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ONE:The Covent Garden meeting became thenceforth an annual feature in the political events of the metropolis, and the effects of this movement in the chief city of the kingdom were seen in the election of Mr. Pattison, the Free Trade candidate, for the City of London. Another sign of the times was the accession to the ranks of the Anti-Corn-Law League of Mr. Samuel Jones Loyd, the wealthy banker, a conspicuous City man, and a great[509] authority on financial matters. This gentleman addressed a letter to the council of the League in October, 1844, in which, after mentioning his reluctance to join a public body, for whose acts he could not be responsible, he said, "The time is now arrived when this must be overruled by other considerations of overwhelming importance. The great question of Free Trade is now fairly at issue, and the bold, manly, and effectual efforts which have been made by the League in its support command at once my admiration and my concurrence." Still more remarkable was the progress of the League in its scheme of converting the agriculturists themselves to their views. The truths which they had always maintained��that the tenant farmer had no real interest in maintaining the Corn Laws, the agricultural labourer, if possible, less, and that even the landed proprietor, on a far-seeing view of his interest, would be on the same side as themselves��were based upon arguments easily understood by calm reasoners, and were even beginning to make way with these classes themselves. Not a few great landowners and noblemen had openly classed themselves among their supporters. Foremost among these was Earl Fitzwilliam, who was one of the most effective speakers at Anti-Corn-Law meetings by the side of Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright. Among the noblemen openly supporting their cause were the Marquis of Westminster, Lord Kinnaird, Earl Ducie, the Earl of Radnor, Lord Morpeth, and Earl Spencer.Perhaps there is no cause from which Ireland has suffered more than from misrepresentations. Nowhere have the want of discrimination, and due allowance for the extravagant exaggerations of vehement partisans, been more pernicious. There were in the reign of George IV. no evils in Ireland which would not have yielded to the action of just and impartial government, removing real grievances, and extending to the people, in a confiding spirit, the blessings of the British Constitution, in the spirit of Lord Wellesley's administration. He had to contend, indeed, with peculiar difficulties. Ireland shared largely in the general distress of the United Kingdom, occasioned by the contraction of the currency, and the consequent low prices of agricultural produce. He found a great portion of the south in a state of licentiousness, surpassing the worst excesses of former unhappy times; he had to deal with dangerous and secret conspiracies in other parts of the country. He applied the energies of his powerful mind to master these complicated difficulties in the spirit of conciliation which had been enjoined in the king's instructions. He explored every dangerous and untried path, and he laboured diligently, by the equal administration of the laws, to promote peace and happiness among all classes of the people. He succeeded to a great extent in accomplishing the object of his administration. Mr. Plunket, the Irish Attorney-General, in his speech on unlawful societies, in the House of Commons, in February, 1825, described the country as in a state of peace and prosperity. She had been enabled, by the noble lord at the head of the Government, and by the measures which he had matured, to enjoy the blessings which were the offspring of internal tranquillity. Those measures had been properly administered, and public confidence had been in consequence restored. "It was a great blessing," he said, "it was a most gratifying object, to behold that country now floating on the tide of public confidence and public prosperity. She was lying on the breakers, almost a wreck, when the noble marquis arrived; and if he had not taken the measures which have been so successfully adopted, she never could have floated on that tide of public prosperity." TWO: "MY DEAR PEEL,��I find it difficult to express to you the regret with which I see how widely I differ in opinion with Graham and yourself as to the necessity for proposing to Parliament a repeal of the Corn Laws. Since the Cabinet on Saturday I have reflected much and anxiously upon it;[519] but I cannot bring my mind to any other conclusion than that at which I had then arrived. I have thought it best to put down in writing the view of the case which presents itself to me; and when you have read it, I will thank you to send it on to Graham, with whom I have had no conversation upon it. I foresee that this question, if you persevere in your present opinion, must break up the Government one way or the other; but I shall greatly regret indeed if it should be broken up, not in consequence of our feeling that we had proposed measures which it properly belonged to others to carry, but in consequence of differences of opinion among ourselves."

