be his duty to help it onward to the best of his power. It was believed that no whig administration was likely to be formed—or if formed, not likely to continue in office— without his occupying a seat in the cabinet; and hopes were formed that some of his former colleagues would follow his example, if not from motives like his, of justice and humanity, from the conviction that without the assistance of the free-trade or people's party they would gain nothing, and that with it, they would at once gain office and popularity. But they continued aloof, abiding pertinaciously to their "fixed duty " Shibboleth; standing doggedly at their half-way house; believing that the juste milieu was equi-distant from obstruction and progression, toryism and radicalism. It was perhaps well that they thus stood. Had they at that time achieved such popularity as to carry them into office, they might have recoiled from the noise themselves had made, and, according to former custom, sought compromise. It was well, perhaps, that they should cling a little longer to their Shibboleth until its utter worthlessness should be demonstrated, until they saw that the old party cries were regarded but as chaff. That year of eighteen hundred and forty-four was still to be one of constant, unremitting toil on the part of the free traders; not cheered by the hope of success then, but sustained by the conviction that their cruse was a just one and that in the and it would prevail—prevail, very probably, by 1848 at the latest, whom popular influence would operate strongly on the body of electors. The duty of the League was to go on instructing the people, and especially the constituencies which had any remnant of elective freedom. It had now the support of the best part of the press both in London and in the provinces. Every speech was reported, and millions of readers looked to the speeches at anti-corn-law meetings with more eagerness than they did to the proceedings in parliament. It was resolved that the meetings in Covent Garden Theatre should be
