vs]

THE LECTT "RY ;N THE COUNTRY. 153

direction of the popular gale. Tt is thus the non-official
statesman who, by concentrating the currents of common
Sentiment or opinion, really shapes the policy which the
official chiefs accept from his hands.
The first year’s campaign convinced the repeslers that
agitation is not always such smooth work as it had been in
Ireland, They learnt how hardly an old class interest dies.
They had begun the work of propagandism by sending out
& small band, which afterwards became a large one, of
8Conomic missionaries. In Scotland the new gospel found
8 temperate hearing and much acceptance, but in England
the lecturers were not many days in discovering at what
peril they had undertaken to assault the prejudice and
selfishness of a territorial aristocracy, and the brutality or
Cowardice of their hangers-on. Though there were many
districts where nobody interfered with them, there were
many others where neither law nor equity gave them protection.
 At Arundel the mayor refused the use of the town
hall, on the ground that the lecture would make the labourers
discontented; and the landlord refused the use of his large
room, on the ground that if he granted it, he should lose
his customers. A landowning farmer went further, and
offered e bushel of wheat to anybody who would throw the
lecturer into the river. At Petersfield, a paltry little borough
mn Hampshire, almost in sight of Cobden’s birthplace, either
Spite or the timidity of political bondage went so far, that
When the lecturer returned, after his harangue in the market-Place,
 to the Dolphin, Boar, or Lion, where he had taken his
ea and ordered his bed, the landlord and landlady peremprlly
 desired him to leave their house. In the eastern
counties, again, they were usually well received by the
Pre People, but vexed and harassed by the authorities.
iy Louth they wire allowed to deliver their address in
© town hall one night, hut a8 the lecturer had the fortune

1839.

Fr. 25