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NOTES 
 
 ON THE 
 
 ANTI-CORN LAW STRUGGLE. 
 
 BY 
 
 ANDEEW BISSET. 
 
 WILLIAMS AND NORGATE, 
 
 14, HENRIETTA STBEET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON ; 
 AND 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH. 
 
 1884. 
 
LONDON : 
 
 U. XORMAN \M1 SON, PRINTEHS, HAST STREET, 
 CliVENT GARDEN, 
 
 (^3 ^^27 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAOE 
 
 Introduction .... 1 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Was the Repeal of the Corn Laws the Effect of 
 
 Oratoet? 14 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Thomas Peeeonet Thompson . . 36 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Chaeles Pelham Villiees . . 86 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The Landloeds . . . ... 178 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Section 1. — Peasant Life 211 
 
 Section 2. — An English Village in 1844-5 . . 223 
 
 Section 3. — A Scottish Village in 1855 . . . 239 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 
 Feee Teade and the Channel Tunnel . . 257 
 
NOTES ON THE ANTI-COEN LAW 
 STEUGGLE. 
 
 INTEODUCTION. 
 
 In revising my MS. of " Notes on the Anti- 
 Corn Law Struggle," I am struck with the fact 
 that one -third or more of the book is the work of 
 him who was throughout the whole of the Struggle 
 the advocate in Parliament of the Repeal of the 
 Corn Laws ; and is now the only survivor of a 
 group of contemporaries among whom " si mea 
 fama in obscuro sit, nobilitate ac magnitudine 
 eorum, meo qui nomini afficient, me consoler." 
 
 I will state shortly what led me to become one 
 of the labourers in the work of repealing the- Corn 
 Laws. On the 17th of January, 1842, I received 
 a note signed Adam Scott, stating that the writer 
 had been requested to communicate with me on 
 
 1 
 
Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 behalf of the Anti-Corn Law League. A day or 
 two after, Mr. Adam Scott* called on me at my 
 chambers in Stone Buildings, Lincoln's Inn, and 
 informed me that the matter on which the Council 
 of the Anti-Corn Law League were desirous of 
 consulting me was the Land- Tax. After some 
 correspondence and several conferences I received 
 from Mr. Scott a letter, dated March 17, 1842, 
 stating that Mr. Cobden had requested him to 
 make an appointment for the following day. On 
 the 18th of March, 1842, Mr. Cobden and Mr. 
 Scott called together, between eleven and twelve 
 o'clock, at my chambers. 
 
 In 1842 and the following three years the 
 prospects of those who laboured for the repeal of 
 the Corn Laws were not very good. When 
 members of the League went into the agricultural 
 districts the farmers did not give them a friendly 
 reception. I have heard witnesses of the fact 
 speak of the farmers on one occasion bringing the 
 
 * Mr. Adam Scott was the author of two able pamphlets, 
 entitled " Anti-Corn Law Tract, No. 1. A Plea for the total 
 and immediate repeal of the Corn Laws, with remarks on 
 the Land-Tax fraud," London, 1842 ; and " Anti-Corn Law 
 Tract, No. 2. Sir Robert Peel's Burdens on Land," London, 
 1842. 
 
Introduction. 
 
 hose of a fire-engine to bear upon the Free Ti'ade- 
 speaker. Those who were travelling through the 
 country to endeavour to diffuse some knowledge 
 of pohtical economy had to encounter not only 
 hostile opinions, but the argumentum haculinum. 
 One of those lecturers told me that (at Dor- 
 chester, I think it was) he observed a stalwart 
 man in the front row of the audience with a 
 large cudgel of which he appeared to make rather 
 an ostentatious, not to say menacing, display. 
 
