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RICHARD COBDEN.
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There were present, he said, ministers of congregations who had come, some two, some three, and some nearly four hundred miles distance, at their own expense.
At the opening of the afternoon's meeting, a resolution was passed unanimously, that Mr. Cohden should be requested to address the conference. Mr. Cobden, on coming forward, was received with warm plaudits, frequently renewed. He said he appeared before the conference as the representative of the National Anti-Corn-Law League, deputed to explain the grounds on which that body advocated a repeal of the Corn Laws:
"They had entered on that inquiry without reference to party considerations, to expediency, or to class interests; and they had come to the conclusion that no tax imposed upon the food of the people could be just. He showed the injustice of the bread-tax by its unequal pressure upon the poor man, whose family, with an income of ten shillings per week, eat as much bread as that of the millionaire or nobleman; and that while it took twenty per cent, out of the income of every unskilled labourer in the kingdom, it did not abstract from the duke, with £150,000 a–year, a thousandth part of one per cent. The enormity of this was enhanced by the fact that this was not a tax for the purpose of revenue, but a tax levied upon the poor man's cupboard for the benefitof the rich man. On these and similar grounds, the fundamental principle of the Anti-Corn-Law League had been the total and immediate repeal of the Corn Laws. The honourable member in a very able manner combated the wages fallacy, insisting upon it that the repeal of the bread tax, so far from reducing, would tend to advance the rate of wages, by increasing the demand for labour. To show the operation of the present law in reducing wages, he instanced the frame-work knitters of Nottingham, who, in 1816, immediately after the passing of it, received 18s. a-week for less labour than they now perform for 8s. He viewed the question as it affected commerce, and showed how it was with the Corn Laws, an importation of foreign grain in times of scarcity must drain this country of its gold; for the law confined the trade in corn to jobbers and speculators, shutting out the honest merchant who dared not enter into it. He called upon the ministers, and especially those from the agricultural districts, to supply facts bearing upon the question of wages, and it would be seen that the class for whose benefit the Corn Laws were said to exist were receiving less wages than any other class of labourers. Mr. Cobden argued several other points of the question,
