The Sun.
London, England, 1844-10-26 00:00:00

mind that the course of the seasons cannot be changed, '
will not be changed to suit the caprice, the folly, or the
criminality of human legislation.—(Applause.) As we
have had before, so we shall have again, a change of
seasons; and when that change shall come, and if the
people of this country have not, in the meantime, bz-
stirred themselves and shaken off this iniquitous impost,
I ask you, who can you blame but yourselves, and
where can you run for refuge, for your own folly will
have led you into danger, and by your own neglect alone
will you have allowed these evils again to come upon
you. You will again have to suffer those evils which
arise from the price of bread rising all over the country;
the consumption of the great mass of the people of all
kinds of manufactured goods will be greatly crippled;
you will have again a great exportation of gold, and a
great derangement of the monetary affairs of the coun-
try; you will again have numbers of merchants and
manufacturers going rapidly, week after week, into the
Gazette, you will again have shopkeepers impoverished,
and worst of all, you will again have the labourers of his
district, your honest and industrious artisans, plunged
into all that distress which we have lately witnessed,
and arisins, from that distress, discontent, dis-
affection, and a brutalising and barbarising of the minds
of the people, such as they have suffered from for the
last half-dozen years, and which 'they are now only par-
tially getting rid of.—(Applause.) It is impossible to
draw a picture too gloomy of that which we have already
seen in this district ; and it is much less possible to draw
a picture of that which must come, if we neglect the
power that we have in our own hands, to wipe away
these infamous laws. I am sure we have the power
the statements made by our Chairman to-night proves
that we have the power.—(Applause.) The Reform
Bill never has been worked by either the liberal or the
free trade party in this country.—(Applause.) It may
be a bad Bill ; it has flaws enough we all know ; it has
pit-falls many for us, and it has privileges far too many
for our opponents.—(Applause.) But for all that, if we
will only work it, I am persuaded there is within it
enough of the popular principle to enable us to amend
it, if need be—(Applause)—and to do many other things
which we may think necessary for our welfare.—(Loud
applause.) Well, then, if there be a possibility of bad
harvests and bad times coming upon us again, I need no
other argument to convince you that it is necessary that
the agitation of the Anti-Corn-law League should be
continued.—(Applause.) I am not one who is in the
habit of apologising for our agitation, nor do I go,
" with bated breath and whispering nimbleness," to ask
my Lord this, or squire that, whether it be proper, or
legal, or constitutional, or pleasant, that the Anti-
Corn-law League should endeavour to repeal the
corn-law.--(Continued applause.) I am sure, from
what we have seen in former years, and what we know
now, we have reasons sufficient to convince us, that if
ever the agitation of this question were a duty, it is a
duty now, and that if we were to let go of it now, we
should deserve all the calamities which the very worst
legislation which squiredom can carry on could possibly
inflict upon us.—(Applause.) Now, I charge the mono-
polist landowners with being the cause, the direct cause,
of the calamities which have afflicted this country fur
some years past ; and I charge them also with being the
direct cause of the deplorable state of things in which
their own agricultural counties are now found.—(Hear.)
They will find it out by and by ; they will come and ask
to have the corn-law repealed some day or other, if we
don't force them to do it beforehand.—( Applause.) his
a law which ultimately must bring ruin, and distress,
and embarrassment, and discor I around their own
baronial halls, as much as it can do in this densely popu-
lated county. These landowners are too ignorant to
legislate for trade.—(Applause.) Mr. Cobden, I think,
charged them with being so ignorant that they were not
lit to manage a chandler's shop.—(Applause and
laughter.) One of them did rise in his place in Parlia-
ment to protest against such a charge, and to assert a
higher character for the order with which he was asso-
ciated ; he said they were fit to manage a chandler's
shop. -(Great laughter.) Their ignorance is so great
in all matters of commercial policy, not only upon facts
but upon principles, that their selfishness runs them into
danger. But there would be no great harm to this
country from squiredom, if there were no man in this
district foolish enough to help them.—(flear, hear.)
If there be a creature of an order which has never yet
been classified, it is a manufacturer in the cotton trade
supporting a squire in carrying out a law to starve the
manufacturer's labourers, and to destroy his trade.—
'Applause.) And yet there are some—a good many—
.

