"The League is a great fact. It would be foolish—nay, rash to deny its importance. It is a great fact that there should have been created in the homesteads of our manufactures a confederacy devoted to the agitation of one political question, persevering at it year after year, shrinking from no trouble, dismayed by no danger, making light of every obstacle. It demonstrates the hardy strength of purpose—the indomitable will—by which Englishmen, working together for a great object, are armed and animated. It is a great fact that at one meeting at Manchester, more than forty manufacturers should subscribe on the spot each at least £100, some £300, some £400, some £500, for the advancement of a measure which, right or wrong, just or unjust, expedient or injurious, they at least believe it to be their duty or their interest, or both, to advance in every possible way.
"These are facts important and worthy of consideration. No moralist can disregard them; no politician can sneer at them; no statesman can undervalue them. He who collects opinions must chronicle them. He who frames laws must to some extent consult them.
"These things are so. It matters not that you tell us, as you may tell us with truth, that the League has another character, and other objects, than those which it now professes. The League may be a hypocrite, a great deceiver, a huge Trojan horse of sedition. Be it so. But we answer—The League exists. You may tell us, and with truth, that there are men in the League sworn foes to church and crown—to peers and dignities—to bishops and judges: that, now speaking and declaiming, and begging, and taxing, and, an' you like, plundering men to resist the Corn Laws, this monster-being will next raise its head and subdue all laws beneath it. You may tell us, that its object is not to open the ports, to facitate commerce, to enrich England, but to rain our aristocracy, whom Leaguers envy and detest. You may tell us that no men of honesty or intelligence could, consistently with their honour and their knowledge, seek to rifle an embarrassed State of that just subsidy which all States impose upon articles of the most necessary consumption.
You may tell us, that, whatever be the specious pretext which they hold out, or the disguise under which they work, they can really only look forward to that disastrous crisis in the appals of a kingdom when indiscriminate plunder consummates the work of hopeless and inextricable confusion. You may tell us, that the League has whined and canted about the sufferings of the poor; that its orators wink with malicious capping at the point they make about the miserable victims of landlord legislation. In all this there is, doubtless, much truth.
"But, we ask, tell us this:—Who created the League? Who found the ribs and planks of this 'infandum monstrum?' Who filled it with armed men, and introduced its perilous presence within the walls of the