Page:History of the Anti corn law league.pdf/323

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ENTIRE REPEAL DEMANDED.
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I followed, and having stated the successful result of the Bazaar at Manchester, as a proof that the League would be heartily supported, I said that the contest between the two parties in Parliament, who recognised no other party, either there or out of doors, would only be whether Lord John's fixed duty, or Sir Eobert's modified slide, should be adopted, while the just demand was that there should be no duty at all; and that the country by the determined front it might assume, should tell both factions that nothing short of an entire abolition of the obnoxious laws would be satisfactory. The burst of cheers that followed gave unequivocal proof that nothing was farther from the mind of the assembled deputies than any compromise with either of the two old political parties that claimed the right to rule. The chairman, Mr. Duncan Mc.Laren, of Edinburgh, announced that his instructions from his constituents, were to demand the full measure of justice, and again the enthusiastic and prolonged cheers showed, that if any one came there with the slightest idea of compromise, he would find no responding voice in that assembly. Mr. John Bright, from that time forward standing forward amongst the first of the leaders in the movement, made a speech full of power and. effect. His motion was to pledge the deputies never to swerve from their purpose, nor relax in their efforts, until the total repeal of the Corn Laws was accomplished, and he enforced it with so much argument, and so energetic and fervid an eloquence, that at the close of his spirit-stirring address the whole assembly rose and testified their approbation by loud and long-continued hurrahs. The Rev. Dr. Pye Smith followed in a different strain, enlisting the Christian sympathies of his auditory in the sufferings of the poor. And then came Mr.Timothy Falvey, a silk weaver, of Macclesfield, who had been engaged as a lecturer, whose natural eloquence on behalf of the deeply wronged of his own order, showed that-the hitherto inarticulate groanings of the oppressed multi-