The Sun.
London, England, 1842-02-09 00:00:00

low men, he must oppose the Corn-law—(Cheers)—as a per-
son wishing to see all artificial distinctions between men done
away with, and desirous of seeing the great family of man
united together—as a person anxious to see the chances of war
diminished, he was hostile to the Corn-laws.—( Loud cheers. )
Mr. PRENIIICE, of Manchester, in supporting the resolution,
said he would say a few words on the subject of the
finances of the Association. It was well known that
there was a splendid demonstration, called the Anti-
Corn-law Bazair, and that as large a sum as 8,000/. had been
collected there.—( Loud cheers.) But the Bazaar was not
yet closed. He was happy to say, on the contrary, that the in-
terest about it had not diminished. The greatest portion of
this sum was collected from those who lived within 100 miles
of Manchester, and it was supposed that their were members
of other towns who would contribute their shares to the
Bazaar.—( Cheers.) It was proposed that it should not close
till they had sent in their donations. But it might be asked
what was the object of this money to men who drove
the Whigs to a fixed duty, and Sir Robert Peel
to abandon the sliding scale.—( Hear, hear.) They should
recollect that there were two parties only ruling in the House
of Commons, who scarcely ever supposed that there was
any other party besides themselves.--( Hear. ) The contest
between them was, whether there was to be a fixed duty or
not, but it altogether slipped from their minds that there was
a still larger party than either, who insisted that there should
be no duty at all.—(Cheers.) Those parties were contending
for half measures, but they would be shown by the people, and
the determined frontythey would assume, that nothing short of
an entire and complete abolition of these obnoxious laws would
satisfy them.--( Cheers. )
The following gentlemen were then unanimously appointed
to serve as the Finance Committee :—William Rawson, Elka-
nah Armitage, Hamer Stansfield, Edward Evans, Samuel Lees,
and Aytoun, Esqs.
The CHAIRMAN said, that as what they had done up to the
present time was only preliminary, the real business of the
meeting was now to begin.--( Hear, hear). The arrangements
and resolutions were to be prepared by a Committee. The
Executive Committee were preparing resolutions, and they had
retired to consider the steps they were to take. The resolu-
tions would now be moved and seconded by the various persons
appointed for that purpose. Having thus explained the mode
in which the business had been conducted, he might be allowed
to say a few words by way of introduction.—( Hear, hear, hear. )
The last speaker had observed that nothing would be satis-
factory less than a total repeal of the Corn-laws. In the jus-
tice of that observation he most fully coincided. He fully
participated in the sentiment that they should go right forward
to attain that object, and that alone.—( Cheers.) That they
should not estimate the merit of the sliding scale or a fixed
duty, and decide between them, but that they should re-
pudiate all compromise in a cause where all_ justice was
on their side, and in which no modification could be
made, without leaving the germ of evil behind.—(Cheers.)
They should make no taxes on food the rule of their conduct.—
( Hear, hear.) These were the sentiments which were all but
universal in Scotland.—( Hear, hear.) They were the senti-
ments of those whom he was sent to represent.—( Hear, hear. )
They were the sentiments of the Edinburgh Convention and
the Committee that managed the business of the League there.
