CHAPTER XI.

ACTION OF THE ANTI-CORN-LAW LEAGUE.

A Return of the Distress-The Action in the House of Commons-Conferences and Meetings in the Country-Richard Cobden made a Member of ParliamentHostility in the House to him-The Death of Mrs. Bright-Cobden's AdviceHorace Twiss's Opinion of Cobden-The irrepressible Manchester Fellows-The Cause of the Depression of the Flannel Trade.

DURING the year 1840 there was much to discourage the men who had engaged to oppose the Corn Laws, and who were regarded by their opponents as intruders from Manchester, on a mission to forward their own interests. In spite of the prevailing distress, the bad harvests, and the high price of corn, a host of pamphleteers rushed into print to prove that the repeal of the Corn Laws would benefit the working man by only about the one hundred and fiftieth part of a penny on the price of a quartern loaf, and therefore it was good for the health, morals, education, comfort, and happiness of the labouring classes that there should be a high price of corn and little work, with which to earn the small wages that were to be given away for the dear bread.

From a return compiled by persons who accompanied the enumerators of the population of Rochdale in 1841, with a view to present a record to the House of Commons of the condition of the inhabitants of Rochdale, it appeared that in several families of seven or eight members there were only two beds, the weekly incomes of such families being from 10s. to 13s. In another family of four members there was one bed, and the earnings were 8s. a week. In another there were seven persons with three beds, and the earnings did not exceed 10s. Another of four persons possessed two beds, and earned only 5s. a week. There were also found families of seven persons with two beds living on 5s. a week; of three persons with two beds and 1s. 3d. a week; of five persons with two beds and 6s. a week; two persons with one bed and earnings 1s. 2d. with 2s. parochial relief. In all these cases the household furniture and bedding were scanty, and the inmates poorly clad.

On the 3rd of April, 1840, Mr. Villiers brought a motion into the House of Commons in favour of a committee to consider

1841.]

FIRST MEETING OF VILLIERS AND BRIGHT.

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the operation of the Corn Law Act, and the result was that 131 were in its favour, and 227 voted for adjourning it sine die, so that the amendment was carried by a majority of 86. The following month he again introduced his motion, but it was rejected by a majority of 123. Earl Fitzwilliam, on the 11th of June, 1840, in the House of Lords moved that it be expedient to consider the laws relating to the importation of foreign corn. Only 42 were in favour of the motion, and 142 against it.

On the 14th of April, 1841, Mr. Bright formed one of a deputation from Rochdale at a Conference in the League Rooms, Market Street, Manchester, on the subject of the Corn Laws. In the evening of the same day a meeting was held in the Corn Exchange, presided over by Mr. J. B. Smith, afterwards member for Stockport for many years, and about 2,000 persons were present. Mr. Cobden was one of the speakers. Mr. Bright, in moving a resolution, declared that the Corn Laws were the greatest iniquity on the face of the statute book. He had proofs of this in his own native town, where the Corn Laws were causing a scarcity of food. He had been told that in Stockport out of a street of 100 houses 99 were empty, and he asked what had become of the inhabitants. Some of them had gone to America, some had removed into lower-rented houses, some to the workhouse, and some doubtless to their graves.

Mr. Villiers, in reply to our inquiry as to where he first saw Mr. John Bright, stated: "I think it was in 1840-1, when I was with Mr. Cobden in Manchester, and he requested me to accompany him to a meeting, as I should then hear a young man, a son of Mr. Jacob Bright, of Rochdale, who would speak on the subject of the repeal of the Corn Laws, and who had lately shown considerable ability in some religious controversy in his own town, and he should like to hear what I thought of him. I remember that upon hearing him I was most favourably impressed with the force and earnestness with which he spoke, and strongly urged upon Mr. Cobden the advantage it would be if his services could be engaged in this cause in which we were then so much interested. Soon after that he was seen and heard (with great success) on the same platform with Mr. Cobden, and afterwards became one of the most prominent speakers in the country against the Corn Laws."

The Budget of 1841 was made the occasion of a great party fight, which lasted eight nights, and which terminated in the defeat of the ministers by a majority of thirty-six votes. In the course of this debate Lord Palmerston showed that he had become completely converted to Free Trade. In reply to a sarcastic

speech from Sir Robert Peel, he said the whole history of parliamentary legislation for a number of years past had been nothing but the destruction of monopolies. "The Test and Corporation Acts, the Protestant Monopoly in Parliament, the Boroughmonger's Monopoly, had successively fallen. The monopolies of corporators and that of the East India Company had also gone down. We were now pursuing monopoly into the last stronghold -were attacking the monopoly of trade." He concluded by telling his opponents that although they might then resist the measures proposed by Government, "yet, if they should come into office, these were the measures which a just regard for the finances and commerce of the country would compel themselves to propose. A few nights later a vote of want of confidence was proposed, and the ministers obtaining a majority of only one, resolved to appeal to the country. The dissolution took place early in June. The contest was fought upon the decisive question of Free Trade, and the verdict of the country was against it.

