and his cabinet. Alas, for the Morning Herald's forlorn hope—the agriculturists had little faith in that quarter. They wanted a better leader. Here is what the Bucks Herald said, no doubt in reference to the " no-surrender" Earl Stanhope:—
"Agricultural Apathy.—We do not fear so much from the activity of the League, although it is too formidable to be despised, as from the torpor of the agricultural body. They seem to have relapsed into a state of somnolence, from which there is no waking. When the time was, and they had a leader ready, able, and willing to head them, they were shy, frightened, and backward; and now they will find their error when it is too late to retrace their steps, and discover in the progress and results of free trade that ruin which they were forwarned of, but which they either did not believe, or, believing, were too much scared to attempt to repulse."
The Manchester Courier, the most reckless of its tribe, had the hardihood to assert that public feeling in that town was fast cooling towards the League! It said:—
"Now, considering the amount of money promised—upwards of £11,000 we are told—the meeting was an exceedingly small and unimportant one, occupying only the small space of the Cross-street end of the Town Hall. The requisition contained only seventy names and firms, collected in the town and neighbourhood; but then the meeting was fixed for the market day, when the manufacturers from the surrounding country flock into the town. This alone ought to have ensured a large meeting, and doubtless it was designed to do so. Nothing, however can be more palpable than that public feeling in this town, and more particularly in this season of revived commercial activity—the fruits of Sir Robert Peel's sound and comprehensive policy—is fast cooling towards the League. True, the remark will not apply to the prime movers, whose activity and zeal seem rather to have increased; but this may arise, and probably does arise, out of a pressing consciousness on their parts that it behoves them to make up by their own personal exertions for the ground which they are undoubtedly losing with the public."
The Courier was eagerly quoted by the Morning Herald, but the statements, so much at variance with the admissions of the Herald, were laughed at where the paper was
