er! You forget that the great mass of the people now take a very
different view of these questions from what you do. Seven years ago they
gave in to your reiterated assertions that wages rise and fall with the
price of bread. You had a very fair clap-trap against us, as we happened
to be master manufacturers, in saying that we wanted to reduce wages.
But the right honourable baronet at the head of the government, and the
right honourable baronet, the home-secretary, are not suspected by the
English people of having such motives on these questions. The English
people have no disinclination to refer to high authorities on these
matters. They assume that men high in office have access to accurate
information; and they generally suppose that those men have no sinister
motive for deceiving the great body of the people on a question like
the present. You see I do not underrate the importance of your leaders
having declared in favour of free trade. On the contrary, I avow that
that has caused the greatest possible accession to the ranks of the free
traders. Well then, the working classes, not believing that wages rise
and fall with the price of bread, when you tell them that they are to
have corn at 25s. per quarter, instead of being frightened, are rubbing
their hands with the greatest satisfaction. They are not frightened at
the visions which you present to their eyes of a big loaf, seeing they
expect to get more money, and bread at half the price. And then the
danger of having your land thrown out of cultivation! Why, what would
the men in smock-frocks in the south of England say to that? They would
say, 'We shall get our land for potato-ground at 1/2 d. a lug, instead
of paying 3d. or 4d. for it.' These fallacies have all been disposed of;
and if you lived more in the world, more in contact with public opinion,
and less within that charmed circle which you think the world, but which
is anything but the world--if you gave way less to the excitement of
clubs, less to the buoyancy which arises from talking to each other
as to the effect of some smart speech in which the minister has been
assailed, you would see that it is mere child's play to attempt to balk
the intelligence of the country on this great question, and you would
not have talked as you have talked for the last eleven days." Mr. Cobden
proceeded to discuss the effect of the march of free trade on farmers;
proving to demonstration that they were not alarmed by it, an