15. That they have a natural protection in the attachment of farmers to the soil, and their inability to turn to other pursuits, and consequently their eager competition for farms.
16. That this competition, accompanied by the distress of their customers, has brought them into a state of destitution, from which nothing can release them but free trade, not merely in corn, but in all the articles which they consume; and
17. That landowners themselves, by painful experience, must soon find that agriculture and trade are twins, waxing and waning together.
I had earned a goodly number of tracts with me, and the demand for them at the close of the meeting showed that the farmers were eager for information when offered to them in a friendly spirit. The publication of my address led to other invitations, and I subsequently visited, in succession, Macclesfield, Congleton, Sandbach, Middlewich, Northwich, Nantwich, Audlem, and Chester, choosing market days, when farmers could attend, and having always deeply attentive audiences, without experiencing the slightest interruption, the only attempt at opposition being at Nantwich, where a chartist, a stranger, got up and said the manufacturers were agitating for the repeal of the Corn Laws only that they might sell more goods. This notable discovery excited a burst of laughter, everybody seeing that if more goods were wanted, more persons would be employed to produce them. The man, nettled at the laugh, challenged me to meet him, at Nantwich, at some future day, and discuss the whole question. I told him that I would not go an inch out of my way to argue with one who could meet his match in any working man there, upon which an old man in the gallery of the chapel called out to him: "I'll meet thee, man and though I am nowt but an old shoemaker I'll soon do for thee." The challenge was not accepted.
