The Sun.
London, England, 1844-07-04 00:00:00

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provided they looked merely to their pecuniary inte-
rest in the matter. He believed a repeal of the corn-
laws might interfere with that political despotism and
political union which still existed, though terribly
shattered in the counties—he meant that union by
which man sought political power by other means than
the honest one of appealing to the intelligence of their
fellow-countrymen, by means of that monopoly which
oppressed the nation. If the landowners chose
to undertake improvements, and would surrender
their political power by granting long leases ; if they
would be. content to eschew such old, feudal privi-
leges of the chase, as that of " vert and venison;" if
they would choose between keeping tenants to culti-
vate the land, and game to destroy the tenants' crops,
he believed the landowner would not be injured.
They took their stand on the principles and evidence
furnished by such men as Lord Spencer and Lord
Ducie. They believed that if landowners would be-
come what they ought to be, useful, practical men ;
if they would dispense with those agents and
valuers who were now their ready tools for
hoodwinking the farmers, he did not believe
that a free trade in corn would necessarily
injtire the landowners themselves.—(Hear, hear.)
If any one class of men would be injured by the re-
peal of the corn-laws, it would be the clergymen of
the Established Church. The Tithe Commutation
Act fixed the income of the clergy at .a certain number
of quarters of corn per annum. Suppose a clergy-
man's tithes were fixed at 200 quarters of corn per
annum, at 40s. per quarter, that would be 4001.
a•year. If corn was at 50s. a quarter it would amount
to 5001. a-year. Now, if the result of the corn-law
should be to cause a reduction of the price of corn in
the amount of 103. a quarter, though he did not
predict such a result, or take it as an argument,
he admitted that this would cause an uncompensated
loss to the tithe-owner; he did not spend enough of
his income in bread to make the greater cheapness of
it, a compensation. But he would ask, if this was
a right position of the clergymen of this country to
be placed in, that those who prayed for plenty should
have an interest in dearth and scarcity?—(Cheers.)
He would put it to the clergy themselves, whether it
was in accordance with their character and respect-
ability, that they should be found going about to
these meetings of the Anti-League Societies, for the
purpose of upholding the corn-laws. Why, a
clergyman would not be fit to sit on a jury
to try these corn-laws; he might be challenged and
excluded from the jury as an interested person ; in
decency then he asked them to stand neuter on this
question ; he asked no more. He believed that free
trade would cause a rise in the money wages of the
operative, and would give him provisions at the
natural price, which natural price would probably be
lower than they had ever hitherto been. He believed
that it would cause an increase in the demand for
labour of every kind, not merely in the labour of
operatives, but of every class—of clerks, of the youths
they wished to set out in life, and about whom 'fathers
and mothers felt so much difficulty ; they heard
everywhere that trades were full, all the professions
were overflowing, and they could get nothing from
the Government, because it gave everything it had to
give to the aristocracy.—(Cheers.) This was their
filth ; these were their objects ; this was the ground
on which they stood; they believed they were right,
and their opponents acknowledged they were right.
They acknowledged their principles to be true, and
the League stood on the truth of those principles.
Let them not be discouraged at the present difficul-
ties of their position ; he had never felt less discou-
raged than he did at the present moment. Their
labours for the next few months might not be quite so
noisy as they had been. Probably there had been a little
too -much talking ; but they would be quite as efficient.
The registration throughout the country would be
well and systematically worked.—(Cheers.) And he
would advise them in every locality, to press the im-
portance of this subject on their neighbours, to watch
the registration, to put themselves on the list, and to
endeavour to strike off those monopolists, who would
not listen to truth and reason on this question. Let
them have this registration, and another after it, and
they should be able to make a very different account
of things in the House of Commons than at
present. One word more : let them keep
the question in its true position. Let them
not permit themselves to be used or abused
by any existing political party. They had no objec-
tion to an alliance, offensive or defensive, with any
party that would adopt their principles; but let them
not be such blockheads as to go into partnership with
any one ; with whom at the first step they should
find themselves going quite in opposite directions.
Political parties were breaking up in this country—
all political parties • there never was a period in their
history, in which there was an attempt to carry on
an opposition with so intangible a line of demare
cation as that at present existing between the Whigs
and Tory party. From the time of Charles the First,
when differences were so great, that men drew their
broadswords, and decided the question in the field,
down to the present hour, there never was a period
at which an attempt was made to keep up an
opposition, as against the party in power, with-
out any one great public question of the slightest
interest out of doors to support that opposition.