They were the sentiments which he was instructed to enforce,
and he had no doubt they would be borne to a successful termina-
tion. He should, therefore, intreat, that in all observations which
might fall from the speakers that should be their great theme
they should remember that that was the fundamental principle
on which the League was constituted. On that principle
they were going right forward, and they were now assembled
to do their best to promote that grand object.—
( Hear, hear, hear.) Consisting, as they did, of all
sections of political and religious principles, they
should adhere to that one point, disregarding all others, and
they should endeavour to impress on their friends in Parlia-
ment—the Liberal Members who had given them some assist-
ance—that they were serious in considering this as a great
moral question, from the agitation of which they would never
depart. —( Hear, hear, and cheers.) Not that they were
wavering between the merits of a moderate fixed duty and
a sliding scale, but that they fought only for a total and
immediate repeal of the Corn-law.—(Cheers,) Let their
friends in Parliament know this, and that they could only
expect the support of the; members of this Conference
upon those grounds. Those were his, (the Chairman's) views,
and he was sure they were the views which would be unani-
-1 mously adopted by the members of this meeting; and if they
' were, he for one, did not fear ,but that public opinion properly
expressed would overcome every opposition.—( Great applause. )
Mr. BRIGHT, from Rochdale, could not but acknowledge
that he came forward with feelings of considerable anxiety and
trepidation, only relieved, however, from a consideration that
anything which ought to be said, which he might omit to say,
would be more than made up by the speakers who were to fol-
low.—( Hear.) He felt this anxiety from the great, momen-
tous importance of the subject which they had met to debate
on. lie came from a neighbourhood where this
question was looked on as one of life and death by
thousands of honest men, and if there were any in that
room, as there were many who had no conception of the state
of things to which this country was fast hastening under these
mischievous laws, he should like them to go with him into
the streets and lanes where he could take them, and, if they
had any intellect, any heart, he was sure they would go away
fully convinced of the necessity of the total and immediate re-
peal of those laws.--( Loud cheers.) Such being his opinion,
he should not be doing his duty at this Conference if he did not
do his utmost to obtain the desideratum for which they la-
boured ; and if they went away without having performed
their duties, they would go away guilty of the sin of having
neglected the best interests of the country.—( Hear, hear. )
Ile had a resolution to propose to the meeting, but before pro-
posing that, he would, with their permission, read a short reso-
lution passed at a former meeting, held at Rochdale on the Ist
of February, appointing him as Delegate to this Conference.
That resolution was as follows :—" Resolved unanimously,
That the deputation from this Association be instructed to op-
pose the Corn-laws as a cruel oppression, inflicting grievous
evils on the great bulk of our population, as contrary to the
most obvibus requirements of morality and religion, and a
wrong of so odious a nature, as to make it inperatively n. -
eessary to insist on its total and immediate abolition."
A number of speeches were made at that meeting, and he dared
not go back to Rochdale unless he had acted up to that docu-
ment, such was the feeling there for the total and immediate
repeal of the Corn-laws.—( Loud cheers.) The resolution
which he now had to propose to the meeting was as follows:
" That in the opinion of the Deputies present, representing
associations, public meetings, and religious congregations in
vat ions parts of the kingdom, the Corn and Provision-laws vio-
late the national and inalienable rights of man—the right
freely to exchange the produce of his labour for the food

of all other countries, impiously obstructing the circulation of
the bounties designed by Divine Providence for the benefit of
all his creatures. That the aim of this monopoly of the first
necessaries of life is to enhance the price of the produce of the
soil of this country, thus necessarily inflicting severe
' privations especially upon the poorest portion o the corn-
munity. That these laws in their operation not only ex-
pose the labouring dais to the physical evils of hunger,
dim ase, and even premature death ; but they war against their
eternal interests by increasing the temptations to crime and
immorality, rendering them less accessible to the influence of
religion. That in denouncing the Corn and Provision-laws as
a great national sin, the Deputies express their own
deliberate consideration, and that of a vast portion of their
countrymen, that those laws should be immediately and
totally abolished, and the Deputies constituting this meet,
ing, pledge themselves never to swerve from their purpose, or
relax in their efforts until that object be accomplished."—
( Tremendous cheering and waving of hats.) This reso-
lution said that the Corn-laws violated the natural
