Page:History of the Anti corn law league.pdf/164

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148
MR. MILNER GIBSON.

from almost every region of the globe. We have here gentlemen from Mexico, and from the United States; from Paris and St. Petersburg from Odessa and Geneva. Indeed, I scarcely know a town within the German League which is not represented here to-night. They will unite the Baltic and the Black Sea, and cover their rivers with commerce as the rivers of England are covered. The object of the Anti-Corn-Law League is to draw together in the bonds of friendship—to unite in the bonds of amity, the whole world."

A Suffolk landowner, Thomas Milner Gibson, appeared on this occasion, for the first time before a Manchester audience, and by his youthful and gentlemanly appearance, and by the mingled good humour and pungency with which he demolished the arguments and statements of men of his own class, from whom he had come, out to make common cause with the people, made a most favourable impression. The other speakers were Edward Baines, jun., of the Leeds Mercury, a journal which had rendered good service to the cause of free trade; the Rev. Mr. M'Donnell, of Birmingham Dr. Bowring, who, in September, 1838, had given the first impulse to the formation of the great confederacy the patriotic Sharman Crawford; George Thompson, the eloquent advocate of negro emancipation; Ebenezer Elliott, whose vigorous "Rhymes had done much to rouse public indignation against the Corn Laws and the veteran reformer, and co-labourer with Joseph Hume, Henry Warburton.

Another magnificent banquet followed. On Tuesday evening five thousand working men dined together in the new pavilion, and the gallery was filled by the wives, daughters, sisters, and friends of those who sat below. The chair was taken by Mr. Frederick Warren, president and the of the Operatives' Anti-Corn-Law Association; and the the platform was occupied Mayor of Manchester (by public-spirited Thomas Potter), M. Philips, M.P., Joseph