CHAPTER XII.

RENEWED ACTIVITY OF THE LEAGUR—-COBDYN AND SIR
ROBERT PEEL—RURAL CAMPAIGN.

1842. Arr the close of the session, Cobden hastened back to Man
Zr. 38. chester, where his business, as he too well knew, urgently
required his presence. As we have seen, his brother’
letters had begun to moke him seriously uneasy as to bi?
position. Affairs were already beginning to fall into diforder
 at Chorley and in Manchester, and in telling the story
of Cobden’s public activity, we have to remember that
almost from the moment of entering Parliament he began
be harassed by private anxieties of a kind which depres®
and unnerve most men more fatally than any other. Cohden’s
buoyant enthusiasm for his cavse carried him forward; if
drove these haunting cares into the background, and his res!
life was not in his business, but in the affairs of the nation:
In September he made an important speech to ‘the
Council of the League, at Manchester. It explains their
relations to political parties, and to social classes. They
had been lately charged, be said, with having been if
collision with the Chartist party. But those who made this
charge had themselves been working for the last three
years to excite the Chartist party against the League, and
that, too, by means that were not over-creditable. Thesé
intrigners had succeeded in deluding a considerable portio?
of the working olasser upon the subject of the Corn Laws