, from time to time, and on which they naturally calculated,
from the party of the late Ministers, whose miserable object was to
secure their own return to power by means of any agency that they
could press into their service. But, to return to our sketch of the
progress of the "League." Admitting that, by dint of very great and
incessant exertion, they kept their ground, they made little or no
progress among the mercantile part of the community; and they resolved
to try their fortune with the agricultural constituencies--to sow
dissension between the landlords and the tenants, the farmers and
their labourers, and combine as many of the disaffected as they could,
in support of the clamour for free trade. This was distinctly avowed
by Cobden, at a meeting of the Anti-corn-law deputies, in the
following very significant terms: "_We can never carry the measure
ourselves_: WE MUST HAVE THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS WITH US!!"[27]

[27] League Circular, No. xxx. p. 3.

They therefore proceeded to commence operations upon the agricultural
constituencies. They knew they could always reckon upon a share of
support wherever they went--it being hard to find any country without
its cluster of bitter and reckless opponents of a Conservative
government, who would willingly aid in any demonstration against it.
With such aid, and indefatigable efforts to collect a crowd of noisy
non-electors: with a judicious choice of localities, and profuse
bribery of the local Radical newspapers, in order to procure copious
accounts of their proceedings--they commenced their "grand series of
country triumphs!" Their own organs, from time to time, gave out that
in each and every county visited by the League, the _farmers_ attended
their meetings, and joined in a vote condemnatory of the corn-laws,
and pledged themselves to vote thereafter for none but the candidates
of the Anti-corn-law League!

The following are specimens of the flattering appellations which had
till now been bestowed, by their new friends, upon these selfsame
farmers--"_Bull-frogs!"_ "_chaw-bacons!" _"_clod-poles!_"
"_hair-bucks!_" "_deluded slaves!_" "_brute drudges!_"[28] Now,
however, they and their labourers were addressed in terms of
respectful sympathy and flattery, as the victims of the rapacity of
their landlords--on whom were poured the full phials of Anti-corn-law
wrath. The following are some of the scalding drops let fall upon
their devoted heads--_"Monster of impi