Page:History of the Anti corn law league - Volume 2.pdf/234

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220
THE CLERGY.

would be challenged as interested parties. All he asked of the clergy was to maintain a strictly neutral position."

In conclusion, he announced the determination of the League to persevere in their present course, unconnected with party; and by attention to the registries for two years, they relied with confidence on success. Mr. Bright followed in a long and able address; after which, the chairman announced that the League would not meet again until Wednesday, the 7th of August, which would he the last night of their re-assembling for the present season. Before breaking up, he called on them to give three cheers for Mr. Villiers, Mr. Cobden, Lord Ducie, Lord Howick, and the other noblemen and gentlemen who had taken part in their proceedings. The call was loudly responded to.

The last metropolitan meeting of the Anti-Corn-Law League, for the season, was held in Covent Garden Theatre, on the Wednesday appointed. Half an hour before the chair was taken, every available seat was occupied: and many failed to gain admission. Mr. George Wilson, chairman; T. Milner Gibson, Esq., Richard Cobden, Esq., and Mr. W. J. Fox, were the speakers. Mr. Wilson, in alluding to the diminished number of public meetings, held and to be held, intimated that the energies of the League were now to be spent principally in seeing to the registration of voters. During the last few weeks they bad, he said, proceeded like men of business to the consideration of the best mode of attending to the registration of electors residing in boroughs throughout the kingdom. "We selected 140 boroughs, upon which we thought, with reasonable exertions, an impression might be made. We selected for our visiting agents to such boroughs men fully acquainted with the subject of registration in all its parts; men fully qualified to undertake the business in as workmanlike a manner us any men in the kingdom; and they had reported to the council of the League the result of their inquiries. In some instances they found the regis-