on Wednesday, for the purpose of addressing the
freeholders and farmers of the county on the subject of the corn laws.

Very considerable excitement had prevailed in the city and the
surrounding districts in consequence of the proposed visit of Mr Cobden,
but it does not appear that the landowners on the present occasion,
through the medium of the farmers' clubs and agricultural associations,
thought fit to get up an organised opposition, similar to that at
Colchester, or interfere to prevent their tenants from attending, as at
Reading. The consequence was a very large number of farmers were present
at the meeting, although it is well known that the harvest is not in
such a state of forwardness as to allow them to absent themselves from
their ordinary occupations without considerable inconvenience.

It is a circumstance worthy of notice, and strongly indicative of the
present state of public feeling upon the subject, that in a purely
agricultural district, at a county meeting regularly convened by the
High Sheriff, the whole of the county members being present, two of whom
spoke in favour of protection, supported by many influential men of
their own party, no person ventured to propose a resolution in favour of
the present corn law, and that even the resolution for a low fixed duty
made by two of the most popular men and largest landed proprietors in
Oxfordshire, Lord Camoys and Mr Langston, was supported by only three or
four individuals out of a meeting of nearly 3,000 persons.

Early in the morning, a protectionist champion presented himself, not in
the guise either of a freeholder or farmer of the county, but in the
person of a good-humoured, though somewhat eccentric printer, named
Sparkhall, who had come from the celebrated _locale_ of John
Gilpin--Cheapside, and who having armed himself with a large blue bag
fitted with elaborate treatises upon the corn laws, and among other
pamphlets a recent number of _Punch_, forthwith travelled to Oxford, and
by the kind permission of the meeting was permitted to essay a speech,
about what nobody could divine, and in a manner truly original. It is,
however, due to the monopolists of Oxfordshire to state that they did
not accredit their volunteer champion, and even went so far as to
request that he would "bottle up" his eloquence for some future
opportunity.

At two o'clock, the hour appointed for the proceedings to commence, the
County hall, which is capable of containing