course which they professed to condemn so strongly. He met and confuted many of the fallacies by which the monopoly was defended, and expressed his hope of the success of a movement which, considered in all its bearings, in its ultimate consequences, and the peaceful relations which it was calculated to establish between men in different climes and countries, would be seen to be admirably designed to spread the spirit of Christianity, and to diffuse the blessings of plenty all over the earth. Mr. Mark Philips, Mr. Cobden, and Mr. John Brooks followed, and the unanimous thanks of the meeting were voted to Mr. Hewlett and Mr. Villiers, On the Wednesday of the same week, a tea party of the working classes, 700 in number, was held in Bolton, addressed by Mr. Brotherton, Mr. Brooks, Dr. Bowring, Mr. Bright, and Mr. Moore, at which a great number of working men came forward and added their mites to the rapidly increasing League fund, intended to furnish the means, at the rate of a thousand pounds a week, for twelve months, of instructing the people in the doctrines of free trade,
The London Times had not yet discovered that the League was a great fact. The monied interests had not yet spoken out; and meetings of manufacturers in a room which held only some fifteen hundred persons were held to be indicative of no great amount of public opinion. That influential journal—influential when it joined any movement which had gained strength without its aid, and was likely to be triumphant in spite of its opposition—had found that the revenue for the quarter ending 5th Jan. 1843, as compared with the corresponding quarter of the preceding year, had decreased no less than £140,062, occasioned mainly by diminished consumption of articles used by the industrial classes of the community, and it said: "It seems to us very clear, whatever our free trade friends may say, that any alteration which may be made in the Corn Laws ought not to be made irrespective
