SABDEN,

>

3

bringing, so far as it did bring, the great religious tradition 18s
of the western world within reach of this isolated flock. Ar. 28.
The workers practised a singular independence towards their
smployers. They took it as matter of course that they
were free, whenever it was their good pleasure, and without
leave asked or given, to quit their work for a whole week at
once, and to set out on a drinking expedition to some neighbouring
 town, whence they would have been ashamed toreturn
 until their pockets were drained to the last penny.
Yet if there was little religion, there was great political
spirit. There is a legend still surviving, how Mr. Foster,
a Liberal of the finest snd most enlightened type, with a
clear head and a strong intelligence, and the good oldfashioned
 faith in freedom, justice, and progress, led the
Sabden contingent of zealous voters to Clitheroe for the first
slection after the Reform Act, and how like a careful patriarch,
 he led them quickly back again after their civil duty
was done; leaving the taverns of Clitheroe behind, and
refreshing themselves at the springs on the hill-side. The
polities of Sabden Were not always so judicious, for it appears
that no baptismal name for the children born in the valley
between 1830 and 1840 was so universally popular as that of
Feargus O’Connor.
It was in this far-off corner of the world that Cobden
began hig career as an agitator, and for a cause in which
all England hag long since come round to his mind, His
earliest speeches were made at Clitheroe on behalf of the
education of the young, and one of his earliest letters on
What may fairly be called a public question is a note
making arrangements for the exhibition at Sabden of twenty
children from an infant school at Manchester, by way of
An example and incentive to more backward regions. It
vas characteristic of him, that he threw as much eager
enthusiasm into the direction of this exhibition of school.