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INSTRUCTING THE NATION
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lions of the people—they were the evidence that the great towns had banded themselves together, and their alliance would be a Hanseatic League against the feudal Corn-Law plunderers. The castles which crowned the rocks along the Rhine, the Danube, and the Elbe, had once been the stronghold of feudal oppressors, but they had been dismantled by a League; and they now only adorned the landscape as picturesque memorials of the past, while the people below had lost all fear of plunder, and tilled their vineyards in peace A public dinner at one of the theatres was offered to the delegates but they were leaving town.—They made no secret of why they were leaving town,—it was to meet again at Manchester. The upholders of the Corn Laws were quite at ease when they no longer saw the train of delegates going down to the house. Yet there were not wanting voices of warning which told them that the matter was not over. While one register of the time tells, with easy satisfaction that the vote of the Commons had the effect of putting the question to rest, and no more was heard of it during the remainder of the session, another is found giving warning, that the departure of the delegates was like the breaking up of a Mahratta camp—the war was not over, but only the mode of attack was about to be changed. There was no secrecy about the new mode of attack. The delegates had offered to instruct the house; the house had refused to be instructed. The house must be instructed and the way now contemplated was the grandest and most unexceptionable and effectual—it was to be by instructing the nation. The delegates were to meet again at Manchester in a fortnight, to devise their measure of general instruction; which, in its seven years' operation, approached more nearly to a genuine national education than any scheme elsewhere at work. By the Anti-Corn-Law League the people at large were better trained to thought and its communication, to the recognition of principles, the obtaining of facts, and the