The Rev.J. Griffin, of Manchester, moved, "That the council of the Anti-Corn-Law League be admitted to address the conference, according to their request." After some remarks by the Rev. J. Wiseman, of Wick, the deputation was introduced by Mr. Massie. It consisted of the following gentlemen:—Sir Thomas Potter, R. Cobden, Esq., M,P., Messrs. Geo. Wilson (chairman of the council), Alderman Walker, Elkanah Armitage, Alderman Kershaw, Thomas Bazley, jun., William Rawson, Alderman Brooks, Henry Rawson, Archibald Prentice, George Thompson, William Bickham, and James Howie. They were received with loud and reiterated applause. Mr. Cobden then read the following address:—
"To the Christian Ministers of all denominations, in conference assembled, for the consideration of the laws restricting the food of the people, the address of the Executive Council of the Anti-Corn-Law League, in Manchester.
"Reverend Sirs,—We beg respectfully to tender you our earnest and grateful thanks for the zealous and truly Christian services which you have rendered to the cause of humanity, and to express our acknowledgments for the sanction which your dignified proceedings have given to your past labours, and from which we shall derive increased encouragement, and a new stimulus to our future efforts.
"The religious world will regard the acts of your conference as a noble illustration of the true spirit of a Christian ministry, whose benign influence can never be more consistently exerted than when vindicating the cause of the poor and destitute.
"We highly appreciate the minute and startling array of evidence brought by you from all parts of the empire, and proving on such unimpeachable testimony, the physical and moral degradation of great numbers of the people, as well in the agricultural as in the manufacturing counties. You have thus made it manifest that, during the long continuance of extreme scarcity and dearness of provisions, consequent upon unwise and unjust legislation, the condition of the labouring classes has rapidly deteriorated; that the demand for labour has declined; that wages, notwithstanding the assertion of the monopolists to the contrary, have materially decreased ; and that, from these causes, multitudes of our industrious fellow-countrymen have been cruelly and needlessly subjected to all the evils of misery, disease, and premature death.
