i846.
Ar. 42.

3556

LIAR OF COBDEN. t

national opinion. The petitions for repeal had ten timo 2
many signatures as petitions for Protection. But, they ried;
the most numerously signed were fictitions. Then let ther?
try public meetings. He challenged them to hold 8 singl®
public and open meeting anywhere in the land. The? for
parliamentary representation. “I ought to know,” he gaids
“ a3 much about the state of the representation and of he
registration as any man in this House. Probably no ove
has given so much attention to that question as 1 have don?
and I distinctly deny that you have the slightest probability
of gaining a numerical majority, if a dissolution took plac?
to-morrow. Now I would not have said this three month
ago; but your party is broken up.” Four-fifths of th
Conservatives from the towns in the north of England were
followers of Sir Robert Peel, and not of the Protection’!
Dukes. They had been for ¥ree Trade all along, but they
had confidence in the Minister, that he would do what was
necessary at the proper time. But let them suppose that
the Protectionists might have a numerical majority. What
would be the character of the minority ? It would cont”
the whole twenty members for the metropolis and th?
metropolitan county. Edinburgh and Dublin would follo®
London. There was not in all Great Britain a town of five
and-twenty thousand inhabitants, not even Liverpool or Bri¥
tol, which would not send members pledged to Free Trad
What would a majority of twenty or thirty men in poe?”
boroughs and nomination counties do in face of such & mind”
rity as this? They would shrink aghast from the positio? B
which they found themselves. The members who cam® oP
under such circumstances to maintain the Corn Laws fro?
their Ripons and Stamfords, Woodstocks and Marlborough”
would not defend their views a day after they had found oot
go vast a moral preponderance of public opinion as this!
} Svecshes, i. No. xxi. Feb. 27, 1848.