intend to pay us another visit but if so, they ought to have timely notice that they will be held responsible for any breach of the peace that may ensue—the forbearance of the peaceable (!) portion of the community may be taxed too far; and if the paid hirelings of a disloyal faction are to persist in inflaming the public mind, with sentiments destructive of all moral right and order, we cannot call too strongly, at the present crisis, upon the well-disposed portion of the community to assist the authorities in putting down those revolutionary emissaries."
The League had commenced its operations in earnest, and the monopolists were alarmed. In June "The Central Agricultural Society of Great Britain and Ireland," which title had been assumed by a combination of landowners to protect their monopoly, issued an address, in which it was stated that of the three first numbers of the the Anti-Corn-Law Circular, 10,000, 12,000, and 15,000 copies respectively had been put into circulation ; that an immense number of anti-corn-law pamphlets had been distributed, more especially in the rural districts; and that the work of agitation had been begun and vigorously carried on by hired agents, who had already delivered lectures in about fifty different towns and villages. This was all true although somewhat short of the truth, for instead of fifty towns and villages having had instruction, there had been one hundred large towns which had benefited by the lectures of Mr. Paulton, Mr. Sidney Smith, Mr. Acland, and Mr. Shearman, besides all the places which had been visited by members of the Leeds and other anti-corn-law associations. The Morning Herald, copying the address, said:—
