A.D. 1841.] APPARENT PROSPERITY OF THE MANUFACTURING CLASSES. a meeting of merchants and manufacturers was held in 531 how much they were laying out on good clothes and good furniture, besides what they were laying by for a future provision. And now again came the question from some-Why should it not always be thus? If a good harvest in England was productive of all this comfort, why should not the people of England have the advantage of a good harvest anywhere else? But then again came the question from others, Why should we agitate for cheap food, when wheat is only 4s. 6d. a bushel?" * It is not surprising that the leaders of the Manchester free traders found it difficult to obtain a hearing at such a time. But the tide was about to turn. The harvest of 1836 showed a considerable falling off compared with that of previous years. Wheat rose 70 per cent. higher than the prices of the previous year. Some heavy failures occurred in London, Manchester, Liverpool, and Glasgow; and in the following April many of the Lancashire factories were working only four days a week, and some thousands of hand-loom weavers were discharged. Towards the end of the previous year, an association for agitation against the corn laws had been formed in London, comprising twenty-two members of Parliament, and a number of manufacturers and gentlemen of Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, Liverpool, and Glasgow. The body, however, was not representative, and did no more than contribute to keep public attention directed to the subject. The crop of 1837 was also inferior to that of previous abundant years, but wheat fell again from 61s. 9d. to 53s. Then came the severe winter of 1837-8, and again the unhappy dependents upon weekly wages found the price of bread more than double what it had been two years before. The distress was now general, and the time for movement had arrived. It was evident that, when the year of bad harvests and dear food should come, the cry of the people against the bread tax would be loudest in this great focus of manufacturing industry. At the beginning of 1836, the price of wheat reached £1 16s. the imperial quarter, the lowest point of depression which it had touched for some years. The cry of agricultural distress was immediately raised, and committees were appointed by both Houses of Parliament early in the session of 1836 to inquire into the subject; but the tenor of the information obtained did not bear out the views of the agricultural party. Indeed, it was found that so far from there being a decline, there had been an extension and improvement of cultivation and an increase of produce; and that so far from the agricultural labourer being in more than usual distress, his circumstances had greatly improved, his wages not having been reduced in proportion to the fall in the prices of necessaries. Trade, too, was enjoying one of those intervals of comparative prosperity in which the periodical visitation of hard times is naturally forgotten by the bulk of the people. "In Manchester," says the writer just quoted, "I had the gratification of again seeing the working man on a Saturday night helping his wife to carry home the heavy basket. There was no need for statistical tables to show that there was a great additional consumption of necessaries and comforts. The fact spoke out in the manifest improvement in the appearance of the multitudes, now well dressed, and presenting undeniable proofs that they were well-fed. I asked my foreman how the compositors in my office, whose wages had been the same sum weekly for a quarter of a century, were expending what they saved from the low price of food; and he said it was astonishing to see | 1853, i., 46. The determined opposition of the landed interest in Parliament to all changes, however slight, in the laws for maintaining the price of food, may be said to have reached its height in the debate of the 9th of May, 1838, on the second reading of the bill for permitting the grinding of wheat in bond for foreign export. At that time British shipowners were in the habit of obtaining their supplies of food for the consumption of their crews in foreign ports. As none of that food need be brought into the country, and the captains and owners were necessarily free to buy where they pleased, it was impossible to suppose that they would supply their vessels with the heavily taxed articles of their own country. They must clearly be permitted to take the corn they wanted out of bond free of duty, or must continue to be driven to seek supplies elsewhere. This, in fact, was conceded as far as corn was concerned, but the ships had no means of grinding wheat into flour, or converting it into biscuit. It was shown that to relax the law slightly in this respect could lead to no possible loss to the landlord, would obviate the prevailing wasteful and circuitous system of obtaining stores from abroad, and would, besides, give employment to a great number of persons in our chief sea-ports. The project appeared so *History of the "Anti-Corn Law League," by Richard Prentice, London, harmless that the first reading of the bill was carried by of these words. While the landlords were foolishly a majority of 127 to 92. The landowners, however, consoling themselves with the belief that the opposition quickly took alarm. They dreaded all change, however to the corn laws was dead, a movement was comtrifling; and suggested that flour or biscuits might be mencing which was destined to force this question more easy to smuggle than grain, and that the change upon the Government, as the one great question of might lead to a fraudulent importation of food to the the day. The Manchester newspapers, in commentinjury of their own monopoly. These ideas rapidly ing upon the debate, regarded it rather as a sign spread in the agricultural districts. Petitions against the of the necessity for further reform in the representation bill