CHAPTER XXII.
FREE TRADE HALL MEETING.
A meeting of the members of the League was held in the Free Trade Hall on Tuesday, October 28. The attendance from the neighbouring towns was very numerous, arrangements having been made with the railway companies for trains to return after the proceedings were closed. The audience mustered more than eight thousand, and hundreds went away without obtaining admittance. On the platform were the representatives of an amount of wealth and capital such as had never before been collected in the north of England. Mr. Wilson having taken the chair, introduced Mr. Cobden, who started at once into the object of the meeting, which was to point out the remedy for the famine which threatened our own island, and to avert the misery, starvation, and death of millions in Ireland. The natural and obvious remedy was to open the ports. Russia, Turkey, Germany, and Holland bad done So, and why should not our government follow the example? Peel might apply it if he would. He would have the sup. port of Lancashire, the West Riding of Yorkshire, and the vast multitudes of the people, and if with such support he shrunk from the task he would be a criminal and & poltroon. Mr. Cobden then referred to the rumours of a new Corn Law being intended, and said that some delusive modification would be made unless the country declared against the acceptance of either a fixed duty or a reduced
