Page:History of the Anti corn law league.pdf/118

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102
INVITATION TO UNITE.

such societies are earnestly recommended to form Anti-Corn-Law Associations; and, in case they require information or advice, they are invited to put themselves immediately in correspondence with the Manchester Association, whose fundamental rule, prohibiting the discussion of any party or political topics, is especially recommended for the adoption of all similar bodies elsewhere."

"3. That the agricultural proprietor, capitalist, and labourer are benefited equally with the trader, by the creation and circulation of the wealth of the country; and this meeting appeals to all those classes to co-operate for the removal of a monopoly which, by restricting the foreign commerce of the country, retards the increase of population, and thus depriving them of the manifold resources to be derived from the augmenting numbers and wealth of restrains the growth of towns; the country."

"4. That this meeting cannot separate without expressing its deep sympathy with the present privations of that great and valuable class of their countrymen who earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow; many of whom are now suffering from hunger in the midst of boundless fields of employment, rendered unproductive solely by those unjust laws which prevent the exchange of the products of their industry for the food of other countries. So long as a plentiful supply of the first necessaries of life is denied by acts of the British legislature to the great body of the nation, so long will the government and the country be justly exposed to all the evils resulting from the discontent of the people. With a view to avert so great a danger by an act of universal justice, this meeting pledges itself to a united, energetic, and persevering effort for the total and immediate repeal of all laws affecting the free importation of grain."

"5. That the delegates appointed for the furtherance of the objects of this work by the different Anti-Corn-Law associations and towns, be advised to assemble at Brown's Hotel, Palace Yard, Westminster, at twelve o'clock on Monday the 4th of February."

Mr. William Weir, a member of the Scottish bar, then editor of the Glasgow Argus, who had suggested that the agitation should take the course which had been successful in causing the repeal of the Orders in Council, stated that the petition from Glasgow for the total repeal of the Corn Laws had, in a few days, been signed by 80,000 persons, and that the number would probably be doubled. The association there would take nothing short of repeal. Mr.