as he could spare from the emancipation of a hundred millions of his fellow men in India, to the emancipation of his fellow countrymen from the effects of a depressing monopoly at home.
The Chamber of Commerce followed, and, at a meeting held on Thursday, the 20th of May, resolved: "That this meeting has learned with deep regret the decision of the House of Commons on Lord Sandon's motion—a decision which, in the opinion of this chamber, places in extreme jeopardy the largest foreign market for our cotton goods, the loss of which, at a period when our capitalists and operatives are suffering under an unparalleled depression of trade, would be fraught "with the most ruinous consequences to the surrounding community."
The working classes of Manchester were eager to join in this movement. A great number of active-minded men amongst them believing, in spite of the often and loudly reiterated assertions of the bread-taxers' hirelings to the contrary, that the great majority of their own order were fully convinced that the operation of the Corn Law was to lower their wages while it raised the price of their food, originated a requisition to the mayor to call an open-air meeting, where an opportunity might be given them to testify their abhorrence of the starvation–creating monopoly. In three days it received five thousand three hundred and ninety signatures, a fact of itself sufficiently demonstrative that they were very far from being indifferent to the question. The mayor returned a respectful answer, approving of the object of the meeting, but officially declining to call it, on the ground that he had already called and presided over one in the Town Hall for the same purpose. A meeting of the requisitionists was called, and upwards of two thousand of their number met, and resolved that a meeting should be held in Stephenson Square, that Mr. Cobden should be requested to preside, and that the various trades and temperance societies