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ONE:CHAPTER IX. REIGN OF GEORGE III. (continued).[See larger version] TWO:While the landed interest were thus showing their determination to maintain, at all hazards, the laws for preventing the importation of foreign corn, a spirit of opposition had been growing up in the large manufacturing towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire, which, though only partially shared in by the working classes, was already significant of the approaching downfall of the system of monopoly. The first use made by Manchester of its constitution as a political borough by the Reform Act was to send to Parliament Mr. Poulett Thomson and Mr. Mark Philips, two members long conspicuous in the House for the zeal and ability with which they supported the principles of Free Trade. The Manchester newspapers generally advocated the same views; and Manchester became regarded as the centre of the Anti-Corn Law agitation. No organised movement, however, had yet been attempted. A series of good harvests from 1832 to 1835 rendered it extremely difficult to arouse public attention to the injustice which the bread law invariably inflicted in less favourable circumstances. Nevertheless, the effort was made. In January, 1834, a meeting of merchants and manufacturers was held in the Manchester Exchange Committee-room, to consider how the cause of Corn Law Repeal was to be forwarded, at which some powerful speeches were delivered by the members for the borough and other speakers of influence. A committee was appointed, which timidly endeavoured to avoid the appearance of a political agitation and finally ended by doing nothing. But soon the desultory opposition to the bread tax of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce��a body which had only presented one petition on the subject in seven years��was no longer sufficient to represent the feeling of that great centre of industry. Seven men united themselves in the month of October, 1838, to advocate the freedom of trade. The names of those seven members are now scarcely remembered out of Manchester, with the exception of Mr. Archibald Prentice, the historian of the League, whose newspaper, the Manchester Times, had fought with considerable talent, and with inexhaustible energy on the side of all the great reforms of this important period in our history. In that newspaper for the 13th of October a list of the Provisional Committee of a new Anti-Corn Law Association was for the first time published. It comprised thirty-seven names, chiefly of Manchester manufacturers, and ended with the modest[482] note that "Subscriptions, 5s. each, would be received by the members of that committee." Such was the simple origin of that vast movement which, a few years later, compelled the very chiefs of the landowners' party in Parliament to become the instruments for carrying out measures more sweeping than even the most ardent Free Traders had regarded as possible. But men of influence were beginning to join the movement. The list of the Provisional Committee contained at least one name which afterwards became famous��that of Mr. John Bright. Three of them became members of Parliament at a later date, and another, Mr. George Wilson, was afterwards known as the permanent chairman of the League.[See larger version]

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ONE:On the 14th of March Lord North moved to bring in a Bill to take away from Boston the customs, the courts of justice, and government offices, and give them to Salem. This Bill was carried through both Houses with little opposition. Bollan, the agent of the Council of Massachusetts, desired to be heard against the Bill, but was refused. It received the royal assent on the 31st of March, and the trade of Boston was supposed to be annihilated. TWO:In pursuance of this report, Mr. O'Loughlin, the Irish Attorney-General, introduced a Bill, early in the Session of 1836, for the better regulation of Irish corporations. There still remained, he said, 71 corporations, which included within their territories a population of 900,000, while the number of corporators was only 13,000. Of these, no less than 8,000 were to be found in four of the larger boroughs, leaving only 5,000 corporators for the remaining 67 corporations, containing above 500,000 inhabitants. So exclusive had they been, that though, since 1792, Roman Catholics were eligible as members, not more than 200 had ever been admitted. In Dublin the principle of exclusion was extended to the great majority of Protestants of wealth, respectability, and intelligence. In a word, the Attorney-General said that the management of corporations, and the administration of justice in their hands, was nothing but a tissue of injustice, partisanship, and corruption. He concluded by laying down a plan of Reform which would assimilate the Irish corporations to those of England. On the part of the Conservatives it was admitted that the greater part of the corporations in Ireland were created by James I., avowedly as guardians of the Protestant interests, and to favour the spread of the Protestant religion; and that ancient and venerable system this Bill would annihilate��a revolution against which they solemnly protested, even though it covered many abuses which had crept into it during the lapse of time. They were quite appalled at the prospect of the evils that this Bill would produce. Borough magistrates were to be elected by popular suffrage. What a source of discord and animosity! First, there would be the registration of the voters, then the election of the town councillors, and then the election of the mayor, aldermen, and town clerks. What a scene would such a state of things present! How truly was it said that the boroughs would be the normal[391] schools of agitation! Then what was to become of the corporate property, which yielded an income of ��61,000, while the expenditure was only ��57,000, and the debt charged on it only ��133,000? Was all this property to be placed under the control of the priests, whose influence would determine the elections?

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ONE:The troops of Austria were already in Bavaria on the 21st of August. They amounted to eighty thousand men, under the nominal command of the Archduke Ferdinand��a prince of high courage and great hopes��but really under that of General Mack, whose utter incapacity had not been sufficiently manifested to Austria by his miserable failures in the Neapolitan campaign, and who was still regarded in Germany as a great military genius. His army had been posted behind the Inn, in the country between the Tyrol and the Danube, into which the Inn falls at Passau. This was a strong frontier, and had the Austrians waited there till the arrival of the Russians, they might have made a powerful stand. But Mack had already advanced them to the Lech, where again he had a strong position covering Munich. Meanwhile, the Archduke Charles, Austria's best general, was posted in the north of Italy, with another eighty thousand men, and the Archduke John in the Tyrol with an inferior force. Such were the positions of the Austrian armies when Mack was invading Bavaria, and Buonaparte was preparing to crush him. TWO:[See larger version]

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