The Sun.
London, England, 1844-06-20 00:00:00

from that of the class having only their labour
to rely upon. It might answer the purpose of the
manufacturer, the merchant, and the shopkeeper; it
might in some measure satisfy those who were look-
ing exclusively to their own interests ; but it would
do so at the sacrifice of the interests and the rights of
the great majotity of the toiling multitudes, whose
question this was, and with reference to whom
it had always been agitated, and not one item
of whose claim to food should ever be compro-
mised by any friend of free trade, or that
just and broad principle which that phrase denoted.
In looking at the public indicatives of the state of
their cause, one could not but be struck at once with
the fact of the unabated interest that had been mani-
fested in those meetings ; and this was the more re-
markable at the present time than it was last year or
on any former occasion, and for this reason :—The pre-
sent period was not one of very much excitement
on this question. It was not one in which there
were such stimulating and cheering electoral victories
as had occurred a few months ago. It was not one
of those numerous public meetings in different parts
of the kingdom, which some while since occupied
public attention, and formed a continual occasion for
regarding the progress of their cause. It had not
been a period, except within the last few days, of
Parliamentary discussions, that were exciting any
very extended degree of notice or great influence ;
yet they had come to this place, from week to week,
seeing the old familiar faces, and hearing the old
familiar voices ; they came under no temporary ex-
citement, under no extraordinary stimulus from with-
out ; they came because there was an increasing
stimulus in their own bosoms; they came because
this was a matter of principle, and not of
mere passing excitement; they came because their
determination was fixed and rooted in their own souls
to protest against the atrocious impost on food till it
should be utterly abolished—and to reiterate that de-
termination, calling Heaven to witness, that come
storm, come sunshine, come calm, come struggle,
they were resolved to make their protest, till at
length the voice of truth and justice prevailed over
all class interests, and that the Legislature itself
should yield to the power of public opinion.
—:(Cheers.) In this quiet determination they
needed no contrivance, no recourse to varied means
for keeping up their attendance. He saw in them
that calm and growing strength which worked like
the mighty elements of nature itself ; it was the
power which had within itself the means of perma-
nence and the means of permanence in moral power
implied the means of increase also. It showed a
strength that went on from day to day silently and
irresistibly swelling like the snow on the mountain
top, till it formed into an extent compact as the
glacier, ready at a word, if they bided their time—
ready when that time came to rush down, bearing all
before it, overwhelming any hostile power with the
will, the resistless will of a mighty nation.—(Loud
cheers.) Miscalculating the quietness with which true
power held its own, they found some journalists
still determined to treat the League as absolutely or
permanently defunct ; indeed, only a few days ago it
was stated by one of these papers that the League
had been driven from Covent-garden Theatre by the
London Conservative Association, a most marvellous
rout that would have been ; but the generosity that
had allowed them the use of the theatre, had been by
no means displaced. Their meeting ought to have
been held this day instead of last Wednesday, then,
when they toasted the glorious majority of ninety,
they might have asked where it was last Monday and
on Friday.—(Loud cheers.) They might have been
called on to explain whether they were cele-
brating the triumph of the Tories over Peel, or of
Peel over the Tories.—(Cheers and laughter.). And
that question might have especially been asked of
Sir _Howard Douglas, who voted on the first occasion
with Mr. Miles, and on the second occasion with Sir
R. Peel, and who prefaced his second vote with de-
claring that his opinions had undergone no change.—
(Oreat laughter.) That was the gentleman who
took on him, or had put upon him, the task of being
the responsor when the health of the Duke of Wel-
lington was given. Had the Conservative festival
waited till to-day, they might have made a pithy
allusion to the uncovered statue of the Duke, which
he was told, for he had not seen it, stood with its
face to the Post-office and the Horse-Guards, and its
back towards the Royal Exchange.—(Laughter.)
At that festival they said repeatedly, and they said
very truly, that they were not an association to up-
hold " any particular Ministry." The Ministry such
an association upheld must be a Ministry that were
not very particular—(Loud cheers)—and he won-
dered much, considering the number of mercantile
people there, and the large correspondence they must
keep up, he wondered they did not introduce at least
some such toast as this, Success to those who hold
the seals of office, and who break the seals of letters."