began to pour in from Buckinghamshire, where the of the people, than as a signal for an extensive moveMarquis of Chandos, who presented them, had been ment against the monopoly system. Elsewhere the corn holding excited meetings; and when Colonel Seale rose laws had only partially been adopted as a rallying cry of to move the second reading, it was manifest that the bill Reformers; and the Chartists and extreme Radicals still was doomed. In vain it was pointed out that the bill looked coldly on what they were told was merely an provided that all flour so made should be absolutely employers' question: indeed, in many instances, the exported within two months after being ground. The Chartists openly avowed themselves on the side of the Marquis of Chandos, who led the opposition, told the landlords. House that he had no doubt the bill would afford a great advantage to the commercial, at the expense of the agricultural interest; that at the present moment the agriculturists were enjoying a little relief from the long period of distress under which they suffered, which referred, of course, to the high price of bread, by which the agriculturists were then so largely profiting, and added that "the only wish of the farmers was that the House would not interfere with them." Another representative of this party declared "that the last dying speech of the free traders in corn" had been made in a recent speech of Mr. Clay. It is a lamentable fact that Sir Robert Peel was among the most conspicuous of the speakers on this side. Sir James Graham followed with a speech against the bill. The free traders had nothing to oppose to the numerical strength of their opponents, but a solemn warning of the danger and folly of the course which they were pursuing. Mr. Brotherton and Mr. Villiers avowed that they regarded the rejection of the bill as even to be desired, because tending "to hasten the downfall of the wicked corn laws." So little did their party concur in the view that the "last dying speech" of the free traders in corn had been spoken, that they looked forward to their defeat that night as the signal for the people to arouse. Mr. Villiers concluded his speech with the remarkable words, "If the measure be carried, it will open to our trade a new channel for profit and employment; but if it be rejected, it will, perhaps, be still more useful. This is just what is now required. What is most wanted is some practical illustration of the working of the corn laws and the spirit of those who maintain them; something to strike the imagination something to arouse those who had too long kissed the rod which had scourged them. I look upon it as a good sign. All great changes are preceded by some wanton act of the power which was complained of and attacked. I regard it as the East Retford of the corn laws. To reject this measure would be like that preliminary folly which characterised those whom Heaven had marked as its victims." The warning was received with laughter and loud cries of divide;" and the bill was finally rejected by a majority of 200 to 150. A few months, however, began to show the truth A few weeks after the debate on Colonel Seale's motion, Earl Fitzwilliam, a nobleman who had distinguished himself by his enlightened views on this question, presented a petition from a great number of inhabitants of Glasgow against the corn laws. "The debate that ensued," remarks the Manchester Times of July 7th, 1838, "was in most respects just of the character which always marks the treatment of a question affecting the profits of that House-of corn dealers on the one hand, and the comfortable subsistence of twenty-six millions of people on the other. We thought, however, we discovered some symptoms of fear, if not of repentance, on the part of one or two of the titled monopolists who spoke on the occasion. Apprehensions of short harvests, dear bread, and a probable famine, floated across their brains, and found utterance in some warning prognostications as to the effect of such accidents upon the fate of the question then under discussion. Their lordships are right; a wet July might come, August might find the country with scarcely a month's consumption of corn on hand, and the ports of Continental Europe drained for the supply of the United States. We are now entirely dependent on the still ungathered harvest for preservation against greater misery than ever afflicted a civilised community. To the corn laws it is owing that no sacks of wheat or other grain are filling the granaries of our own capitalists, or awaiting their orders in the stores of Hamburg or Odessa; and should starvation stalk through the land, every additional death will be attributed to those laws." It was in the course of this discussion that Lord Melbourne uttered a remarkable declaration of the policy of the Ministry. He believed, he said, that the corn laws had acted well for the interests of all parties; and holding these opinions, he certainly would not attempt to alter the system which had been established, nor would he ever introduce any new system of corn laws founded on a different principle from the present, unless a decided opinion was expressed on the subject by a large majority of the people. It was probably far from the thought of the Minister who once declared it madness to interfere with these laws, and who regarded the theories of political economists generally with aversion, to recom mend a general Anti-Corn-Law agitation; but his words served at least to remind Reformers that no relief could A.D. 1841.] ESTABLISHMENT OF THE ANTI-CORN-LAW ASSOCIATION. 