which he has repeated, times without number, out of doors. He told them that they were not agriculturists, but merely rent-owners. He told them that the Corn Laws were not to protect farmers and labourers bat to raise rents. These statements may be condemned, as we are disposed most gravely to condemn them; they may be described as untrue; they may be referred to malice as their source; but they are straightforward. They are uttered in the presence of country gentlemen, who constitute, numerically, the largest party in the house; and the utterer, by consequence, exposes himself to prompt retaliation of the most crushing kind. Mr. Cobden charged Mr. George Bankes and the other Dorsetshire landowners, with pauperising and brutalising their labourers. He defied any landowner to prove that the Corn Laws could by possibility protect labourers or farmers. He charged Sir Edward Knatchbull with having claimed the continuance of the Corn Laws as necessary to the maintenance of an aristocracy. He reminded Lord Stanley of the admission which had fallen from that noble lord, to the effect, that Corn Laws raised rents, but did not raise wages! No man answered these charges of Mr. Cobden. No man attempted to answer them. Sir Robert Peel's speech, whatever might be its merits, contained no defence of the Corn Laws on those general grounds on which Mr. Cobden assailed them. No; Sir Robert Peel avowed himself a free trader as decidedly as Mr. Cobden; but the right hon. baronet appealed to existing interests, as rendering caution in dealing with the Corn Laws indispensable. "Mr. Huskisson was a free trader,' urged Sir Robert, but he was no friend to immediate and precipitate repeal. Adam Smith, the theoretical free trader, approved himself no less anxious, than the practical statesman, to proceed with the utmost caution in the application of free-trade principles. Those statements may be exceedingly sound, or they may be the reverse; but, assuredly, these statements contain no reply to the arguments of Mr. Cobden. If country gentlemen be really ashamed to utter one word in favour of protective principles, if they were willing to listen in silence to the furious assaults of their opponents, and if the defence to which they trust, amounts merely to a qualified admission of the truth of the principles and statements in which their opponents trust, then let country gentleman cease to wonder at the progress made by the Anti-Corn-Law League. 'Heaven,' says the proverb, "helps those who help themselves. In this world, assuredly, those who will not help themselves will find few friends.
"No man answered Mr. Cobden," and "no man attempted to answer him." "Sir Robert Peel's speech contained no defence of the Corn Law on those general grounds on
