254
MR. COBDEN ON FREEHOLDS.
to lessen the confidence in that security, but I say there is no investment so secure as the freehold of the earth, and it is the only investment that gives a vote along with the property. (Hear, hear.) We come then to this: it costs a man nothing to have a vote for the county. ('Hear,' and applause.) He buys his property; sixty pounds for a cottage is given—thirty or forty pounds in many of the neighbouring towns will do it; he has then the interest of his money, he has the property to sell when he wants it, and he has his vote in the bargain. (Loud cheers, and cries of 'hear.') Sometimes a parent, wishing to teach a son to be economical and saving, gives him a set of nest-eggs in a savings' bank; I say to such a parent, 'Make your son, at twentyone, a freeholder; it is an act of duty, for you make him thereby an independent freeman, and put it in his power to defend himself and his children from political oppression—(loud cheers)—and you make that man with £60 an equal in the polling-booth to Mr. Scarisbrick, with his eleven miles in extent of territory, or to Mr. Egerton. (Renewed cheers.) This must be done. In order to be on the next year's register, it requires only that you should be in possession of a freehold before the 31st of next January.' We shall probably be told that 'this is very indiscreet—what is the use of coming out in public, and announcing such a plan as this, when your enemies can take advantage of it as well as you?' My first answer to that is, that our opponents, the monopolists, cannot take advantage of it as well as we. (Hear, hear.) In the first place, very few men are, from connexion or prejudice, monopolists, unless their capacity for inquiry or their sympathies have been blunted by already possessing an undue share of wealth. (Hear, hear.) In the next place, if they wish to urge upon others of a rank below them to qualify for a vote, they cannot trust them with the use of the vote when they have got it. ('Hear,' and cheers.) But, apart from that, I would answer those people who cavil at this public appeal, and say, 'You will not put salt upon your enemy's tail—it is much too wise a bird. They have been at this work long ago,' and they have the worst of it now. (Hear, hear, hear.) What has been the conduct of the landlords of the country? Why, they have been long engaged in multiplying voters upon their estates, making the farmers take their sons, brothers, nephews, to the register; making them qualify as many as the rent of the land will cover; they have been making their land a kind of political capital ever since the passing of the Reform Bill. (Cheers and a laugh.) You have, then, a new ground opened to you which has never yet been entered upon, and from which I expect, in the course of not more than three years from this time, that every county (if we persevere as we have in South Lancashire) possessing a large town population may carry free traders as their representatives to