tho-u-gh in the south-of England people cannot well -be•
lieve it.—(Hear, hear.) The monopolist landlords them-
selves, when they passed the corn-law, never for an in-
stant dreamt that they should receive great support from
this district. They have their Buckingham, and manu •
facturers have their Birley.—(Loud applause.) Now I
would be the very last man in this room to say a sylla-
ble against any man who was acting at an election in his
political character different from me, but acting accord-
ing to his honest conviction, and after moderate inquiry
into the question before him. But when I see a man
who, of all men in the world, one would think has a
direct interest in the well-being of commerce and manu-
factures, presiding, as I believe, this man did preside
over the election committee for the return of a person
pledged to oppose every step in the direction of free
trade, I do say that that man is a traitor to the order to
which he belongs—(Hear, hear)—and abandons his duty,
especially to the great mass of the labourers of this dis-
trict, to a large number of whom he gives employment.
—( Loud applause.) It may be that this gentleman was
perfectly convinced that a fall in the price of bread
would involve a fall in the rate of wages, for I have
understood that during this week there has been a
procession of persons in his employ, discontented
with the present rate of wages, and seeking
for an advance, grounding their claim upon the in •
crease of business, and the improvement in business ;
thus proving that the statements of the monopolists in
this respect were wholly false.—(Applause.) I know
not whether this brings conviction to the mind of Mr.
Birley, or to any other of his class. I would hope that
they acted conscientiously in the courses that they took ;
but I do say that it becomes the duty of the free traders
of this country, who are five out of every six of the po-
pulation—(Loud applause)—l say it does become
us to mark with our reprobation the conduct of
any man, himself deriving his property and his station
from the commerce and the manufactures of his country,
and when an invader comes to besiege the town, that he
himself, traitor-like, by night, as it were, opens the gates
and lets in the enemy.—(Cheers.) The last time I was
in this hall I listened with extreme pleasure to a speech
delivered by Mr. Smythe, the Member for Canterbury,
himself the son of a nobleman, and heir, I presume, to a
Peerage, a speech from which the monopolist manufac-
turers of this district would do well to take a lesson.—
(Cheers.) He spoke of a time when a citizen of the
distinguished city of Mayence combined with others to
put down the spoliation of the barons, who lived upon
the banks of the Rhine—barons who, as he said, exacted
a toll upon the I±rst necessaries of life.—(Hear, hear.)
Now, do you believe that there was a single citizen of
Mayence who turned out to fight on the side of the ba-
rons? And yet the monopolist manufacturers are sur-
rounded by a body of men, nobles of this country—nobles
by courtesy, truly—who exact a toll upon the first
necessaries of life, who do not do it by pistol, musket,
bayonet, or sword, but who do it by the not less power-
ful, far more subtle machinery of an Act of Parliament;
and when we are assembled here, men all of one order,
interested in nothing but the prosperity of the industry
of this district and of our country—when we are as-
sembled together fur the purpose of protesting against
this invasion of our rights, and calling upon the whole
population to march with us, after us, or before us, to
re-establish our rights, then we find the monopolist ma-
nufacturer—and this one I have named the chief among
them—actually turning out from this district and siding
with the feudal barons, actually endeavouring to
strengthen the oppression which we are striving to over-
throw.—(Loud applause.) I often wonder why it is that
men are so willing to bow their necks to men who are
ornamented with stars and garters and titles—(Ap-
plause)—for I am sure the more I come in contact with
these characters, the more I come to the conclusion that
it is something far beyond this which constitutes true
nobility of character.—(Applause.) And there is not
any creature that crawls the earth to my rind more
despicable and more pitiable than the man who sacrifices
the interests of his own class, and of his own order, and
of his country, merely that he may toady somebody
who has a title to his name.—(Applause.) He should
recollect—
" Tit:e his ill-woven chaplet wears
Full often wreathed around the miscreant's brow ;"

and that there are men in the peerage of every country
who are greatly to be dr...spised, as there are some worthy
to be honoured to the utmost, in whose hearts their high
rank has not driven away all sympathy with the rights
and interests of their fellow-men.—(Applause.) And
for whom is it that these men degrade themselves, and
make these sacrifices ? Why, for a class who don't like
us, the producers ; for it is no disrespect to the aris-
tocracy of this country to say that they don't like trade,
because it is notorious that they value themselves chiefly
on the very long period of time during which their an-
cestors have not been connected with anything so sordid
as trade.—(Applause.) They prove that they don't like
trade, because they make laws which shall cripple trade,
' and keep it always, as it were, in swaddling-clothes, and
! never let the infant become a youth, nor the youth a
man.—(Hear, hear.) And they are a class, also, of whom
1 it may be said, and I say it 'with grief, that however bad
the laws they pass in Parliament may be, the adminis-
tration of those laws in their own districts, where they
reign predominant, is quite as bad as the legislation of
which they are guilty.—(Applause.) But there is a
retributive justice—l heard Sir James Graham say that.
—(Loud applause.) And when men fail in their duty,
or violate great principles, they may be sure that,
some time or other, they will be found out and punished
for it. In the southern counties, at this moment, how
deplorable is the state of thins ! It is not of our
telling ; the evidence comes from themselves. It has
not gone through the magnifying process of the council-
chamber of the Anti-Corn-law League. The insurance
offices proclaim it.—(Hear, hear.) Did not one office
send down 200/. towards the fund ter opening public
parks and walks in Manchester, with a letter in which
they complimented the people of Manchester and the
working classes for the energy, zeal, and courage, with
which they had assisted in preserving property when in
danger of being destroyed by fire.—(Applause.) And
within a fortnight of that memorable letter, for I hold it
to be memorable, and most creditable and honourable to
this town—within a fortnight of that time, did not the
united insurance-offices meet together and issue a cir-
cular to all their agents in England and Wales—and, I
believe, in Ireland—but certainly in England and Wales,
tti_ _ _
(euri ritinedhaeref,iorhrceeuamhr e.
circumstances
insures
ff a
ther.m farming
ssotno cwkh,
oa
ws
itsoh
et hs e
to c
ihnas ruarce-
11
mAannd
whwoh ahta, are
received any threatening
society it must be, when
!it is necessary to ask a farmer—has he reeeiveLar threat-
ening letter ? What does that mean ? Is
body who is ready to burn his premises, and it me asymn he,e-
almost to destroy his rife ? Again—has the- man