n, the League and their stanch friends have
sustained an unexpected and serious shock.

IV. _Salisbury_.--We have not the least desire to magnify this into a
mighty victory for the Conservative party; but the interference of
the Anti-corn-law League certainly made the struggle a very critical
and important one. We expected to succeed, but not by a large
majority; for ever since 1832, the representation had (till within the
last year) been divided between a Conservative and a Liberal. However,
the Anti-corn-law League, flushed with their "triumphs" at London and
Kendal, flung all their forces ostentatiously into the borough, and
exhibited a disgusting and alarming specimen of the sort of
interference which it seems we are to expect in all future elections,
in all counties and boroughs. It was, however, in vain; the ambitious
young gentleman who had the benefit of their services, and who is a
law-student in London, but the son of the great Earl of Radnor, lost
his election by a large majority, and the discomfited League retired
ridiculously to Manchester. When we heard of their meditated descent
upon Salisbury, we fancied we saw Cobden and his companions waddling
back, geese-like, and exclaimed--

"Geese! if we had you but on Sarum plain,
We'd drive you cackling back to Camelot!"

So much for the boasted electoral triumphs of the Anti-corn-law
League--we repeat, that they are all mere moonshine, and challenge
them to disprove our assertion.

They are now making another desperate effort to raise a further sum of
a hundred thousand pounds; and beginning, as usual, at Manchester,
have raised there alone, within a few days' time, upwards of L.20,000!
The fact (if _true_) is at once ludicrous and disgusting: ludicrous
for its transparency of humbug--disgusting for its palpable
selfishness. Will these proverbially hard-hearted men put down their
L.100, L.200, L.300, L.400, L.500, for nothing? Alas, the great sums
they have expended in this crusade against the Corn-laws, will have to
be wrung out of their wretched and exhausted factory slaves! For how
otherwise but by diminishing wages can they repay themselves for lost
time, for trouble, and for expense?

Looked at in its proper light, the Corn-law League is nothing but _an
abominable conspiracy against labour_. Cheap _bread_ means cheap
_labour_; those who cannot see this, must be blind indeed! The
melancholy fact of the continually-decreasing price of labo