parliament. (Cheers.) Now, gentlemen, with just these preliminary remarks, I was going to notice a common objection made to us during the last two or three months—that the League has been very quiet of late—that we have been doing nothing. (Hear, hear.) Many people have said to me, 'When are you going out into the agricultural districts again? I think they will be quite ripe for you now, for most of your predictions have fallen true, and the farmers will come and listen.' (Hear.) My answer has been, We are better employed at present at home, and the landlords are doing our work very well for us at their agricultural meetings.'"
Mr. Cobden then adverted to the great improvements that had been effected in agriculture since the League had pointed out the wretched system of farming that had prevailed over England, and concluded a most effective speech by saying:—
"I believe, when the future historian comes to write the history of agriculture, he will have to state:—'In such a year, there was a stringent Corn Law passed for the protection of agriculture. From that time agriculture slumbered in England, and it was not until, by the aid of the aid of the Anti-Corn-Law League the Corn Law was utterly abolished, that agriculture sprang up to the full vigour of existence in England to become what it now is, like her manufactures, unrivalled in the world.' (Loud cheers.) It is a gloomy and most discouraging thought, that whilst this system of Corn Laws alternately starves the people in the manufacturing districts and then ruins the farmers, it really, in the end, confers no permanent benefit on any class. (Hear.) I told you in the beginning I did not believe the agricultural labourer was now so badly off as he was when corn was 70s. a quarter; but I will tell you where distress in the agricultural districts is now. It is among the tenant farmers themselves. (Hear.) They are paying rents with wheat at 45s. a quarter, which they have bargained for at a calculation of wheat being 56s., and in many cases 60s. a quarter. It is owing to this discrepancy in the prices that the tenant farmers are now paying rent out of capital; they are discharging their labourers, unable to employ them; and theirs is the real distress now existing in the agricultural districts. This state of things will not continue either here or in the agricultural districts. What is the language that drops from the landlords at some of their meetings? It is, 'We shall not very likely have higher prices for corn this year; we must wait for better times; we will give you back ten per cent, this year.' No permanent reduction, and why? Because they know that, by the certain
