and loud cheers.) I have also in my hand a list of returns for 70 out of the 140 boroughs over which the League has exercised some influence, and of these there are 68 in which there has been a clear gain upon the registration—in some a great gain, but less or more in all. (Applause.) Well, now we will leave these results to speak for themselves; they are here, before the country. Our opponents may gather from them whether the League has been dead or slumbering, and they will accordingly derive what consolation they may from them. (Applause.) We have concentrated our energies on these points. We thought it was where, for the season, our efforts were most required; and although I may say we have done much, I believe the League is but yet in its infancy, that it is opening up new fields of labour, is occupying ground not before occupied, and that the exertions before made will afford no parallel to its future efforts."
Something more was wanted than the reformation of the registers. There was an opening for a great increase in the number of forty-shilling freeholds. Mr. Cobden came forward after Mr. Wilson had concluded, and pointed out this as the means of gaining many of the counties. He said:—
"Mr. Chairman, ladies, and gentlemen, I congratulate you upon this magnificent meeting. I was thinking, as I sat here, that probably there never had been so many persons assembled under a roof in England, or in Europe, as we have at this great League meeting; and the occasion and the circumstances under which we meet afford the most encouraging symptoms,—(hear)—encouraging, inasmuch as they prove that it is from no transient motive that you have joined together in this great cause—(hear)—that it is not from the pressure of distress, tem porary distress, that you have banded yourselves together that the cause of free trade is, in your minds, something more than a remedy for present evils—that you look at it, under all circumstances, as a great and absorbing truth—and that your minds crave for it with an intellectual and moral craving, which has made it almost a part of the religion of your souls. ('Hear, hear,' and applause.) I venture to say that this meeting, held under these circumstances, with no pressure or excitement to call you together, will have more weight, more effect, upon public opinion than a score of those assemblies we used to hold, when we were driven together, as it were, under the pressure of local and temporary distress. (Hear, hear.) And quiet as has been those statistical tables that you have heard by our chairman, I venture to say that they will strike more terror into the ranks of the monopolists than
