no power to prevent the reduction of wages. It was want of work and the consequent competition of unemployed men that reduced wages. Mr. Cobden, of whom my fear had been that he was a little too refined for the rough work of a popular meeting, now gave evidence that he possessed, in the highest degree, the power of arguing to the plainest understanding, and conciliating the most adverse audience. He did not skulk the question but vigorously grappled with it at once, and by a clear explanation of the principles which regulate wages, and an appeal to the experience of all present that their condition was better when food was plentful and cheap, than when it was scarce and dear, carried the whole meeting with him, and when the resolution was put, there was not a single hand held up for it but that of the mover. A motion made by Mr. Eskrigge pledging the electors present to vote for no candidate for the representation of the borough who was not favourable to the repeal of the Corn Law was then put and carried, the only dissentient being the mover of the rejected resolution.
On Monday, the 21st December, a similar meeting was held at Macclesfield, attended by Mr. Cobden, Mr. W. Rawson, Mr. J. Brooks, and Mr. W. Evans, as a deputation from the League. The result was the formation of an Anti-Corn-Law Association which should disclaim all protection to manufactures. The agitation for free trade had been, to a certain degree, suppressed in Macclesfield, by the propagation of the notion that the silk manufacture of the place would be endangered by its adoption. In reference to these two meetings, the first of hundreds of similar assemblages throughout the island, where Cobden and his compatriots popularized the philosophical doctrine of the economists, I remarked at the time that "the most important results are likely to follow when men take up a great public question with the same spirit of determination in which they pursue their own private
