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DISAPPOINTMENT OF THR LEAGUE. 22%

"oSembled a monkey fondling a bear. What do your Tories
think of their party in the House? I find that nothing
Seems to bo considered so decided a stigma, as to brand
® man as a mill-owner. Thus you see that the charge
“gainst me of working a mill at night would not be given
UD, even although it was proved to be a print works, I
hope Ferrand by getting rope enough will settle himself
Soon. Tory praise will goon carry him off his logs.
“From all that I hear, your people in Lancashire seem
to be swayed to and fro like the grass by a summer’s wind,
Without any particular progress. I suppose it will settle
down into more quiet work in the way of tracts and lectures.
I should like to have carried it by a coup, but that is not
Possible. It seems generally admitted up here by all parties
that it is now only a question of time. Lord Lowther said
to a friend of Villiers the other day, after the division of
Uinety, that he did not thiak it would take more than three
years to abolish the Corn Laws; and Rawson and I were
‘aking ton, at Bellamy’s, when a party of Tory members at
Another table agreed that it would come to a Bs. fixed duty
about, three years. The Tories have not liked the debate.
Peel feel that he has not come out of it well. He looks
Gissatisfiod with himself, and I am told he is not in good
health, What will he bo by the end of the session?”
The truth seems to be that the Leaguers, in spite of their
Moderate expectations, were taken aback by the heavy blow
Which the Minister had just dealt them. They had hoped
“88inst hope, and hed been too fall of faith in their own
“*guments to doubt their effect upon others. The ways of
Parliaments were ag strange to them, as the ways of mill-O¥ners
 were to the House of Commons. For a single
Moment they were staggered ; Cobden was for an instant or
"Wo freq by a violent impulse, which soon, however, yielded

184%.

Ar. 88,

¢ Tn F. Cobden, Feb. 28, 1848.