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1844. If the Factory Law was in one sense a weapon with which
Fr. 40. the country party harassed the manufacturers, it was pot
long before Cobden hit upon a plan for retaliating. For tW0
or three years the League had confined its operations to the
creation of an enlightened public opinion on the subject of
the Corn Laws, Then it began to work in the borough?
and Cobden was able to say that never at any previous date
had so much systematic attention, time, and labour bee?
given to the boroughs in the way of registration. The
power which had thus been given to the Free Trade party i
nearly one hundred and fifty boroughs, was expected 10
make an immense, if not a decisive, difference in the nex’
parliament. In the great county of Lancashire alone, such
changes had been wrought by attention to the register, that
it was calculated that a new election would only leave the
monopolists five out of the six-and-twenty members for the
entire province. It now occurred to Cobden that these
constituencies could be dealt with even more effectually:
In the last division, not a single county member had gor
into the lobby with Mr, Villiers. Cobden’s thought was
to turn the counties by an indefinite increase of the ¢o8"
stituencies. They were to be won through that section of
the Reform Act which conferred the franchise in countie®
upon possessors of freehold property of the value of forty
shillings a year. The landlords had already availed them”
selves to an immense extent of the Chandos clause. By the
Chandos clause tenants at will, occupying at a yearly value
of fifty pounds, had the franchise. The monopolists, i#
Cobden’s words, worked this clause out ; they applied them
selves to qualifying their tenant-farmers for the poll, “by
making brothers, sons, nephews, uncles—ay, down to the
third generation, if they happened to live upon the farm—
all qualify for the same holding, and swear, if need be, that
they were partners in the farm, though they were no more