CHAPTER X.
THE CAMPAIGN FOR 1840.
The free-trade campaign, for 1840, was commenced with great vigour. It had been determined that a numerous meeting of delegates should be held in Manchester, and that on the occasion of their assembling, there should also be given to the opponents of the Corn Law, throughout the populous district surrounding Manchester, an opportunity of hearing the advocates of unrestricted commerce. There was no hall in the town large enough to contain half of the actual members of the local association. It was therefore resolved to construct one for the purpose. Mr. Cobden, who owned nearly all the then unbuilt-upon land in St. Peter's Field, offered it as the site of the erection; and thus it curiously happened that it was raised upon the very spot, where, in 1819, a peaceably-met and legally-convened meeting was dispersed by the sabre, because its objects were to petition for a repeal of the Corn Law, and for reform in Parliament. The survivors of that fatal day had seen the Reform Bill passed; and many of them, seeing on that blood-stained field, a great place of assemblage rising up, to be devoted to the purpose of abolishing, by peaceful and temperate discussion, the oppressive monopoly against which the older radical reformers were all united, began to entertain the hope that, in spite of the protectionists and their new allies, the physical force chartists, the time was coming when selfish mono-
