CHAPTER XIII. CONTINUED RAID AGAINST THE CORN LAWS. Visits to Huddersfield, Manchester, Kendal, Nottingham, Holmfirth, Preston, Wolverhampton, Dudley, Stourbridge, Birmingham, Stirling, Glasgow, Hawick, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Lancaster, Edinburgh, Dundee, Perth, and Ashton-Erection of the Free Trade Hall, Manchester. THE first of a series of soirées in Yorkshire was held at the cloth-manufacturing town of Huddersfield, in the Philosophical Hall, on the 18th of November, a month noted for its gloomwhen trees are stripped of all their beauty, and birds sit shivering, "a dull despondent flock;" but the people on this occasion were animated, and assembled in great numbers to listen to Mr. Bright and Mr. Cobden. In four days both gentlemen had returned to Manchester, and were present at a meeting of merchants, spinners, manufacturers, and tradespeople, which was held in the Town Hall, under the presidency of Mr. R. Hyde Greg. Thirty-six gentlemen were appointed to canvass for subscriptions for the £50,000 fund. Mr. Bright informed those present that at that time meetings had been arrar gel for every day in the month, and that every day brought in statements of others that were being appointed. On behalf of his father, himself, and brothers, he presented a subscription of £300, and promised to give further sums if it was needed. A few days after Mr. Bright was present at another meeting of the League, and gave an account of the meetings that he had attended at Coventry, Liverpool, and other towns. He said that on the 21st of November he was at a meeting at Accrington, which consisted of at least 500 persons, and that the room was packed for two hours, and that he never was in a place so much like an oven before. The meeting in the Sheffield Music Hall was the largest ever held in the hall of that town. On the 29th of November, Mr. Bright visited the old manufacturing town of Kendal, and the white houses covered with blue slates attracted his attention. He received an enthusiastic greeting in the evening, at a meeting held in the Whitehall Assembly Room, and his speech was listened to with marked attention. On the 1st of December he was again in J Manchester at a meeting of the League, and he and Mr. Cobden gave an account of their labours. The evening after, Mr. Bright was at a large meeting at the seaport town of Sunderland, which was held in the Athenæum, and on the 12th of the same month he returned to his native town, and a large number of persons assembled in the Theatre, Toad Lane. Mr. John Fenton, the late member for the borough, was the chairman, and Dr. Bowring, M.P., Mr. Cobden, and Mr. Bright were the speakers. The latter gave an account of the meetings he had attended at Kendal, Carlisle, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Sunderland, South Shields, and Darlington. It was midnight before the meeting broke up, and £1,695 6s. 6d. were subscribed to the funds of the League. The liberality of this gathering, as well as the others in the various towns, surprised Mr. Bright, and the formidable amount contributed gave the protectionists a good idea of the strength of the power which was arrayed against them. "Single sands have little weight, The following evening Mr. Bright was at Nottingham. Here a meeting was held in the Independent Chapel, Friar's Lane, and so important was the event that twelve reporters were present. Mr. Alderman Heard presided. Mr. Wm. Biggs, the Mayor of Leicester, and Mr. Thomas Wakefield, Mayor of Nottingham, also addressed the meeting with Mr. Bright, and £997 were subscribed. Mr. Bright next travelled to Holmfirth, and an audience of about 1,000 assembled in the Town Hall on the 15th of December, and for nearly two hours he entertained them with his speech. Four days after, he accompanied Mr. Cobden and Colonel Thompson to the fashionable town of Preston, the birthplace of Arkwright, who invented the power-loom. A meeting was held in the Theatre. At the front of the stage an artificial canal had been made, on which a small vessel kept making her trips during the evening. The building was crowded, chiefly by operatives engaged in the manufacture of cotton, who listened very attentively to the distinguished trio from the League. The metropolis of South Staffordshire, Wolverhampton, was visited by Mr. Bright on the 23rd of December, and a meeting was held in the Music Hall. The audience was chiefly composed of mechanics, many of whose homes were at that time scenes of want and distress. On the 28th of December he was again in Manchester, at a meeting of the League which was held in the Corn Exchange, 1843.] AT MANCHESTER. 131 and in the course of a speech, five columns in length, he remarked : "I assure you that wherever we go, at every meeting we address, for my own share, I hide my diminished head. I am humiliated at the manner in which I am treated at these meetings-(Applause)-they look upon persons who come from the Anti-Corn-Law League as the very deliverers of the commerce of the country from the shackles in which it has been so long enthralled. (Cheers.) And thus we see that a responsibility lies upon us. The League has risen from a very small beginning. It had a great truth in hand, however, and that truth has grown and spread till it will soon be admitted by the whole population of this empire. The time is now come when we must no longer look upon this infamous law as a mistake on the part of the aristocracy and the landowners-it was no mistake of the law-makers, it was no accident, chance had nothing to do with it--it was a crime, a crime of the deepest dye against the rights of industry and against the well-being of the British people, and 'Not all that heralds rake from coffin'd clay, Nor florid prose, nor honied lies of rhyme The meeting rose en masse and cheered lustily, and the ladies waved their handkerchiefs. The day after, Mr. Bright was at a meeting in Dudley, Staffordshire, at the Independent Chapel, and