وو

The Members of the Anti-Corn Law League decided to bring forward Mr. Cobden as a candidate for Stockport, and he was returned on the 30th of June. The result of the general election was a majority of ninety for the Conservative party. Sir Robert Peel became prime minister, and the Duke of Wellington, Lord Aberdeen, and Sir James Graham were members of the cabinet. The new Parliament assembled on the 19th of August, and in the royal speech it was called upon to direct its attention to "the revision of the duties affecting the protection of the country; to consider whether some of these duties were not so trifling in amount as to be unproductive to the revenue, while they were vexatious to the commerce; to further examine whether the principle of protection upon which other of those duties were founded was not carried to an extent injurious alike to the income of the State and the interests of the people; and above all, to consider the laws which regulate the trade in corn." The majority of the members of the House of Commons, however, decided that they had not been sent there to take measures for the freedom of commerce, the resuscitating of trade, or the mitigating of the sufferings of millions of people. In fact, the "agricultural interest" boasted of having returned the Parliament; and from what followed in the sessions, it appeared that the boast was founded on facts. When, acting in concert, a determined majority sent forth in the House of Commons shouts of derision and cries of disapprobation, it was no mean chirrup. This was the species of hostility which the new member for Stockport had to encounter when he made his first appearance

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MRS. BRIGHT'S DEATH.

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in Parliament. The moment he uttered a Free-trade sentiment, the crowded monopolist benches attempted to sink it with a storm of disapprobation. The name of the Anti-Corn-Law League was the signal for laughter loud and long, or else a tirade against that "presumptuous," 'presumptuous," "audacious," "intermeddling," "factious," and "mischievous" association, which prevented the great body of the people from enjoying scarcity and dearness of food, and protected want of employment.

Mr. Villiers informed the author of this biography, that Mr. Cobden consented to become a member of parliament "after some hesitation which he expressed to me (Mr. Villiers) in a letter asking my advice, and which I gave most distinctly in favour of his doing so, if he could, for it was in the House of Commons where our real opponents were in all their force, and where the fight had really to be carried on."

In the summer months of this year, instead of bright sunshine to mature the wheat and mellow the fruit, dark clouds chased each other across the sky, and torrents of rain drenched the ground. A dark and gloomy winter followed; commerce was depressed, and the labouring classes suffered severely.

"Shoals of artisans

From ill-requited labour turned adrift,
Sought daily bread from public charity."

Mr. Bright's anxieties were increased by forebodings of sorrow in his own home, for the decline of Mrs. Bright's health troubled him, and they removed to Leamington, so that she might be benefited by that more salubrious air, but his suffering became more severe,

"Because too surely in her cheek he saw

The insidious bloom of death; and then her smile
And innocent mirth excited deeper grief."

The stern winter of 1841 was fast approaching, the green of the fields was fading, the forest darkening, and sere leaves falling before their time; a hoarser murmur came from the mountain stream, migratory birds were flocking, and pluming their wings for their long flight to more genial climes, and the last rose of summer "in the Sabbath of the year," had just sprung from the clefts of its hood, bowed its head and broken the stalk, when Mrs. Bright's soul took its flight to the God who gave it, and her earthly frame was buried in the quiet haven of the Rochdale Friends' Meeting House. There is, perhaps, no circumstance so well calculated to awaken the fulness of tender feeling as the death of those to whom the

heart has been long and fondly attached. Not, indeed, in the first flow and bitterness of irrepressible grief, but when time and the memory of former happiness have mellowed anguish into tender regret. Beneath such a loss he was bowed down with sorrow, and the misery of the poor shared the sigh which the calamity of his home extorted. The last night of her life, when attacked by the hæmorrhage which carried her off, she did not forget to thank the doctor for his kindness, nor to request her attendants to see that he should have some coffee; showing the gentle thoughtfulness which marked her character through her too short life.

The sad event and what followed is best described in a speech which Mr. Bright delivered at Rochdale :—

"He best can paint them who shall feel them most.”

"In this beautiful address there is a reference to services which you are kind enough to say I have rendered in conjunction with the illustrious and lamented Mr. Cobden. This reminds me of an incident which had something to do with my after career. In the year 1841 I was at Leamington, and spent several months there. It was near the middle of September there fell upon me one of the heaviest blows that can visit any man. I found myself left there with none living of my house but a motherless child. Mr. Cobden called upon me the day after that event, so terrible to me, and so prostrating. He said, after some conversation, 'Don't allow this grief, great as it is, to weigh you down too much; there are at this moment in thousands of homes in this country wives and children who are dying of hunger, of hunger made by the law. (Hear, hear.) If you will come along with me, we will never rest till we have got rid of the Corn Law.' (Cheers.) We saw the colossal injustice which cast its shadow over every part of the nation, and we thought we saw the true remedy and the relief, and that if we united our efforts, as you know we did, with the efforts of hundreds and thousands of good men in various parts of the country, we should be able to bring that remedy home, and to afford that relief to the starving people of this country. (Hear.) I recollect well, in some of our labours, when I looked forward to the day (we could not see it, but we knew that it was coming) when that injustice would be removed, and that law-made hunger would be ever after prevented. I recollect often that I took to myself something of prophecy from the lines of one of our poets-when that day shall come, I thought:

'Then shall misery's sons and daughters
In their lowly dwellings sing;
Bounteous as the Nile's dark waters,
Undiscover'd as their spring,
We will scatter o'er the land
Plenty with a secret hand.'"

The call came from a voice which was as potent to him as it was destined to become in the councils of the country; and he arose from his sorrow, and gave himself to labours that blessed mankind, and the name of Cobden and Bright became household words on the lips of the people of England.

Mr. Bright's sister, Miss Priscilla Bright (now Mrs. McLaren), presided over the quiet little home at "One Ash," after the death of Mrs. Bright, and gave him every help and sympathy in his work, not only from affection for him, but also from a deep interest in all public questions.