en,

OCOTUPAYIONS IN THD BREOESS. 285

The session came to an end; it does not appear, how- 184%
over, that he suffered himself to be long detained from the am: 23.
Sreat work by private affairs. He went for two or three
Weeks with his family to the south of England for a
breath of calm. By the middle of September, he and Mr.
Bright were again at work at Ozford, Lancaster, and
slsewhere, They were ubiquitous; to-day at Manchester,
Yo-morrow at Lincoln, this week at Salisbury, the next in
Haddingtonshire. A day without a meeting was seid to be
8 deplorable to them, as the merciful emperor's day without
8 good deed. The following extracts from letters to his
Wife and his brother, from October to January (1844), will
Serve to show how Cobden passed the autumn and winter.
“I have been incessantly occupied travelling or talking
Since I gay you, having made the journey across Northumberland,
 Cumberland, and Haddingtonshire twice. We go
bo-moreow to Kendal to give Warburton a lift, and I shall
be home on Tuesday. I have seen much to gratify and
Wstruct me, We spent a couple of days with Hope, and his
Reighbours the Hast Lotbian farmers. They are a century
before our Hants and Sussex chawbacons. In fact, they are,
by comparison, educated gentlemen and practical philoso-Phers,
 ang their workpeople are more like Sharp and Roberts’s
skilled mechanics than our round-frocked peasantry. Our
farmers cannot be brought to the Scotch standard by Lord
Ducie or g hundred Lord Ducies. The men are wanting.
We have better soil and climate, and the live and dead stock
ay be casily brought to match them, bub the two-legged
“Mimals will nob do in the present generation. ‘We have
%een much to encourage us. 1 have no doubt the Haddingbonshire
 farmers will commence an agitation against the
Corn Laws, which will be a nucleus for independent action
Mmongst their class elsewhere. The Northamberland farmers
“Dacially fn the north ave newrly npon a par with them, and