#37] _

Sig

TU IYENT.

175

"0 afraid,” he wrote to his brother, “ you will be vexed 1841.
°1 lending in England t) find me Member for Stock- Zr. 87.
port. I had fully, as you know, determined not to ‘go to
Parliament. I stood out. The Bolton and Stockport folks
both go requisitions to me insuring my return. I declined.
1 was then that the Stockport people put the screw upon
me, by a large deputation confessing their inabiity to agree
amongst themselves upon any other man who could turn
Out the Major. They offered me carte blanche as to my
attendance in London, and as to the time of my retaining
the seat. I was over-persnaded by my Manchester partisans
and have yielded, and the election is secure. You must
Dot vex yourself, for I am quite resolved that it shall not
be the cause of imposing either additional expense on my
Mode of living, or any increased call upon my time for
public objects, I did not dream of this, as you very well
know 1
“I have a right to expect other men of business,” he
Wrote to a manufacturer at Warrington, urging a contest
in tha borough, “for I am doing it myself much against
Dy wish, I offered to give a hundred pounds towards the
®Xpenses of another candidate in my stead for Stockport,
and to canvass for him for a week; and it was only when
the electors declared that they could not agree to another,
3d would not be able to oust the bread-taxers without me,
that T consented to stand.”
The League, in fact, put a strong pressure upon him, and
We may perhaps believe that Cobden’s resistance to the
Urgency of his political friends was not very stubborn.
He must have felt by invincible instinet that only through
% Seat in Parliament could he secure an effective hearing
for hig arguments. It is uncertain whether the opinion of
the constituency which had rejected him in 1837, bad really

1 To F. Jobden, June 16, 1841.