and inalienable rights of man to exchange the pro-
duce of his labour for the produce of other coun-
tries. It appeared to him that in this country there had been
an entire forgetfulness of the rights of the labouring classes, in
the Legislature. The time was coming when they would compel
the landowning legislators to look over the principles on ,
which they had legislated, to see if there were, any
reason why pauperism should exist in a country which
Providence had blessed with inward resources, unparalleled in
other lands.—( Loud cheers.) When be looked at the title by
which landed proprietors held their land, he did not desire to
dispute their title, but he did not approve of the rights,
which they assumed to themselves in consequence of th,e4
possessions.._( Hear hear.) He did not say a man siNuldi not
do as he liked with his own, but there was a heixndary, beyond
which a landowner could not go. If a Lord or a Duke had a
large estate—as many of them had, and' very thankful they
ought to be for it—( Cheers 4nel laughter)—he could not allow
it to lay fallow ; he could not say that no plough henceforth
or for ever should pass over those acres ; because there was a
right which society possesses, which comes before the right
even of the landowners.—(Loud cheers.) Pie, kad, only
mentioned this to show that there was a, Ipn,it to the
rights which they assumed. There was., however, an-
other property in this country—labour,—(Cheers.) If a
man had made any article by his own ingenuity, no matter
what it was, that man had an absolute eontroul over the pro-
duce of his labour; and under no circumstances had Govern-
ment a right to say that he should. not do what he pleased with
the produce of his labour. Ira weaver. for example; act the materials of which cloth was made, and prod .a...pieee
of clad), in his (Mr. B.!s) opinion., that,t.leAk waif. more ab-
solutely that man's property thin an, laud could -become
the property of any mar{.—(Loud cheers.) If that man
then, went over io Anteriea, where his brother, perhaps,
might have been tilling the land, and had produced a number
of sacks of flow., they were undoubtedly the property of that
Anglo-American, and he. (Mr. B.) could see no reason; : whatever why an interchange of those two, pr4erties
should not take place.—( Hear, hear, atld, chop.) If the
Englishman and the American, witesk to, eNehange what be-
longed to each other, and they rnaile the exchange, he held
that the flour wal)tholais nAtte.► the property of the Englishman,
and he iiid. as entire ; right to dispose of it as any landowner
had to hit acres.—( Loud cheers.) Seeing that then to be
lust, why should they have a law to say that he should not eaxz
;t home for the consumption of his wve and children), what he
is bound to cherish and support? He was, persuaded
that no man, of whatever party, could say that such a thing
was just; and that was one pC the brat principles on which the
resolution was foended, and which had from its object, the
providing of cheap bfead and meat to the hundre*,
and thousands of their fellow-creatures. They setkl look at the state of society throughout the. ee,uu-,
try, from the Monarch down the squirearchy, ttn4 tck the very
poorest classes of the people; see whatthotated famine is—see
what a deplorable condition the ley‘,4..r.etasses of the people are in,
The aristocracy and th,7, siuwearehy feel nothing of VaaA
famine. The PcJeotes who composed that meetim felt
nothing Sif it so far as the food and clot* they wwd
Here eencerned, but if the condition of ;la% Weir lOople
was considered, it would be found that tire imniense and fright-
ful amount of destitution and soffi it7g 't,O, whist; they are sub-
jected, are infinitely increaledi byte, operation of the Corn-
laws—( Hear, hear)—in tkc: i, hlourhood in which he (the
speaker) lived, tie. tirade principally consisted in the manufac-
ture of *mind:, tie was net himself interested in it in any way,
lluflile knew the extent to which the Corn-laws had cesqratell;
against that trade.—( Hear, hear.) There were. Severa),
thousand persons who lived by it in 14s, rieighheighpeck 1
and they, in consequence of the operttion, qt tAcle. lam, %two I
driven from their country. Int cepsevenee. of OA gials,,, .
of those laws he hard t4r,r),,ed. his, a,tren,triQA to sb- _e, evils
nightt and he, was f#l4iyotraiticed.lksat the". .zm day and
of
..,e was no point
view iitt whiela,.. 'the; c 9,4
ot v"„ slg4.-ered that did not show
thAi. evil, 0r.% i4l - . )._. ' .. tor their total and immediate
ali94,S? 44"'"
,
..mar, and cheers.) If the home trade
'it,uns was
Looked to would it not be seen that
the
Corn-laws had a most fatal effect upon them ?
If the foreign trade was considered, it would be found that it
was almost entirely ruined by the operation of those laws.—
( Hear.) As an instance of their effects upon the foreign trade
of this country, he (Mr. Bright) would just state one fact :
Up to 1828 the whole of the flannel made in the neighbourhood
in which he lived was exported to the United States of Ame-
rica; but in 1828 a very high scale of duty was imposed by the
Government of America upon the flannels imported there, and
accordingly the consumption of that article was considerably j
diminished, and the employment given to the weavers of that