CHAPTER XVI.
PREPARING FOR PARLIAMENT, 1845.
As a prelude to the opening of parliament, there was a great gathering in Covent Garden Theatre on the 15th of January, and the crowded attendance proved that the subject was as interesting as it had been when the first meeting was held there. Mr. Wilson was in the chair, and called attention to registration, and the purchase of freeholds:—
"Since the idea was broached we have had forty meetings in Lancashire and Yorkshire, for the purpose of inducing our friends in those counties to qualify as voters. All these have been thorough business meetings. We have had some experience in public meetings during the course of this agitation; but never since the League commenced its operations have there been such large assemblages convened for business objects as those to which I am now referring. (Cheers.) We want our friends in the counties of Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Middlesex, to run side by side—not in a spirit of jealousy, but with a feeling of honest rivalry—so that each county may present a proper return at the next election. The counties I have now enumerated are such as any man may well be proud of becoming a freeholder of: they are leading districts of this country, but they have not been made so by the influence of the aristocracy of the land. (Cheers.) Their inhabitants have not been raised to their present high position by the efforts of the aristocracy, nor have they attained their present standing by anything which mere rank or station may have contributed to their welfare; but it is attributable to the muscle and sinew, skill and intellect, of their operatives and capitalists, manufacturers, masters, and merchants. (Cheers.) It never can be long the destiny of these counties to be held in the thraldom of an aristocracy, or to be misrepresented by men who are hostile to the very principles upon which their prosperity is founded. (Cheers.)"