533 be expected from Parliament until an overwhelming great centre of industry. "Seven men," says Frederie force of public opinion should be directed to the subject. Bastiat, the eminent French economist, "united themThe Ministerial challenge was not long in finding a selves in the month of October, 1838, and with that body of men able and willing to take it up, with a manly determination which characterises the Anglospirit determined to overcome all obstacles. Before the Saxon race, they resolved to overturn every monopoly end of August, wheat had attained the price of £3 17s. by legal means, and accomplish, without disturbance, the quarter-more than double the price of the same without effusion of blood, with the power only of opinion, period in 1835. On the 10th of September, Dr. Bowring a revolution as profound, perhaps more profound, was invited to a public dinner at Manchester, on his way than that which our fathers worked to effect in 1789." from Liverpool to Blackburn. He had recently returned The names of those seven members are now scarcely from a mission to promote more free commercial inter- remembered out of Manchester, with the exception of course with some foreign countries; and he gave to the Mr. Archibald Prentice, the historian of the League, Manchester people an eloquent account of the mischiefs whose newspaper, the Manchester Times, had fought with which he had found everywhere traceable to our absurd considerable talent, and with inexhaustible energy on Custom House laws. He showed how he had found the the side of all the great reforms of this important period Hungarian nobles on the Danube ceasing to produce in our history. In that newspaper for the 13th of corn for the English market, and turning their capital to October, a list of the Provisional Committee of a new manufacturing those articles with which England, under Anti-Corn-Law Association was for the first time puba better system of international exchange, might have lished. It comprised thirty-seven names, chiefly of supplied them. He illustrated the folly of the fear of Manchester manufacturers, and ended with the modest being reduced to what the Duke of Wellington had called note that, "Subscriptions, 5s. each, would be received the humiliating necessity of depending upon foreign by the members of that committee." Such was the lands for a supply of food by the case of Holland-a simple origin of that vast movement which, a few years country entirely dependent upon foreign trade, and yet later, compelled the very chiefs of the landowners' party one in which the granaries were always well filled, and in Parliament to become the instruments for carrying where the people knew at all times the real rate of out measures more sweeping than even the most ardent wages, because, with a very slight alteration in price, free-traders had regarded as possible. But men of in- . they could always estimate what the quartern loaf would fluence were beginning to join the movement. The list cost them and their families. He showed the meeting of the Provisional Committee contained, at least, one the wonderful results of the enlightened policy of the name which afterwards became famous-that of Mr. Pacha of Egypt, who had been converted to free-trade John Bright. Three of them subsequently became principles, declaring that he "thought it better to let members of Parliament, and another, Mr. George corn come in and go out of the ports without any duty Wilson, was afterwards known as the permanent chairwhatever." Mr. Hadfield, one of the speakers on this man of the League. memorable occasion, reminded his hearers that, although this law had been passed in the days of Toryism, against the will of the country, while petitions signed by millions were being presented against it, and when Lord Goderich had his house burnt over his head by an assemblage of Anti-Corn-Law rioters, no simultaneous popular effort had from that time to this been made to overturn it. It was time, he said, "to unite heart and hand on this question, and challenge the whole country to put their shoulder to the wheel, and get rid of a system alike offensive to the laws of God and man.' This appeal excited the enthusiasm of the company, which was still further aroused when another speaker, Mr. Howie, said that what had just fallen from the chairman reminded him that they had at Manchester no Anti-Corn-Law Association. He should propose that the present company at once form themselves into such an association, and though few in number, be the rolling stone that should gather strength in its progress. The proposition was considered by the company, and it was agreed that the meeting should form a committee to establish such an association, and meet on the following Monday. The desultory opposition to the bread tax of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce-a body which had only presented one petition on the subject in seven yearswas no longer sufficient to represent the feeling of that The name of the leader of the new movement, however, had not yet been added to the list. Mr. Bright, whose residence was at Rochdale, had not begun to give personal aid to the cause, and was scarcely known out of his native town, where his efforts to improve the moral and social condition of the working classes had, however, long made him conspicuous among his fellowtownsmen. The name of Richard Cobden, which appears in the additional list of the committee published a short time afterwards, was one more familiar in Manchester ears. Mr. Cobden was the son of a yeoman at Midhurst, in Sussex, who possessed a small property in that neighbourhood, which he cultivated till his death. The father was, however, not prosperous, and the son, we believe, owed his education to the kindness of a Chichester gentleman, a friend of his family. At an early age he was sent to London, and is said to have been employed in a warehouse in the City. From this position he was promoted to travel for the firm in whose service he was, and thus obtained some knowledge of Lancashire trade. Some time afterwards he found opportunities of starting in business with some fellow-clerks as calico printers in the neighbourhood of Clitheroe. The business prospered, and Mr. Cobden settled in Manchester, where