burthen might be shifted from the shoulders of the former to those of the latter. Thinking that farmers and farm labourers would be more easily convinced if they heard less of injustice to manufacturers and weavers, than of injustice and injury to themselves, I accepted an invitation to address the farmers at Over, in Cheshire, on their market day, and proceeded there alone on October 12th, to make the experiment. A clergyman, seeing the announcement of the lecture, had gone amongst the farmers in the Market Hall, and told them that they ought not to attend, on the ground that the teachings of the League were highly immoral and irreligious, and, in the then circumstances of the country, seditious. This rather excited the curiosity to hear, and the hall was well filled. Mr. Slater, of Woodford Hall, a farmer of 300 acres of land, took the chair, and introduced me to the meeting. I met the charge of irreligion by reading a portion of a speech which had been delivered by the Rev. Gilbert Elliot, of Kirby Thorpe, who had quoted Archbishop Cranmer as an authority against the deep sin of artificially raising the price of food. Having thus cleared the way, I argued:
1. That so far from the Corn Laws having secured steadiness of prices, they have caused extraordinary fluctuations, and make farming a matter of dangerous gambling and speculation.
2. That the sliding scale has caused a fall of prices at the very period when the farmer had a right to expect a fair remuneration for his capital and industry.
3. That the prices promised by the laws of 1815, 1822, and 1828, and on which promised prices the farmer had made his contracts, have not been realized, and that consequently his progress has been constantly downward.
4. That legislation may raise the rent of land where the number of acres is limited, but cannot sustain, beyond the level of other businesses, the profits of farmers whose number is not limited.