he told his audience that it was astonishing that for twenty-seven years the people should have suffered the Corn Laws; and more astonishing that now he should have come nearly 100 miles to talk to people about a law which should have caused them not to give sleep to their eyes, nor slumber to their eyelids, till they had caused it to be repealed. It was a law enacted expressly to make a scarcity of food, and if it did not do this it did not answer the purpose for which it was made. 66 Mr. Bright continued his journey in the mineral districts of Staffordshire, even in this roughest month of the year, when snow comes down at once in hoar antiquity," and was next at the populous town of Stourbridge, at a meeting at the British School Room, High Street, on the night of the 30th of December. Mr. Robert Scott, M.P., presided. An Anti-Corn-Law Festival was held in the Town Hall, Birmingham, on the 3rd of January, 1843, presided over by Mr. Schofield, M.P. Mr. Bright was present, and he said that he had the authority of the chairman to say that the inhabitants of Birmingham had not for several years past found themselves in a more prosperous condition than the rest of their fellow-countrymen, and every manufacturer had found himself gradually sinking from a state of independence and prosperity to the very opposite condition; and that there were industrious, sober, honest working men in Birmingham, formerly in constant employment well paid, who now had precarious employment at reduced wages. In Lan cashire they thought that the people of Birmingham had gone to sleep; yet he had it in his memory that in former years the men of Birmingham had done something; and he remembered the time when every post which reached them in the North was looked to with exciting interest; but now what was going on in the town of Birmingham. He asked whether there had been a rise in the price of manufactured goods in proportion to the rise of the price of bread. He could speak from experience that the prices of goods in Manchester were lower in the twelve months just past than they had been for many years previously. It was the same in Staffordshire Potteries and the iron districts, where a ton of straw cost as much as a ton of iron. Mr. Cobden and Mr. Alderman Brooks, of Manchester, addressed the same meeting. Mr. Bright, Mr. Cobden, and Colonel Thompson next visited the city of Stirling, which commands a fine view of the Grampian range-Ben Lomond, Ben Venue, Ben Ledi, Ben Voirlich, and the winding of the Forth through fertile land. In the evening of the day of their arrival a meeting was held, and the attendance was considered by the residents the largest that had assembled for twenty-seven years. From Stirling they went to the commercial metropolis of Scotland-Glasgow-to a meeting of the Young Men's Free Trade Association, and Mr. Bright afterwards declared "that a more magnificent meeting, I think, I scarcely ever beheld." Next they travelled to the manufacturing town of Hawick, in Roxburghshire, and about 500 persons assembled to listen to their addresses. From Hawick they went on to Newcastle-on-Tyne, the great emporium of coals. Special trains brought large numbers of persons from Sunderland and North and South Shields, so anxious were the people in that part of the country to hear them. Sir John Fife, formerly Mayor of Newcastle, officiated as chairman. "When I look abroad over the face of this island," said Mr. Bright, "and see all that Providence has given us, and all that we have the power to accomplish, and behold such masses of misery where there ought to be gladness and joy, pleasure and delight, I really wonder how it is, if there be judgment in heaven, that it does not come down upon us who have neglected the duty imposed upon us." Mr. W. L. Larle Metcalf, M.P., and Mr. Wawn, M.P., as well as Mr. Cobden and Colonel Thompson, addressed the meeting. On the 10th of January, Mr. Bright and Mr. Moore arrived at the ancient town of Lancaster, and so large was the attendance at the Music Hall that two meetings had to be held to give the 1843.] IN SCOTLAND. 133 inhabitants an opportunity of listening to the distinguished members of the League. Mr. Bright, Mr. Cobden, and Col. Thompson arrived on the 12th of January at "the modern Athens," the capital of Scotland -Edinburgh, the birthplace of Sir Walter Scott and Henry Brougham. A soirée in the evening was held in the Waterloo Rooms, and the audience, after listening to the speeches, contributed £600 to the funds of the League. The Scotsman, in describing Mr. Bright at the time, states:- "He seems a man nearly of the same age as Mr. Cobden, or rather younger, and is full of fire and vivacity, with no small share of depth and power." On the 23rd of January they travelled to the seaport and manufacturing town of Dundee, and a meeting was held at the Royal Circus, Meadowside. 2,000 persons listened to their speeches. The inhabitants of the historic city of Perth, long the residence of Scottish kings, and where Knox preached his first sermon, had next the opportunity of listening to Mr. Bright and his colleagues. Although only an hour's notice was given calling the meeting, 300 persons assembled in the Council Chamber, and municipal honours were conferred upon Mr. Cobden. Mr. Bright was again in Manchester on the 27th of January at a meeting in the Corn Exchange, and, in alluding to the presence of twenty-nine ministers of religion at the Edinburgh meeting, he said : "They believe that the Corn Law is a law operating constantly, incessantly, and most powerfully to destroy the labours which they are engaged in bringing to perfection amongst their people, and therefore they come forward, unanimously almost, throughout Scotland, to raise their voice against the longer continuance of this law. I would say of these men, as was said of some preachers of the olden time : 'No servile doctrines such as power approves, With truths which tyrants hate and conscience loves, (Cheers.) |