ry.

LT®% "= OOBDEN. cma?

1841. been excited by the Free Trade discussion, or whether the
Er. 97. motives of the voters were merely personal. Shrewd
electionecrers have a maxim that a candidate is sure to Wi
any given seat in time, if he is only tenacious enough
Cobden was returned by a triumphant majority, © The
Stockport affair,” he wrote, “ was carried with unexpected
éclat. We drubbed the Major so soundly that at one o’clock
he resigned. We could have beaten him easily by two to one:
My committee worked to admiration. Two hundred elector
were up all the night previous to polling, including the
mill-owners . . . . who neither changed their clothes nf
closed their eyes for thirty-six hours. These men wer?
against me at the former election. Upon the whole the
slections will give Peel a majority of thirty or forty. 5°
much the better. We shall do something in opposition.”
It proved that Sir Robert Peel had a majority, not of
thirty or forty, but of more than ninety. Lord Melbourn
however, did not anticipate the practice of our own day
by resigning before the meeting of the hostile Parliament:
The Ministers put into the Queen’s speech as good 82
account as they could of their policy, and awaited the
fate. Cobden took his seat on the first day of the session:
“ Yesterday,” he says, “I went down to the House to b?
sworn to renounce the Pope and the Pretender. Then I
went into the Treasury, and heard Lord John deliver his last
dying speech and confession to his parliamentary minority:
He gave us the substance of the Queen’s speech, which. is i?
the Chronicle to-day. I cannot learn what the Tories intend t0
do to-night, but I suppose they will try to avoid committing
themselves against the Free Trade measures. It is allowed
on all sides that they fear discussion as they do death. Ib
ig reported that the old Duke advises his party not to force
themselves on the Queen, but to let the Whigs go on till the

3 To F. Qoliden. July 8. 1841.