Mr. Bennett, a tenant farmer, of Luton, moved that the repeal of the Corn Law would spread inevitable ruin throughout the rural districts. The motion was seconded in a bitter speech by Mr. Maydwell. Mr. Lattimore, another tenant farmer, moved: "That it is the opinion of this meeting that the existing Corn Laws have proved highly injurious to the independence and welfare of the tenant farmer, and that they ought to be abolished." The amendment was put and carried triumphantly, only about ten bands being held up for the original motion. Another open-air meeting of farmers, held at Cambridge, on the same day, and addressed by Mr. Bright and Mr. Moore, had a similar result. On Saturday, May 6, Mr. Cobden and Mr. Moore attended a crowded meeting in the County Hall, Aylesbury, Lord Nugent in the chair. It had been announced that Dr. Sleigh, a pro-corn-law lecturer, would be there to oppose the free traders, but he did not make his appearance, and a vote of thanks to their visitors, and of approval of the principles advocated, was passed by the whole assembly except five persons—"amongst the faithless faithful only they,"—and this in the stronghold of the Duke of Buckingham. On the following week, Mr. Cobden and Mr. Moore addressed the farmers at Uxbridge, and Mr. Bright and Mr. Moore the same class in the county town of Dorsetshire, and at both places resolutions were passed condemnatory of the Corn Law.
On Friday, May 19th, a meeting was held in the Sheep Market, Lincoln, to hear an address from Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright upon the Corn Laws. This meeting, like all the others in the agricultural districts, had been advertised and placarded for three weeks previously throughout the county, so that it might in the strictest sense of the word he called a county meeting. It was attended by many farmers and others from a distance of nearly thirty miles, and great interest was felt in the result, from the confident expectation entertained by the monopolist party, whatever
