Page:History of the Anti corn law league.pdf/346

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THREE SIMULTANEOUS MOVEMENTS.
non-represented, but only the electors, to join in this movement for extending the benefit of full, ample representation to the whole people, without standing on small details, confident that these can be easily arranged, when all are on an equality of political privilege. (Cheers.) I am a chartist to the whole extent, although I do not exactly approve of the conduct of some of those who agitate it, or of the manner in which they obstruct Anti-Corn-Law meetings—but I am a chartist, and I trust the chartists will presevere in their agitation, because it is my full conviction, that to the charter, sooner or later, the whole community must come. (Loud cheers.) The League, in agitating for Corn Law repeal, mix up no other question with it. We are bound together by one common tie—that is the repeal of all taxes on the poor man's bread; and you will find there is great advantage in keeping it totally distinct from all other sorts of agitation. I labour to promote Mr. Sturge's agitation among electors, because I know that it is among electors principally I have any little influence, and I wish to use that influence in as moderate a way as I can, and, at the same time, in as firm a way as I can, to persuade my fellow electors to obtain for non-electors equal privileges with ourselves. It is my firm conviction that all will have to come to the charter, and the way to get the middle classes is not to ask them to swallow too much at first—if we can get them to agitate for complete suffrage, it will be easy to come to an amicable arrangement of the other points afterwards. I say this that you may not obstruct Mr. Sturge's movement. I should be sorry if any person should understand me, that, in agitating for that, I was opposed to the agitation of the charter—it is an exceedingly wholesome agitation, and I trust it will continue. (Cheers.) All I ask is, that we shall not run into a hasty union that never can be lasting, if it be had by any compromise of principle. Every man has heard that the duke—the great iron duke—the man who tells us we are not to have a repeal of the Corn Laws—that he, in his victories, which cost the country so much blood and treasure, and involved us in so much debt that these victories have been our disgrace, instead of being an honour and a glory to us—every one has heard that in those victories he has boasted of his English, Irish, and Scotch regiments, marching together against the common enemy, and becoming invincible by reason of their union, but he did not ask the English to mix themselves up with the Scotch, nor the Scotch to become amalgamated with the Irish, and thus to go forward pell-mell against the enemy, but he directed them to march forward side by side, firmly united without losing their distinctive characteristics; and in this way they achieved their victories. (Cheers,) I ask you to allow these three sorts of agitation to march along, shoulder by shoulder, against the common enemy—not quarrelling by the way, but all going