—(Loud cheers, several times renewed.) To re-
turn to the indications of the progress of their
cause, he for one reckoned it a very gra-
tifying indication, and a good of immense
moment effected by the League, that the condition of
, the, agricultural labourer was now forced upon public
attention, with a power that insured that something
must be done towards their amelioration. It was the
League that brought that condition first under notice,
in the face of the boldest contradiction ; for every
rural district was described as a perfect arcadia, all
innocence, and comfort, and enjoyment. The veil
was now torn aside, one which no patching could
ever hold together again, and the horrid and disgust-
ing reality was exposed, a reality which, however
tampered :with, he believed could never be entirely
altered in its character, and never thoroughly
_ reformed, but by the accomplishment of that
, repeal of the taxes on food which it was
the object of the League to accomplish.
How much had been done by the League in the cause
of free trade ? Would that great power, the Times,
have taken up their cause had it not been for previous
preparation ? The Times sent out its royal com-
mission to the disturbed districts ; he said royal com-
, mission, for there were other powers of Government
besides those that met in West Minster. The Times
might be said, to a certain agent, to rule England as
Daniel O'Connell rules Ireland. Printing-house-
. square, and the Penitentiary at the Circular-road, were
seats of Government, where there were influences
which made themselves felt to the remotest bounda-
ries of either island. A series of papers had appeared
. in the Times regarding the agricultural districts,
whence you might trace, as on a map, a broad, black
, line—low wages and incendiary fires.—(Hear, hear.)
These papers, by the impression they would produce,
, would shame down the calumnies so often repeated
against the League, that they had, or could have had,
anything to do with these disturbances. Those
sophisms had fallen in the way of so many others—
they would go down the road to oblivion, and nothing
would be left but the plain, daring assertion—that to
tax food is good for our pockets, and that tax we will
keep up as long as you leave us the power.—(Hear,
hear.) It was pleasing to see that the condition of
these poor creatures was becoming so much better
Understood, and that the need of some alleviation to
the miseries of the inhabitants of the agricultural
counties of Norfolk, Essex, and Suffolk was univer-
sally admitted. This, and much more, was owing
to the exertions pf the League.—(Hear, hear.)
The poor creature born to filth and hunger,
brought up in a dilapidated cottage destined to de-
.molition under the common-clearing system—sent
out in his early years to break stones on the road
that leads to some ducal mansion, kept up in splen-
dour by the assistance of a bread-tax—made to work
for all ; he mist feed, and house, and lie as he can—
his chureh was the beer-shop, his only refuge—his
only chance of tasting anything but dry bread,
poaching on the preserves of some squiresteering
between the Scylla and Charybdis of the workhouse
and the gaol, the view of the gallows being made visi-
ble in the distance by the fires of the blazing barns.
To reach such as this the 'star of hope had risen,
and it would held on in its course until it obtained
- the meridian of truth and justice. There were indi-
cations of advance in their cause in the present con-
dition of the hostile powers. Where was the great
Compact phalanx which had been bound against them
two years ago ? Where was the power which was
exercised in- the election of 1841, when it carried
everything before them ? Where was that compact
now ? Quarrelling about almost everything that-
could be started. They were quarrelling about a
Welsh bishopric, Dissenters' Chapels Bills, and were
about to quarrel about the New Poor-law, having
quarrelled about the Ten Hsu& Bill, and were now
involved in a deadly quarrel about the sugar duties.
There were high Church and moderate Church—an-
.
dent Tories and modern Conservatives--young
Eng-
land and old England (Laughter) —.and there
was was the Prime Minister himself stirring up the hete-
rogeneous material,
and well might he exclaim--"
Double double, toil and trouble,
Fire burn and cauldron bubble. —(Laughter.)
Thus was Sir Robert Peel at the head of that great
Conservative party, which he had been ten years
amalgamating. These things read a very impressive
moral lesson, which was to avoid in future any endea-
vour to form a party without principle—or what was
'Worse, a party with five or six antagonistic principles.
In opposition, Sir Robert Peel had avoided showing
himself with wonderful dexterity. The amalgama-
tion of the 'Tory arty succeeded in displacing the
Whigs ; but Sir Robert Peel was now exhibited in
the- most pitiable light in which a Prime Minister has
been placed—endured for his dexterity—tolerated for
nothing else. There he was---toiling at their work—
endured by all, scorned by all, ti warted by all—re-
Prosebed by all—not adhered to for any steadiness of
printiple, for he turned his back upon all those doc-
trines which he formerly maintained, but supported-
because be propped up that wretched system of expe-
-‘it6We which
nirmilwas fast tottering to destruction.
b:erguert3i tto sustain himself in office he had
obtained for hinisee most palpable treachery. He had
trickster, and if they e well-earned reputation of a
ey searched the calendar they

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