Peel and Mr. Gladstone, are, to a great extent, but the realization of projects and the carrying out of principles laid down by Mr. Thomson during his official connection with that board, as desiderata to be secured, whenever the government had the power to do so."
The Wellington-Peel administration were soon compelled to resign office, and in the succeeding government, Mr. Thomson, again returned for Manchester, had the presidentship of the Board of Trade, with a seat in the cabinet, stipulating that, in his more influential position, he should still, notwithstanding the old rule of compromise, have liberty to raise his voice and record his vote against the heaviest and most oppressive of all the monopolies to which he was opposed. It was something that Manchester compelled this concession from colleagues far behind him in the comprehension of a principle and boldness in giving it expression–something that Manchester, from the period of its enfranchisement to the repeal of the corn-law, always sent representatives to protest against the landowners' monopoly.
The landlords, in 1834, were "distressed" with the abundance, as they had been with the abundance of 1822. I have, elsewhere,[1] described the comfort of the people at the former period; and there may be use, at the present time, when, while I write, an administration is in office, pledged to protection by all its antecedents, in repeating the description ; for the memory is more retentive of inflictions than of their occasional cessation, and history is more a record of crime and suffering than of periods of peace and plenty. The sword and the spear furnish more stirring descriptions than the ploughshare and the pruning hook. The man who storms and fires a city is immortalised by the historian's pen ; he who enables a nation to earn its food by honest labour, dies
- ↑ Historical Sketchs of Manchester
