House of Commons opposed to monopoly; and he trusted in God that they would do so, and thereby promote the happiness, virtue, and welfare of this great community; that they would throw aside all partial interests, and stand forward in support of independent principles, and return a majority, not of a particular set of partisans—not persons looking to the sweets of office—but of men who are determined to support great principles, and great principles alone. He sketched the declining career of the protection societies, and amused his audience very much with some commentaries on the principles promulgated in the Morning Post, particularly its views as to the utter uselessness of all trade and commerce except trade in guano; and blamed tho landed interest, "the provision dealers," and the clergy, for wishing for a war rather than that we should have free trade.
Mr. Cobden, alluding to the assertion, renewed from day to day, of the League being extinct, said the League was not extinct, nor anything like it. When it set about its great work—the overthrow of a monopoly, greater and more strongly fortified than the world ever before saw—it knew perfectly well that so mighty a task could only be accomplished by the most strenuous exertions, extending over a long period of time. It had to teach two genera-tions—that which was passing away, and that which was rising up; and it had to teach them, not merely by arguments and general facts, but by their own experience; and this was necessarily a work of time. Much experience of a most valuable kind those whom they sought to teach had already had; and, if the present abundant harvest should be, by the blessing of God, safely garnered in, the next six months would complete the lesson which the farmer's had for the three last years been learning, and which showed them that what they had hitherto credulously believed to be protection, was utter destruction to them. There were crops now on the surface of the country which,
