terials out of which the Anti-Corn-Law League has been fashioned, it were worse than folly to shut our eyes to the probability that much mischief may, at no distant period, result from its unceasing efforts to injure the agricultural interests of England. The League has always brought into play all the approved modes of poisoning the stream of public sentiment. Lecturers are paid to perambulate the country, and to declaim against the 'atrocities of landed monopoly! What though those men be empty conceited blockheads? They are permitted to tell their story, day by day, without contradiction, and their uncontradicted falsehoods come, at length, to be regarded as truths ! The League, in like manner, issues, periodically, cheap publications condemnatory of the Corn Laws. These publications are diffused with incredible zeal, and the result will yet be visible on the state of public opinion. It is true, we repeat, that the agricultural interest should shake off its apathy in this matter. The Corn Laws are not to be saved by parliamentary majorities alone. Parliamentary majorities are really effective so long as they reflect the sentiments of the majority out of doors. Let public opinion be subjected for a long period to vicious influences, and the disposition in parliament to defend the Corn Laws will wax fainter and fainter. We trust, therefore, that the appeal of the committee of the Central Agricultural Society will be responded to with alacrity by the body of the landowners. The agricultural body must, in self-defence, adopt the tactics of their antagonists. If they shall do so, the Anti-Corn-Law League will very speedily be disposed of."
These vituperations, given as a specimen of the sort of writing with which the protectionist press met the arguments of the free traders, show that the League had hit hard. It was now fully organised and in active operation—no longer a movement of London, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Leeds, and Glasgow, but NATIONAL. There was hard work before it, but there were stout hearts for the work; and there were the results of other movements to help it on. The reduction, in 1837, of the newspaper stamp-duty, from three-pence one-fifth to one penny, had greatly favoured the diffusion of principles adverse to monopoly, either in representation or trade. The sevenpence newspaper had been reduced to fourpence-half penny or fivepence, and of the consequent increased circulation to the amount of fifty per cent., the greater portion was shared by papers advocating political and commercial
