202

LI¥H OF COBDEN. {oma®:

184. League, or must we enlarge to a sixpenny paper, and whilst
&r. 40. keeping corn prominent, attack collaterally sugar, and
coffee? If we stick to the Circular in its present characte’
then another Free-trade paper might be started; if °
adopted the enlarged paper, then it would be folly in James
Wilson to undertake another, and he would not attempb it.”
In the long-run Mr. Wilson sterted his own newspapels
which he called the Economist. The Oireular was suppressed;
and the League was published in its stead, conveying, 8°
Cobden said, every syllable of their speeches to twenty
thousand people in all the parishes of the kingdom. Before
describing a more important move in the Mancheste®
tactics, I have to say something of Cobden’s action in Par
liament, where a very momentous subject presently engaged
attention.
In the session of 1844 the Corn Laws fell into the back:
ground. Mr. Cardwell, in se onding the motion on the
Address, made a marked impression by a collection of evi
dence that trade was reviving, The revival of trade
weakened the strongest argument of the agitators, because
it diminished the practical urgency of their question. Parliament
 is always glad of an excuse for leaving a questio®
alone, and the slightest improvement in the markets wa
welcomed as a reason for allowing the Corn Law to slumber
The Prime Minister took advantage of such a state of thing®
to quell the sullen suspicion of the agricultural party, by e®”
ohatic declarations that the Government had never conte”
plated, and did not then contemplate, any alteration in the
existing law. Repeal he hardly deigned to notice; it would;
he said, produce the greatest confusion and distress. Ther?
was, no doubt, the alternative of a fixed duty; bub if it
should happen that the agriculturists should come to pref’
that to his sliding scale, then he was inclined to think that
t To Mr. Bright. Jane 21. 1848.