MR COBDEN ON WAGES.
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may suit his purpose as a feat in the jugglery of statesmanship. (Cheers.) But let it be understood that we have nothing to do with all this mystification and shuffling. Ours is a very simple and plain proposition. We say to the right honourable baronet, 'Abolish the monopolies which go to enrich that majority which placed you in power and keeps you there.' We know he will not attempt it; bat we are quite certain that be will make great professions of being a free-trader notwithstanding. Ok! I am more afraid of our friends being taken in by plausibilities and mystifications, than anything else. I wish we had the Duke of Richmond or his Grace of Buckingham in power for twelve months, that they might be compelled to a Fow what they really want, and let us have a perfect understanding upon the matter. We should not then be long before we achieved the object of our organization. Ladies and gentlemen, Sir Robert Peal will meet Parliament under circumstances which may perhaps call for congratulation in the Queen's speech, Manufactures and commerce are thriving, and the revenue is flourishing. Was that ever known when corn was at an immoderately high price? (Hear.) Why the present state of our finances and manufactures is an illustration of the truth of the free-trade doctrines. As the chairman has told you, I have been, during the last two months, paying a visit to nearly all the principal towns lo Lancashire and Yorkshire, and have seen much prosperity prevailing in those places where, four years ago, the people were plunged in the greatest distress; and I am glad to tell you that I have everywhere met larger and more enthusiastic meetings than I did in the time of the greatest crisis of distress. We have passed through that trying ordeal which I had ways dreaded as the real and difficult test of this agitation; I mean the period when the manufactures of this country regained a temporary prosperity. We are proof against that trial; we have had larger, more enthusiastic, and more influential meetings than ever we had before, and I am happy to tell you, that, so far as the north of England goes, the present state of prosperity in business is merely having the effect of recruiting the funds of the Anti-Corn-Law League. (Cheers.) There is not a working man in the manufacturing districts who has not his eyes opened to the enormous falsehoods which have been told by the monopolists during the last four or five years. You know that the operatives do not deal learnedly in books: they are not all of them great theorists, or philosophers; but they have, nevertheless, a lively faith in what passes under their own noses. (Hear, and laughter.) These men have seen the prices of provisions high, and they have the found pauperism and starvation in their streets; they have seen them low, and have found the demand for labour immediately increase, and wages rising in every district of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and a state of things prevailing the very opposite
