Page:History of the Anti corn law league.pdf/91

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75
MR. PAULTON'S LECTURE.

number, an element to success, and permitted constant additions of earnest workers, doing work which could not have been bought in the ordinary labour market.

On Thursday evening, October 25th, Mr. Paul ton delivered his first lecture to one of the largest audiences ever assembled in the Corn Exchange, every ticket of admission to the lecture room having been eagerly sought for and obtained by the public some hours previous to its commencement, and many applicants were necessarily disappointed. About seven o'clock the Committee of the Anti Corn-Law Association took their seats on the platform, and J. B. Smith, Esq., having been called upon to preside, in introducing Mr. Paulton, said he would take the opportunity of stating the objects for which the association had been established: "It had been established on the same righteous principle as the Anti-Slavery Society. The object of that society was to obtain the free right for the negroes to possess their own flesh and blood—the object of this was to obtain the free right of the people to exchange their labour for as much food as could be got for it; that we might no longer be obliged by law to buy our food at one shop, and that the dearest in the world, but be at liberty to go to that at which it can be obtained cheapest. It was an object in which men of all political opinions might unite without compromising those principles, and it was a fundamental rule of the association that no party politics should be mixed up in the discussion of the question. It might seem to be a work of supererogation to prove that a man had a right to a big loaf, but when we saw the nobles of the land, the majority of our senators, and men of wealth and education contending that the indulgence of "an appetite for big loaves was fraught with consequences no less serious than the ruin of the landowner, the farmer, the labourer, and ultimately of the nation, it was then that lectures like these became necessary to show the absurdity and fallacy of such asser-