ore circumscribed duties of a citizen of Manchester.
Manchester was not yet a city with municipal representation, when he
wrote a pamphlet entitled "Incorporate your Borough," which did as much
as anything else to raise it to that dignity; and Manchester showed its
gratitude by electing him to be alderman in the first town-council.

It is hard for us at this date to realize the condition of England when
that horrible _Sirocco_, as Robert Browning called it, the tax on corn,
was blighting the land. The suicidal policy which had prevailed since
the Peace of 1815 had brought the country to the verge of ruin; and
when, in 1838, those reformers of Manchester repaired to that first
meeting of the Anti-Corn-Law League, it was through crowds of pale,
haggard, starving men, each with his starving family at home, muttering
treason, and prepared for violence at any touch. The banner of Chartism
was already lifted. It was then that these resolute men, with Cobden at
their head, met and vowed sacredly that their League should never be
disbanded until those laws had been repealed. The devotion with which
Richard Cobden fought that good fight may be illustrated by the story
that once his little daughter said to her mother concerning her
father,--"Mother, who is that gentleman that comes here sometimes?" With
a similar devotion to humanity did this tenderest of parents inspire his
companions; and it is not in the nature of things that such labors so
put forth shall fail. One by one the haughty aristocrats yielded; and
when at last Cobden had conquered the conqueror of Napoleon, the battle
was won. The "Times" pooh-poohed the movement, until one day the news
came that a few gentlemen of Manchester had subscribed between forty and
fifty thousand pounds for repeal, when it suddenly discovered that "the
Anti-Corn-Law movement was a great fact." When, in 1841, the new Whig
Ministry, with Sir Robert Peel at their head, came in, elected as
Protectionists, gaunt Famine took its stand by the Royal Mace, like a
Banquo. Sir Robert driving along Fleet Street might see those whom this
new unwelcome commoner represented grimly gazing of "Punch,"--that of
the Premier turning his back on a starving man with half-naked wife and
child, and buttoning up his coat with the words, "I'm very sorry, my
good man, but I can do nothing for you,--nothing!" But though Peel was
the Premier apparent, Cobden was the Premier actual. And means were
found of softening Si