Page:History of the Anti corn law league - Volume 2.pdf/40

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26
KOHL.

They have lecturers, who are perpetually traversing the country to fan the flames of agitation in the minds of the people. Those lecturers, who sometimes earn as much as 1000 a year, often hold conferences and disputations with lecturers of the opposite party, and not unfrequently drive them in disgrace from the field. It is also the business of the travelling lecturers, to keep a vigilant watch on every movement of the enemy, and acquaint the League with every circumstance likely to affect its interests. The Leaguers write direct letters to the Queen, the Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, and other distinguished people, to whom, as well as to the foreign ambassadors, they send copies of those journals containing the most faithful accounts of their proceedings. Sometimes they send personal deputations to distinguished opponents, in order to tell them disagreeable truths to their faces. Nor do the Leaguers neglect the potent instrumentality of that hundred-armed Briareus, the press. Not only do they spread their opinions through the medium of those journals favourable to them; they issue many periodicals of their own, which are exclusively devoted to the interests of the League. These contain, of course, full reports of all mcctings, proceedings, and lectures against the Com Laws; extracts from Anti-Corn-Law publications, repeating for the thousandth time that monopoly is contrary to the order of nature, and that the League seeks only to restore the just order of Providence; original articles hended Signs of the Times,' 'Anti-Corn-Law Agitation in London, Progress of the Good Work,' &c., &c.; and last not least, poems entitled Lays of the League,' advocating in various ways the cause of free trade, and satirising their opponents generally with more lengthiness than wit. Nor does the Anti-Com-Law party omit to avail itself of the agency of those cheap little pamphlets called Tracts,' which are such favourite party weapons in England. With these tiny dissertations, seldom costing