 Of the argument which I drew up in the case 
 submitted to me professionally on behalf of the 
 Council of the Anti-Corn Law League, the Council 
 printed at the time two thousand copies for distri- 
 bution to Members of Parliament. Mr. Cobden 
 was repeatedly applied to for copies, and he referred 
 applicants to me. Among those who noticed m}^ 
 argument on the Land-Tax was a critic in a weekly 
 publication, who described my argument as that of 
 " a writer of Mr. Bright's school," and said, " it 
 was with universal assent that all the tenures 
 were at the Restoration simplified into the form 
 of free and common socage." 
 
 So far was it from " universal assent " that the 
 
 resolution by which the excise was substituted for 
 
 the feudal dues was only carried by a majority of 
 
 2 * 
 
Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 two in a House of three hundred Members— one 
 hundred and fifty-one to one hundred and forty- 
 nine — many Members urging in the strongest 
 terms the injustice of the measure.* 
 
 This critic goes on to say : " If Mr. Bright had 
 been then ahve he might fairly have urged the 
 justice of commuting an obsolete burden for a 
 moderate land-tax ; but the latter impost, which 
 still exists under that name, furnishes an ample 
 equivalent for one of the least productive revenues 
 which belonged to the Crown." 
 
 The answer to this is that a question which all 
 through the reign of James I. occupied very much 
 of the time and attention of the Parliament Avas 
 the mode of getting rid of the feudal tenures. 
 The same hand which drew the Petition of Right 
 drew up an account of a motion made at the 
 Parliament in the eighteenth year of the reign of 
 James I. for commuting the feudal tenures and 
 payments into a " competent yearly rent, to be 
 assured to his Majesty, his heirs, and successors " 
 (4 Inst., 202, 203). This motion Coke stamps 
 with his approbation, " hoping that so good a 
 
 * Parliamentary History, vol. iv., pp. 148, 149. — Gomm. 
 Journ., Nov. 21, 1660. 
 
Introduction. 
 
 motion will some time or other, by authority of 
 Parliament, one way or other, take effect and be 
 established." The amount of the rent-charge 
 which was to be substituted for the feudal pay- 
 ments was equal to nearly one-half of the whole 
 revenue at that time (Sinclair, " Hist. Eevenue," 
 vol. i., pp. 233, 244) ; and as the value of the land 
 would increase with the wealth and revenue of 
 the kingdom, the proportion would remain the 
 same. 
 
 The confidence with which this anonymous 
 writer expressed himself on the subjept of the 
 Land-Tax, induces me to mention one of the 
 numerous applications for a copy of my argument 
 on the Land-Tax, because it shows, notwithstand- 
 ing the judgment of this anonymous critic, that 
 the soundness of the reasoning as well as of the 
 legal learniag of my argument has been stamped 
 with the approbation of some of the highest legal 
 authorities. 
 
 In Michaelmas Term, 1852, an eminent counsel 
 — a Member of Parliament — who was engaged in 
 a heavy land-tax case with the then Attorney- 
 General, Sir Alexander Cockburn, afterwards Lord 
 Chief Justice Cockburn, having applied to all the 
 law booksellers, without effect, for a copy of the 
 
6 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 pamphlet which was out of prmt — indeed, I don t 
 know that it was ever actually published foi' sale — 
 I sent him a copy and received soon after the 
 following note from him : — " Allow me to thank, 
 you most sincerely for your very able and valuable 
 pamphlet on the Land-Tax, which has been of 
 great use and value to me." 
 
 On the 6th November, 1844, I received a letter 
 from Mr. Cobden, dated Manchester, 5th November, 
 1884, in which he said : — 
 
 " There is an idea talked of here of sending a Commission 
 of Inquiry into two or three of the southern counties, say 
 Dorset, Somerset, Wilts, to ascertain the condition of the 
 labouring population, and particularly how much of the 
 average earnings of a peasant's family goes in purchasing 
 clothing and articles paying excise or duty to Government. 
 As the only way of making such an inquiry useful would he 
 by having men of character and respectability to put their 
 names to the report, it is thought that one person from 
 Manchester and another from London would be best suited 
 to the labour. The object would be simply an inquiry into 
 facts, without meddling with theories, whether of Corn 
 Law or Poor Law. Do you think you would be able to 
 give six weeks to such an investigation, between this and 
 Christmas, if the plan were carried out ?" 
 
