the principles which he had impressed upon them on his visit of the previous year. In November, a special meeting of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce was held, to hear him respecting the state and prospects of our relations with the countries comprised in the Prussian Commercial Union. He attributed the formation of that League to the refusal of our government to receive the products of Germany, and entered into a great variety of details to show the effect of our restrictive commercial policy, in raising rival manufactures on the continent. There was no debate, for the chamber was now constituted of free traders, but Dr. Bowling's views were strongly corroborated in able speeches by Mr. J. B. Smith, the president,Mr. Cobden, Mr. Thomas Bazley, Mr. Henry Ashworth, Mr. Robert Gardner, Mr. Samuel Stocks, and Mr. Benj. Pearson. The report of the meeting's proceedings appeared in the German papers, and gave rise to much discussion on the continent. "If," said one of the German journals, "the opinion of the Manchester people and of Dr. Bowring were to be found in English legislation, that would be something, but neither represent the government nor the Parliament." Certainly neither did. The object was to make both the government and Parliament yield. Dr. Bowring proceeded to Leeds, where there had arisen an active agitation against the Corn Law, and addressed its Chamber of Commerce very effectively. The Mayor, Mr. Baines, M.P., Mr. J. Holdforth, Mr. George Wise, Mr. John Sykes and Mr. John Waddingham, took part in the proceedings, the report of which was widely circulated in Yorkshire.
There had been formed in Manchester a Working Man's Anti Corn-Law Association, with its own officers and its own lecturers. This body (sending its lecturers to towns and villages seeming to require instruction), looking at the outrageous conduct of some of the working men at the meeting to receive delegates in the Corn Exchange,
