
ought to have done to defend them. We have seen
our error—(Cheers)—we have seen these men strug-
gling against the evil necessity which was driving them
to pauperism and the workhouse.—(Cheers.) We
have seen how nobly they have struggled—how
great was their love of independence.—(Hear,
hear.) We have seen a heroism in some of
those men before which the heroism of warriors
turns pale.—(Loud cheers.) We came to London
as our head-quarters—as the heart of the empire—as
the seat of Government—to explain the cause of these
sufferings. We were met by the landowners with
the statement, that if the corn-laws did destroy our
labourers, it was necessary to protect their labourers.
We were then led to inquire into this new agitation ;
and further inquiry brought out more of the truth,
but the whole truth will, I fear, never be known.
We found that the evidence of the Government Com-
mission, the evidence of all private and impartial per-
sons, the evidence of all sent to the agricultural
districts, agreed most singularly in this. What-
ever distress had been felt in the manufac-
turing districts, it much exceeded that which
was endured by the labourers upon those pro-
tected estates ; and we have found out another
thing, viz., that distress on those estates is not of a
temporary character, but has existed there for many
years. In 1829 and 1830 the torch of the incendiary
frightened the agriculturists into the raising of wages,
and into some consideration for the .state of the poor.
In 1843 the same sad instructor was at work ; and we
find them now with their wages very much depressed,
and that something must be done for their relief. We
have heard that more than thirty farmers stated be-
fore the Committee in 1836, that never within their
lifetime had the condition of the agriculturists been
as good as then, and that never before had they been
able to obtain more wages and better employment
than during that period. You have heard that the
effect of this is to increase mortality. I could give
you statistics to show, that precisely as the price of
food increases, the rate of emigration increases from
this country to foreign lands ; that the number of
committals before magistrates increase in the same
way ; and that the number of deaths amongst the
working classes increase at about the same rate.
We were aided by the manufacturing districts—we
are now aided by the agricultural districts.—(Hear.)
We are attacking the landowners in front, and the
poor starving labourers are attacking them in the rear,
and this they did, at a meeting lately held at Goat-
aker, in the county of Wiltshire. Is there not some-
thing wrong when men with their wives and families
assemble together by hundreds—aye, hundreds there
were who could not get within the walls of the place
of meeting—when women—aged women—stood up
before hundreds of their neighbours to tell them of
their privations ?—(Hear.) Does it bode no evil for
the landed proprietors that the class amongst whom
they live are in this desperate condition? Is it not
right that we, who know something of the cause of
this state of things, end who have some influence with
the middle and working classes—is it not right, I say,
that we should work more than we have worked for
the delivery of this country from a state of things so