he soon began to interest himself in local affairs. At that time the local govern ment of Manchester was in the hands of the lord of the made a journey through France, Belgium, and Switzermanor, being governed by a borough reeve, constables, land; and in 1838 travelled through Germany. It was and others elected at the lord of the manor's court leet, on his return from the latter tour that he joined the exactly as it had been in the ancient times when Man-movement which he found preparing against the system chester consisted of ten streets and Salford of three; and of which the "Manchester manufacturer" had, like Dr. Mr. Cobden was one of those who were chiefly instru- Bowring, been observing the effects in limiting our foreign mental in overturning this absurd system, and obtaining trade. But the association were not long in finding in the the municipal charter, which was at last conceded, after energy and resources of this remarkable man their best much opposition. He had already become known as a support. The committee saw clearly that there could be political writer, professing generally the views on trade, no hope for the success of their movement, if they could commerce, and international relations of the liberal not succeed in enlightening the body of the people on school of political economists. the nature and effects of the laws which they were seeking to overtura. One of their first acts, therefore, was to begin a system of political education for the people. ་ In 1835 there had been sent to the editor of the Manchester Times, for publication in that paper, some admirably written letters. They contained no internal In September, 1838, a stranger had engaged a theatre evidence to guide in guessing as to who might be the in Bolton, to deliver a lecture on the corn laws. The writer; and the editor concluded that there was some audience, which were admitted by payment at the man amongst them who, if he held a station that would doors, were numerous; but it turned out that the lecturer enable him to take a part in public affairs, would exert was so ill prepared for his task as altogether to break a widely beneficial influence. "He might," says Mr. down in it. The assemblage was about to end in a riot, Prentice, in his interesting narrative of this incident, when a young medical student named Paulton rushed "be some young man in a warehouse who had thought on to the platform, at the request of the mayor and other deeply on political economy, and its practical applica- friends, to address the people. His plea to be heard for tion in our commercial policy, who might not be soon in a few moments was met with loud cries of "hear, hear" a position to come before the public as an influential and "go on." An address of a quarter of an hour created teacher; but we had, I had no doubt, somewhere a wish that he should be heard again. The people amongst us, perhaps sitting solitary after his day's work recovered their good humour, and the improvised lecturer in some obscure apartment, like Adam Smith in his ended by promising to open the theatre without a price quiet closet at Kirkcaldy, one inwardly and quietly con- of admission on that day week, when a lecture on the scious of his power, but patiently biding his time, to corn laws would be delivered, a promise which, for popularise the doctrines set forth in the Wealth of the present, satisfied the audience. The young speaker Nations,' and to make the multitude think as the philo- possessed considerable eloquence and general knowledge; sopher had thought, and to act upon their convictions. and some manufacturers of Bolton, his friends, assisted I told many that a new man had come, and the question him in collecting facts. Thus aided, he prepared and was often put amongst my friends-'Who is he?' In delivered his first lecture. The result clearly showed the course of that year, a pamphlet, published by Ridg-how the people might be reached, and how mistaken way, under the title, 'England, Ireland, and America,' were those who thought that no interest could be excited was put into my hand by a friend, inscribed From the on this subject. The lecture was received with enthuauthor,' and I instantly recognised the handwriting of siasm, and was reported in the newspapers. my unknown-much by me desired to be knowncorrespondent; and I was greatly gratified when I learned that Mr. Cobden, the author of the pamphlet, desired to meet me at my friend's house. I went with something of the same kind of feelings which I had experienced when I first, four years before, went to visit Jeremy Bentham, the father of the practical free traders; nor was I disappointed, except in one respect. I found a man who could enlighten by his knowledge, counsel by his prudence, and conciliate by his temper and manners; and who, if he found his way into the House of Commons, would secure its respectful attention; but I had been an actor amongst men who, from 1812 to 1832, had fought in the rough battle for parliamentary reform, and I missed in the unassuming gentleman before me, not the energy, but the apparent hardihood and dash which I had, forgetting the change of times, believed to be requisites to the success of a popular leader." Mr. Cobden also published a pamphlet entitled The new association were not long in inviting Mr. Paulton to deliver two lectures in the Corn Exchange, Manchester. The lectures were attended by a crowded audience, who received with enthusiasm the speaker's quotation from Lord Byron's "Age of Bronze:" "For what were all those landed patriots born? Blood, sweat, and tear-wrung millions. Why? for reat. The eloquent young lecturer soon re-appeared in the magnificent Town Hall of Birmingham, and continued to carry tidings of the new association for giving untaxed food and employment to the people of all the great manufacturing towns. The objects of the association were now declared to be to form a fund for diffusing in |