 In consequence of unavoidable delays it was not 
 till towards the middle of December that the 
 
Introduction. 
 
 gentleman joined with me in this Commission, 
 Mr. Philip Holland, and myself took our departure 
 for Salishury. 
 
 It will be of use in throwing light on the 
 subject to give here the credentials, or at least the 
 credential letter, dated 10th December, 1844, and 
 addressed to A. Bisset, Esq., and P. Holland, Esq. 
 The following is a copy of the letter : — 
 
 " Mt deae Sirs, 
 
 " I have not time to write notes to all those with 
 whom I am personally acquainted, or whom I know to he 
 friendly, in Wilts, Dorset, and Somerset; but you will he 
 good enough in the first instance to show this to Mr. Lam- 
 hert, solicitor, Salisbury, and to Mr. Squarey, and they will, 
 I am sure, not only give all the personal aid in their power, 
 but also give you letters of introduction which will aid you 
 va. your inquiries in all parts of the country. I have sent 
 you a list of names of parties to whom I would advise you 
 to apply ; and be good enough to use this letter as an 
 introduction, if necessary. 
 
 " Believe me, my dear Sirs, 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 "RICHARD COBDEN." 
 
 This letter was written at the offices of the 
 Anti-Corn Law League, in Spring Gardens, 
 London, on the evening of the 10th December, 
 
S Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 1844. It was a very hard frost. I had Been 
 waiting all the evening to receive this credential 
 letter from Mr. Cobden, who was in his bed-room, 
 with a large fire, receiving people on business, of 
 which he had a vast deal on his hands. He wrote 
 this letter while I was in the room with him ; and. , 
 it struck me as an example of his great aptitude 
 for business that though he had been occupied 
 for several hours by a succession of visitors who 
 sought his counsel or direction on the business 
 of the League, quite apart from the business on 
 which I came to him, he immediately proceeded 
 to write the letter above quoted, and with such 
 precision and accuracy that he did not need to 
 alter a word or even a letter, as I can see from 
 the original letter now lying before me. 
 
 I left London on Saturday, December 14th, 
 1844, I reached Salisbury towards evening the 
 same day, and called on Mr. Lambert the same 
 evening. Some time after my return to London, 
 in January, 1845, I made a report to Mr. Cobden 
 of the result of my inquiries. I will refer in 
 the fifth chapter to some points in my report that 
 may appear of importance and interest ; and I may 
 say here that I found myself upon an engagement 
 very difficult. Besides the diflaculty of getting 
 
Introduction. 9 
 
 at the truth from the imperfect machinery we 
 had for examining witnesses, there was getting 
 up, in an unusually severe winter, at 4, or even 
 sometimes 3 a.m., to catch a coach; and the 
 farmers, who thought their interests identical with 
 those of their landlords, threatened to shoot us 
 if we came upon their ground. I remember in 
 particular a room in an inn at Cranbourne, the 
 door of which would not close though the frost 
 was intense; and I remember my colleague, after 
 taking great pains for some hours in examining a 
 witness, saying, at the conclusion of his labour, 
 " It's hard work ! " 
 
 Some time after my return to London I made 
 a report to Mr. Cobden of the result of my 
 inquiries. I first made a somewhat short report 
 in order that Mr. Cobden might have it in his 
 hands before making a speech on a certain day in 
 the House of Commons. Some months after I 
 made a longer and more elaborate report, in which 
 I compared the condition of the agricultural 
 labourers at that time in England with their 
 condition at other times. I showed, on the best 
 evidence I could obtain, that in the thirteenth, 
 fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries the wages of the 
 agricultural labourer in England were such as to 
 
10 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 procure for him nearly double the quantity of food 
 which his wages between 1740 and 1794 procured; 
 and that the wages obtained by him from 1834 to 
 1844, as measured by the quantity of produce, 
 were considerably less than in the period between 
 1740 and 1794. I also showed that under the 
 combined operation of the Poor Law of 1790 and 
 the Corn Law of 1815 the wages of agricultural 
 labour were lower, and the condition of the agri- 
 cultural labourer was worse than at any former 
 period except that in which the Poor Law of 
 Elizabeth was passed. 
 
