210

LIFE OF OOBDEN.

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1842. Lancaster, etcetera, Really when we think of these piace®
ar. 88. it ought to make us modest.
“T have been thinking a good deal of the plan of district
meetings alluded to in a former letter to Mr. Rawson, and
am more and more favourable to it. Iam convinced hsb
spontaneous efforts through the country would tell more
powerfully upon the aristocracy, than another great meeting
in Manchester. The question has been too much confined
to Manchester. The cotton lords are not more popular tba”
the landlords.”
Although hedeprecated the agitation of impatience, Cobder
was as eager and as active as anybody else in the agitatio®
of persuasion. He spoke at a great conference, held at Derby
of the merchants of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, and Let
cestershire, where he made a vigorous onslaught upon whet
he called the Land-tax fraud. From the Trent he found
way to the Clyde, while Mr. Bright went to Dublin, as wel
as to every place nearer home where he could get men to
listen to him. In all the centres of industry people were
urged to form associations, to get up petitions, and to hold
district meetings of deputies. They were to collect inform#”
tion as to the state of trade, the rate of wages, the extent of
pauperism, and other facts bearing upon the food monopolf?
as all these things affected their local industry ; the woollé?
trade at Leeds, the iron trade at Wolverhampton, the earth”
enware trade in the Potteries, the flax trade at Dundee. the
sotton trade at Manchester and Glasgow.
The lecturers continued their work. One of them wos?
among the farmers and labourers on Sir James Graham?
sstate, where he did not forget the landlord's idyllic cat”
logue of the blessings of the rural poor. * What!” cried
the lecturer, “ six shillings a week for wages, and the mors”
ing’s sun, and the singing of birds, and sportive lambs, #” 4
Y Po F. Wilson. Leexndngton, Cot. 12, 1841.