The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-06-01 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORNING, JUNE 1, 1841

There is no one point of view in which we can re-
gard the Anti-Corn-Law lecturers and their doctrines,
in which they do not appear to our mind to he per-
fectly deserving of abhorrence. We might show the
justice of this conclusion through a long induction of
particulars, but we are satisfied to let it rest on a very
few. If it appeared, for example, that the object of
these men was to cause a revolution in the country—
to defraud one class of the community in order to en-
rich another—or, that whatever their intention might
be, this would be. the effect and consequence of their
measures—would not this alone be enough to cause
any good subject to contemplate their proceedings
with detestation, and to use his best endeavours to de-
feat them ? That this is the fact we have already of-
fered some proof, and we mean now to offer more,
confining ourselves merely to the addresses of Mr.
Cobden, a leading man of the party.
We have shown that, regardless of all social institu-
tions and obligations, he argues for a resumption of
the state of nature. He has not yet informed us whe-
ther he maintains the doctrine of a community of
wives ; but that men are still free to help themselves
to the fruits of the earth wherever they can find them,
he infers from that passage of scripture which declares
that the fruits of the earth were given to man for food.
By this he means to prove that the manufacturers have
a right to seize the estates of the corn-growers of this
country, and convert them to their own use. The
landlords, he contends, have no right to appropriate ;
" every herb bearing seed which is on the face of the
earth" was given to man " to be for meat," and there-
fore all have a right in common to their acquisition.
Further, he declares he can find nothing in the Bible
about the Duke of Buckingham's or any other duke's
estate; and leaves it thereby to be inferred that they
have no right to any such possession. It is manifest,
therefore, that this professor argues for—

" The good old rule, the simple plan,
That he should take who has the power,
And he should keep, who can ;"
or what is commonly called, the " state of nature."
The manufacturer's " new moral world" is, however,
somewhat different from that great man's, Mr.
Owen's ; for Mr. Cobden does not contend so much
for a community of goods as an exchange of them—
not so much to share the Duke of Buckingham's es-
tate, or the estates of the landed gentry, fairly between
them and their tenantry, or others, as to drive them
out of them altogether, and put the tenantry, or others,
in their place. Owen is for a community of goods as
well as wives ; Mr. Cobden for an exchange only. This
he made clear by an anecdote.

He said that he knew of one parish, Cholesbury,
(somewhere in the south,) which had been entirely
abandoned by the landowners on account of the ex-
cessive amount of the poor rates. The landlords gave
it up altogether; but the paupers took it in hands.
Under the advice of a London society, they " set to
work to till the parish themselves, and for themselves,
and in the course of two years and a half the poor
men, who had previously been hopeless paupers, be-
came possessed of cows, and pigs, and horses.—
(Cheers.)" Here then the land exchanged owners,
and here was exchange without robbery. Follow this
out, and you have the beneficent effects which will be
sure to follow a repeal of the corn laws. The land-
lords must abandon their estates ; but what of that ?
paupers and labourers will get possession of them—
and " Cohdenism" will be glorified ! The lecturer
had been frequently asked, he said, what would become
of the labourers if the landlords were compelled by a
repeal of the corn duties to cease to cultivate their
lands,—and his answer usually was, " what became of
the labourers in Cholesbury ?" THEY TOOK POS-
SESSION OF THE NEGLECTED TERRITORY !

Professor Cobden dilates on this point at such
length that we defy the dullest of his pupils to misun-
derstand him. Here is another of his anecdotes on
the same subject :

' The other day, one of the anti-corn law lecturers, who
was travelling in Dorsetshire, hired a peasant whom he met,
to carry his carpet-bag for five miles, in order that he might
have an opportunity of entering into conversation with him.
He (the lecturer) had been addressiug the people in a neigh-
bouring town. He said to the man, ' You have some anti-
corn law lecturers here, sent among you from the manufac-
turers in Manchester, do you know what those manufac-
turers are going to do ? I will tell you. They are going to
repeal the corn laws, and then there will be so much foreign
corn imported that all your lands will be thrown out of cul-
tivation. The man looked up to the speaker with a know.•
ing cock of his eye, and said, ' they beant going to carry
away the land, be they ?' (Great laughter, followed by en-
thusiastic applause.)"