Mr. Gisborne, then member for Carlow, followed, and congratulated the meeting that there was a small band in both houses of Parliament, who did not submit their judgment to squires' logic. Daniel O'Connell came next, and in a speech of mingled power, humour, and pathos, produced a great impression. "If the Corn Laws," he asked, "were good to rescue the people from wretchedness, why did they not rescue the people of Ireland? Were there not sixty or seventy thousand Irish in Manchester, driven there by destitution in their own country? If the Corn Laws gave employment and high wages, why did they not give them in agricultural Ireland?" Subsequently he asked, what the Corn Laws were for? "To put money into the pockets of the landlords—not the money of the Russians, the Danes, or the Swedes, but that of their fellow countrymen."
Mr. Cobden followed O'Connell, and occupied the time of the meeting only for about ten minutes, so little disposed was he to take that prominent part which naturally fell to him when, in the subsequent long and ardent struggle, each of the free-trade agitators had the place tacitly assigned him for which his peculiar talents fitted him. John Bright, also, had yet to find his proper place; he was but little known out of his native town, and on this memorable evening he was sitting down in the body of the Hall, undistinguished amongst the other delegates. Cobden's speech, though short, was not without proof of some of the qualities which were afterwards to characterize his career—his brief exposure of landlord fallacies was trenchant and conclusive, and he effectively asserted the worldwide interest of a question which had not often been regarded as more than one of conflicting interests in these narrow islands. "We have here," he said, "gentlemen
