206

LIFE OF COBDEN,

{CHAR

1844. would confirm one’s notion that the Government of thE
mr, 40. country is in advance of the people.
“ Lord Duncan’s reply to a deputation was not amiss:
He told them drily, ‘It may be a question whether th°
founders of the chapels in question intended them for the
benefit of Unitarians or Trinitarians, but one thing *
certain, they did not intend them for the lawyers, who wil
have every kick of them, unless the Bill is passed into ?
law.” This young chip of the old block who stood such
hard knocking at Camperdown, said an equally good thing
to the short-time delegates who called on him to abuse tho
factory masters. He told them to go home and thank God
they had not the landlords for masters, for if they bad,
their wages would be reduced one-half.’’®

It is now time to turn briefly to a subject which sprang 2°
directly as Free Trade itself from the great Condition of
England Question. Throughout this memorable parliament;
which sat from 1841 to 1847, we are conscious of a genuin®
effort, alike on the part of the Prime Minister and of i"
dependent reformers and philanthropists of all kinds,
grapple with a state of society which threatened to beco®
unmanageable. We see the Parliament diligently feelin8
its way to one piece after another of wise and beneficen?
policy, winding up with the most beneficent of all. The
development of manufactures, and the increase and redist™”
bution of population which attended it, forced upon all th
foremost minds of that time a group of difficulties with
which most of them were very inadequately prepared to desl:
One fact will be enough to illustrate the extent of the
change. In 1818 it was computed that 57,000 persons wer?
employed in cotton factories. Within twenty-one year
their numbers had increased to 469,000. How was this vast
$ To F. W. Cobden, London, June 5, 1844,