250

LIFE QP JOBIEN.

[HAE

1848. an easy popularity by second-hand arguments. They wer?
Air, 38. constantly accused of retarding their own cause, and
frightening away respectable people, by their violence
Violence, as usual, denoted nothing more than that they
knew their own minds, and pressed their convictions as i
they were in earnest. In the earlier part of the auturm?
there had been a furious turn-out of the operatives in the
milly, and later on in the season ricks had been burnt in the
midland and southern counties. The League, in spite of the
fact that its leaders were nearly ‘all mill-owners, or cob”
nected with manufactures, was secused of promoting these
outrages. There were loud threats of criminal proceeding®
against the obnoxious confederacy. It was rumoured oP
the Manchester Exchange that the Government had resolved
to put down the League as an association constituted against
the law of the land. If necessary, a new law would be made
to enable them to suppress a body so seditious. This heat
in the minds of the ruling class made them anxious 8b
almost any cost to destroy Cobden, who was now openly
recognized as the foremost personage in the detested
organization. This partly explains what now followed.

The session of 1843 opened with the most painful incident
in Cobden’s parliamentary life. It is well to preface 2B
account of it, by mentioning an event that happened on the
ave of the session. * Mr. Drummond, the private secretary
of the Prime Minister, was shot in Parliament Street, and in
a few days died from the wound. The assassin was Daniel
M‘Naghten, a mechanic from Glasgow, who at the trial was
acquitted on the ground of insanity. From something that
he said to a police inspector in his cell, the belief gob
nbroad that in firing at Mr. Drummond he supposed that he
was dealing with Sir Robert Peel. The evidence at the
irial showed even this to be very doubifal, and in any caso