the paper for a petition without assistance, had sent up a petition for the repeal of the Corn Laws, bearing 22,000 signatures. I could not help thinking that it was degrading to the merchants, manufacturers, and tradesmen of a town like this, that the poor hand-loom weavers should have to set them this example."
Mr. James Howie, a man always prompt for action, said that what had just fallen from the chairman reminded him that we had here no Anti-Corn-Law Association. He believed that if the devil himself had contrived a system for the destruction of the human race, he could not have framed a code of laws more adapted for the purpose than the insolent aristocracy had done. He should propose that the present company at once form themselves into such an association, and though few in number, be the rolling stone that should gather strength in its progress. Mr. Howie's proposition was well received, and I requested all who were favourable to its object, to meet at the same place on the following Monday evening.
The health of Mr. Paulton was then given, with commendation of his lectures at Bolton of Mark Philip, M.P. for the borough; of Earl Fitzwilliam, as an opponent of the Corn Laws; and of Mr. Brotherton, M.P. for Salford, to which his brother-in-law, Mr. Wm. Harvey, responded.
M. Frederic Bastiat, in his "Cobden et la Ligue," published in 1845, says: "Seven men united themselves at Manchester, in the month of October, 1838; and with that manly determination which characterizes the Anglo-Saxon race, they resolved to overturn every monopoly by legal means, and accomplish without disturbance, without effusion of blood, with the power only of opinion, a revolution as profound, perhaps more profound, than that which our fathers worked to effect in 1789." There is no reason why the names of those seven men, possessing "cette virile determination qui characterise la race Anglo-Saxonne," should not be known. The first meeting to
