i] THE LONDON ANII-CORN.LAW ASSOCIATION. 143

Reular point at which the campaign of a century first opened. _ 1588.
As he sid to his brother in a letier that has already been Zr.34
quoted, he had convinced himself that a moral, and even a
religious, spirit might be infused into the question of the
corn laws, and that if it were agitated in the same manner as
bhe olq question of slavery, the effect would be irresistible.
Cobden was in no sense the original projector of an
organized body for throwing off the burden of the corn
duties. In 1836 an Anti-Corn-Law Association had been
formed in London; its principal members were the parlia~
mentary radicals, Grote, Molesworth, Joseph Hume, and
Mr. Roebuck. But this group, notwithstanding their acuteness,
 their logical penetration, and the soundness of their
ideas, were in that, as in so many other matters, stricken
with impotence. Their gifts of reasoning were admirable,
but they had no gifts for popular organization, and neither
their personality nor their logic offered anything to excite
the imagination or interest the sentiment of the public.
“The free-traders,” Lord Sydenham said, with a pang, in
1841, “have never been orators since Mr. Pitt’s early days.
We hammered away with facts and figures and some
arguments ; but we could not elevate the subject and excite
the feelings of the people.” An economic demonstration
went for nothing, until it was made alive by the passion of
suffering interests and the reverberations of the popular
voice. Lord Melbourne, in 1838, sharply informed all
petitioners for the repeal of the corn-laws, that they must
look for no decided action on the part of the government,
until they had made it quite clear that the majority of the
uation were strongly in favour of a new policy. London,
from causes that have often been explained and are well
understood, 18 no centre for the kind of agitation which the
Prime Minister, not without some secret mockery, invited
t Above, p. 126