 In attempting to make a table of wages, the 
 most that can be looked for is an approximation 
 to the truth. Besides the difference of wages in 
 different counties, there are the variations through 
 the various seasons of the year — winter, summer, 
 haytime, harvest. In a table which I drew up 
 with great care to show the comparative amount 
 of wages in pints of wheat from the fifteenth 
 century to the middle of the nineteenth century, I 
 have taken the summer wages as the basis of the 
 calculation, because that basis afforded greater 
 facilities for comparison, from the fact that in the 
 early rates of wages fixed at various times by the 
 legislature, or by the magistrates acting under the 
 
Introduction. 11 
 
 authority of a legislative enactment, a certain 
 scale of wages is always given from Easter till 
 Michaelmas, with the exception of harvest, when 
 a somewhat higher rate is allowed. It appears 
 from this table, which was drawn up from the 
 best authorities, which authorities are cited at the 
 foot of it, that wages were much higher in the 
 fifteenth century than they have ever been since ; 
 that, about the middle of the eighteenth century, 
 they were higher than they had ever been since the 
 sixteenth ; that from the middle of the eighteenth 
 century they declined till they attained a minimum 
 about 1824; that, after the agricultural riots and 
 burnings of 1830-31, they rose considerably, so 
 as to be for a time higher than they had been for 
 upwards of fifty years. But the rise caused by 
 the riots of 1830 and 1831 was only temporary. 
 I subjoin the table to which I have referred. 
 
12 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 
 Wheat 
 per quarter. 
 s. d. 
 . 6 31(a) . . 
 
 Summer wages, p 
 including haytime 
 
 In money, 
 s. d. V 
 . 2 0(6) . . 
 
 er week, no 
 and harve 
 
 t 
 
 St. 
 
 ure. 
 its. 
 
 Year. 
 1496 . . 
 
 In wheat. 
 
 finch, meas 
 
 163 pii 
 
 1514 . . 
 
 . 8 
 
 8(c) . . 
 
 . 2 
 
 0(d) . 
 
 118 , 
 
 
 1545 . . 
 
 . 18 
 
 8(e) . . 
 
 . 2 
 
 6(f) ■ ■ 
 
 68 , 
 
 
 1593 . . 
 
 . 20 
 
 0(g) . . 
 
 . 2 
 
 6(h) . . 
 
 64 , 
 
 
 1610 . . 
 
 . 34 
 
 l(i) . . 
 
 . 3 
 
 6(i) • • 
 
 52 , 
 
 
 1725 . . 
 
 . 35 
 
 4(7.) . 
 
 . 5 
 
 0(0 . . 
 
 72 , 
 
 
 1750 . . 
 
 . 29 
 
 2K™) • 
 
 . 7 
 
 0(n) . 
 
 122 , 
 
 
 1763 . 
 
 33 
 
 IKo) . 
 
 . 7 
 
 0(p) . . 
 
 . 108 , 
 
 
 1770 . . 
 
 41 
 
 4(g) . 
 
 . 7 
 
 4i(r) . 
 
 92 , 
 
 
 1792-4 . 
 
 . 46 
 
 9(.) . 
 
 . . 8 
 
 5f(0 . 
 
 . 94 
 
 
 1824 . . 
 
 . 64 
 
 . . 
 
 . . 8 
 
 7(u) . 
 
 68 , 
 
 
 1832-3 . 
 
 . 55 
 
 9J- . . 
 
