Page:History of the Anti corn law league.pdf/25

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ments, and, to prevent the reconstruction of close boroughs, of the ballot. He pledged himself to give his support to the most severe and rigid economy in. expenditure, to the abolition of all useless places and unmerited pensions, and to the removal of the burden of even a necessary taxation from the industry to the property of the country. As good government essentially depended upon the general intelligence of the people, he should be most anxious to assist in removing all those taxes on knowledge which, to the disgrace of our system of taxation, obstructed the cheap and universal diffusion of information. He declared himself an enemy to all restrictions and monopolies, which, depriving alike the capitalist of his remuneration and the labourer of his wages, impeded the natural progress and prosperity of our trade. It would be the duty of e reformed parliament to abolish the East India, the Bank, and the timber monopolies, and that greatest of all monopolies which was upheld by the Corn Laws. Against. the monopoly of the church, Mr. Philips did not so decidedly declare, but he said that tithes must be abolished, and an unexceptionable system of maintaining the clergy substituted, and such means adopted as would distribute the revenues of the church in a just and fair proportion to the duties to be discharged. In emphatic language he declared his unqualified detestation of slavery, and his conviction of the necessity of immediate emancipation. Mr. Philips did not undergo much cross examination when he addressed meetings in various wards, although some of the more ultra-Cobbettites tried to create a clamour against him, because he would not pledge himself to sponge out. or reduce the national debt.

The candidate brought, forward by the tories and corn-law protectionists was Mr. John Thomas Hope, a nephew of the Earl of Hopeton, their leaning to rank being stronger than their desire to have a representation of their trading interests. In other respects their choice was a