members they returned. Their gains were obtained in the old corporations, where "freemen" had for a century been bought like cattle at a market in the little boroughs, where there were only 200, 300, or 400 electors, and where the balance might have been turned by a douceur of ten or twenty pounds each to some twenty or thirty persons; in certain counties where protectionist landowners could influence at will the tenants-at-will and in certain boroughs where an extensive manufacturer, or a many-acred neighbouring gentleman, brought all his powers of intimidation into play. At a dinner given to Mr. Brotherton, in Salford, Mr. Cobden delivered an admirable speech on the vote by ballot, and showed how different would have been the result of the general election had the electors been protected from the operation of undue influences. The new Parliament did not meet till November. There was the grouse shooting and the partridge shooting to be attended to; the ministers had to consider how, with the deliverance from one Queen, whose adverse influence was a plausible excuse for stand-still policy, they could find one equally plausible for standing still under one with whom, as they took good care to let the people know, they stood in high favour.
In the early part of 1838, some journeymen cotton spinners, of Glasgow, were tried and sentenced to transportation for life, for the part they had taken, as trade unionists which led, to murder and the destruction of property. An able writer in Tait's Magazine, took occasion thence to warn the working classes that they were dissipating the strength which ought to be concentrated into one united effort for the destruction of the landowners' monopoly. In reference to the warning and the advice I said: "There is great truth in these observations. Let the working classes consider the ceaseless labour and the enormous expense they have incurred within the last dozen years to get rid of the Combination Laws, to destroy