There were many other questions in which the
people took an interest besides free trade. But on no
one question had the Opposition the support of the
people out of doors ; and if they give up one iota of
their principles, he knew the temper and character of
those who nourished this agitation from the begin-
ning, and he was convinced that the moment there
was the slightest evidence of a coalition with any
party that would compromise their principles, from
that moment the right arm of every true friend of
the League would be paralyzed.—(Cheers.) Let poli-
ticians take up the principles of the League, or any
other that they might think would gain them more
popular support; but at present the Opposition had
no sympathy out of doors ; and he asked them,
whatever might be said of them in the
party newspapers, whose pens were often
guided by the intriguers of the political fac-
tions, he asked them as free traders to try them by
one test—were they true to their principles ? What-
ever obstacles they might meet with, they might
depend upon it, if they were true to their principles,
their principles would be true to them—(Cheers)--
and lead them on to an ultimate and not very distant
triumph.—(Great cheering.)
Mr. BRIGHT, M.P., then came forward and "was
received with several rounds of enthusiastic cheering.
He said it was a matter of very pleasant reflection,
that after having been consigned to utter oblivion
on several occasions, after having been killed outright at
least half-a-dozen times, to find that they could yet
assemble together in such respectable numbers, and could
feel themselves in such cheerful and good condition. It
was satisfactory to feel that they were yet able to struggle
for the great principles which had been the cause of
their so often meeting in that theatre. Although in the
course of this warfare they had met with storm and sun-
shine, and those vicissitudes which most men have met
with in pursuance of a great object, they had ground for
believing that the principles for which they strove,
although they might be out •voted in both Houses of
Parliament, were making sure and steady progress
in the minds of the honest, the intelligent, and the re-
spectable portion of the people of this country. It was
satisfactory to know that the opposition they had now
met with, partook more of the character of a political
than a commercial opposition. They were certain that
the principle of free trade was so beautiful, so natural,
so simple, that it must commend itself to the mind of
every unprejudiced person. The infringement of that
principle he was convinced was considered by a majority
of the people of this country to be unsound and vicious.
But now they had to contend with a political opposi-
tion ; it had assumed this character naturally,
for the question about which they had been battling
was one, round which political parties were turning.
The men of the party now in power were afraid of it ;
because their rents might be injured by it, and that the
great party which they had been ten years in building
up, might be shattered in pieces by a blow. And it was
not only afraid of rent, everything else possessed by a
great political party might be endana 'ered ; all the
patronage of office, at home and abroad, the patronage
of the army and navy, the vast amount of patronage in
the church, in fact the feeding and fattening upon
50,000,0001. of revenue, besides much more in other
departments, all this might be sacrificed, and they,
themselves, might be thrown into the " cold shades of
opposition." .'They were not daunted at the opposition
having taken that character. They found that all the
great writers who had touched upon this question had,
almost without an exception, taken the same view of it
as they had done. Great men, and great statesmen, for
fifty years past, had held the same opinion ; they knew
that their opponents practised the principles the League
advocated in all their private affairs ; they held the prin-
ciples of free trade to be the principles of com-
mon sense, in their private business, though they
did not apply it in the national affairs. All the past
justified the course they were pursuing, whether they
regarded free trade as conferring benefits upon all those
who had applied it to commerce ; or whether they re-
garded it as beholding monopoly inflicting grievous and
indescribable evils upon large portions of the population.
The present exhorted them also on the working of this
question, for though there was now a respite from the
evils they had lately suffered, yet it was a respite only,
which must he followed by disasters at least as great as
those from which they had but just escaped. And the
future was before them, warning them that if they did not
take a lesson from the part it had in store for them-e-
a lesson not only teaching themselves the error they had
committed, but making them a warning to nations in
all future times, teaching them that there were dangers on
which a nation might run, and make fearful shipwreck.
Their honest opponents had honest fears, and, if he
could bring those fears to a point, it would be this—
that they suspect the introduction of foreign pro-
duce, especially of foreign grain, would supersede
the consumption of their own corn, and cheapen
it in the market, and throw the land out of cul•

tivation, by making it Unprofitable to the occu-
pying tenantry of the country. They thought
that if foreign wheat was eaten, the same quantity of
English wheat would remain uneaten. The same might
be said with respect to rice. The importation of rice was
an addition to the food of the country, and of potatoes;
yet no one found that their potato-grounds were not
worth cultivating. The importation of tea, of coffee, of