wretched condition of hundreds and thousands who looked to him for employment when none was to be had.
While Manchester was bracing itself up for the fight, indications were given in other places of the sort of opposition with which the new movement would be encountered. At Leeds a great meeting was held on the 15th January, rendered still more numerous by the announcement that Mr. Feargus O'Connor would attend "to vindicate the rights of labour," which brought the Chartists in great numbers to support their champion, and it was found necessary to adjourn to the Coloured Cloth Hall, where between seven to eight thousand persons soon congregated. The Mayor was called to the chair Mr. Alderman Goodman moved, and Mr. Alderman Williams seconded a resolution against all restrictions on the interchange of nations as unjust in principle, impolitic, and injurious. Mr. O'Connor designated the movement as one intended only to give the manufacturers power to lower the wages of their workmen, and moved a resolution that, although on trade were injurious, no salutary alterations could be made until those for whose benefit the change was contemplated were fully represented in Parliament. Great confusion ensued, amidst which Mr. Thomas Flint stood forward with the Mirror of Parliament in his hand, and having read some extracts in which O'Connor had spoken against the repeal of the Corn Laws, exclaimed "Here is a man who now assents to the proposition that there should be no restrictions on commerce, and yet only four years ago he maintained that such a principle would be ruinous to the country." Here a cry came from the crowd "What have we to do with his consistency?" "What!" said Mr. Flint, "have you nothing to do with it? I should like to know what better criterion you have of a man's principles than his past actions. If he is unable to give a full and satisfactory explanation of his change of opinion he is unworthy of your confidence." Great con-
