ABSTRACT
On the evening of Wednesday, March 15th, the first meeting of the League was held in Drury-Lane Theatre. Never, in the palmiest days of the legitimate drama, had pit, boxes, and gallery been so filled. The youthful chairman, George Wilson, was received with enthusiastic cheers, and Mr. Ewart, M.P., had a similar reception. Cobden’s incontrovertible argument went home to the heads and hearts of that immense metropolitan audience. He concluded his speech by saying:—
“He could hardly describe the anguish of heart which he felt at finding that the men who were imposing the horrible system of monopoly upon the bread of the people, had actually succeeded in using as instruments for the maintenance of that law the class which suffered most severely from its operation; and that they had hired men from that class to play the part of the bread-taxers in the present great conflict. He felt deep anguish at finding that those poor men had been made use of by designing parties who should have known better than to have employed them. The members of the Anti-Corn-Law League had been assailed as a body who wanted to injure the working class. Why, if the repealing the Corn Law were to benefit any class, it could only be by benefitting that class through the working class. (Hear, hear.) He took it for granted that whatever amount of corn they might bring into this country, the middle class and the upper class would not eat one ounce more bread than they did now. (Hear.) Who, then, were to consume the extra quantity? The working men, they who now, to the number of five millions, according to Dr. Marsham, were ‘rejoicing in potatoes.’ (Hear.) The working men must consume the corn. They would be set to work to pay for that corn with the produce of their wages. They went to the shopkeeper; the shopkeeper was enriched by the custom of the labourer. The shopkeeper went to the wholesale dealer; each shopkeeper went to the neighbouring shopkeeper, and they again enriched each other. The wholesale dealer went to the manufacturer; the manufacturer could only supply the demands of the wholesale dealer by setting to work more operatives. Such was the beautiful order in which Divine Providence regulated this world. There was a circle of continuous links, which could not be injured in any one point, but it would, like electricity, pervade the whole chain. (Great cheering.) Now, he had said that the working class, the shopkeeper, the merchant, the manufacturer, and the farmer, were interested in this question. But there was another class, which fancied itself secure, which was more deeply interested in the question than any other—and that was the landed aristocracy. (Hear, hear.) They called them (the Anti-Corn-Law League) their enemies. If they knew their position, they would call them their friends and their saviours. (Hear, hear.) For let them but continue this war with the people, let it only be continued on that most odious ground the bread monopoly, and not all the virtuous patriotism of your Radnors, your Kinnairds, your Clanricardes, and your Ducies, would save the landed aristocracy from the fate which it would inevitably bring upon them. Why, what were the ominous symptoms now? The town population arrayed against them, their own farmers and farm labourers dropping from their side. They came up to London in the present session of parliament, after spending a troubled and uneasy autumn with their tenants and their labourers. The landlords dared not face their tenants during their last recess. (Hear, hear) When they did get up dinners, they skulked into large towns like Devonport or Plymouth. They came up to London, knowing that they had left disaffected dependents at home; and what did they find in this metropolis? Why, this mighty metropolis, including its most fashionable quarters, putting itself at the head of the Anti-Corn-Law League. Let them go on, and in a short time they would find themselves like the French nobility previous to the revolution—an isolated, helpless, powerless class—a class that in their own inherent qualities, in their intellectual and moral powers, were inferior to any other classes of society. (Great cheering.) Their greatness and their power consisted in the favourable opinion of their fellow-citizens. They not only clung to feudal abuses, but they actually tried to put a restraint upon the supply of food for the people. They were warring against the progression of the age. They fancied that the system which still existed here was necessary; that their feudal system was necessary to the existence of the community. Why, their feudal system had gone in France, it had gone in Germany; in America it had never existed. The question now was, whether the feudal system in this country was to flourish beside an advancing and progressive manufacturing and commercial community? There were manufacturing and commercial communities in other countries, where feudalism did not exist. They would exist here by the side of feudalism, if feudalism would allow them, but if not by the side of feudalism, feudalism would not be permitted to stop the progress of civilization; if not by the side of it, then the manufacturing and commercial interests would flourish upon the ruins of feudalism. (Cheers.) He had only to ask every class that loved justice, that loved humanity, that wished well, not only to the physical, but to the moral, the intellectual, and the religious well-being of their countrymen, to take home with them the sentiments which they had heard that night, to lay them to heart, examine them carefully; and if, after examining the question, they felt convinced of the enormity of the iniquity of which they complained, then they would indeed be accountable if they did not do all that they could, according to the talents which God had committed to them, to abolish this most monstrous evil.”
