to every hamlet and private family in England,
besides the members personally giving their time and effort in public
speeches and lectures in all parts of the country. "It was felt that the
battle of free-trade must be fought first by the conversion of
individuals, then at the hustings, and lastly in the House of Commons."

The principle of protecting the country against the importation of
foreign breadstuffs was upheld as fostering the agricultural interests,
as inciting the larger cultivation of poor lands, as providing against
dangerous dependence on foreign countries, and as helping the large
landowners and their tenants to patronize manufactures and trade; so
that, although the high prices of breadstuffs were keeping vast numbers
of people in misery and the country on the edge of revolution, the
protectionist doctrine was believed in religiously by the laboring
classes, the small shopkeepers, nearly all the educated classes, and a
large majority of the members of Parliament.

To combat this unshaken traditional belief was a gigantic undertaking.
It was the battle of reason and truth against prejudice and
bigotry,--the battle of a new enlightenment of general interests against
the selfishness of unenlightened classes. While Villiers and Thomson
appealed to members in the House of Commons, Cobden and Bright with
still greater eloquence directly addressed the people in the largest
halls that could be found. In 1838 Cobden persuaded the Chamber of
Commerce in Manchester to petition Parliament for a repeal of the duties
on corn. In 1839, the agitation spreading, petitions went up from
various parts of the country bearing two million signatures. The motion
to repeal, however, was lost by a large majority in the Commons. Then
began the organization of Free-Trade Leagues. In 1841 a meeting in
Manchester was held, at which were present seven hundred nonconformist
ministers, so effectually had conversions been made among intelligent
men. Nor did the accession of the conservative Sir Robert Peel to power
discourage the agitators, for in the same year (1841) Cobden was sent to
Parliament. Meetings were still more frequently held in all the towns of
the kingdom, A bazaar held in favor of the cause in the Theatre Royal,
Manchester, in 1842, produced a clear profit of L10,000. In 1843 the
great Free-Trade Hall was opened in Manchester, built expressly for
public meetings for the anti corn-law agitation, and the sum of L150,000
w