 . . 11 
 
 5(v) . 
 
 104 , 
 
 
 (a) Average of nineteen years, in Sir F. Eden's tables. 
 (6) Stat. 11, Hen. VII., c. 22. 
 
 (c) Average of the prices in Sir F. Eden's tables. 
 
 (d) Stat. 16, Hen. VIII., c. 3. 
 
 (e) Sir F. Eden's tables. 
 (/) Ibid. 
 
 (g) Average, or below it, in Eden's tables. 
 (h) Rate fixed by justices of East Riding of Yorksbire in 
 1593. 
 
 (i) Eden, Appendix No. III. 
 
 (j) Rate of Rutlandshire justices in 1610. 
 
 (k) Eden, Appendix, p. Ixxix. 
 
 (I) Rate of Lancashire justices, 1725. 
 
 (m) Eton tables, cited Tooke, " History of Prices,'' i., 48. 
 
Introduction. 13 
 
 (») Tooke's " History of Prices," i., 65. The wages here 
 given are the general mean for the whole year. The summer 
 wages are very near the general mean, as appears by the 
 proportions in Arthur Young's " Six Weeks' Tour," p, 333. 
 The equality is produced by the excess of the summer wages 
 over the winter's being balanced by the excess of the harvest 
 wages over the summer, 
 (o) Tooke, ibid. 
 (_p) Ibid. 
 
 (g) Parliamentary Return, 
 (r) Ibid, 
 (s) Ibid. 
 
 (i) Summer wages, computed as above, from the accounts 
 drawn up for the Board of Agriculture. 
 
 {u) Average of all England from Report of Committee on 
 Labourers' Wages in 1824. 
 
 (u) Average of all the counties of England, from Appendix 
 (B) to the Poor Law Commissioners' Report in 1834. This 
 result has been obtained from a careful examination and 
 analysis of the returns from more than 1200 parishes. But 
 the average seems too high, even allowing for the temporary 
 rise caused by the riots of 1830 and 1831. 
 
14 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 WAS THE REPEAL OF THE CORN LAWS THE EFFECT 
 OF ORATORY? 
 
 It may be of use to try to discover what really 
 won the battle between the manufacturers and the 
 landholders on the question of the Corn Laws. 
 For it was a battle between those two powerful 
 classes, and the poor man, whose cheap loaf was 
 put forward as the principal casus belli, had very 
 little, indeed nothing, to say in the matter except 
 so far as .his voice might be heard through the 
 exertions of his advocates, General Thompson and 
 Mr. Villiers, who could hardly obtain a hearing 
 in the House of Commons ; indeed. General 
 Thompson distinctly says, in his published " Letters 
 to his Constituents," that he was trampled on in 
 the House of Commons, and Mr. Villiers had 
 such powerful opposition to encounter, that, as 
 Mr. Disraeli said in his generous tribute to the 
 character of a political adversary, " anybody but 
 the hon. and learned Member for Wolverhampton 
 would have sunk in the unequal fray." 
 
Repeal of the Corn Laios. 15 
 
 Sir Robert Peel attributed his change of opinion 
 on the subject of the Corn Laws to "the unadorned 
 eloquence of Richard Cobden." Mr. Cobden was 
 certainly at once a most agreeable and a most 
 effective speaker. Mr. Bright, who may be 
 admitted to be a very competent judge, said in a 
 note to me, " Mr. Cobden's speaking was to me 
 always charming, so simple, easy, and true. He 
 did not often rouse to passion, but his power to 
 convince was something wonderful." 
 
 The words here applied by Mr. Bright to Mr. 
 Cobden's speaking may truly be applied to Mr. 
 Bright's own speaking, of which, as of Mr. Cobden's, 
 force and clearness are the characteristics. Never- 
 theless the repeal of the Corn Laws was not the 
 work of the eloquence adorned or unadorned of 
 Mr. Cobden, or of anybody else. Neither did 
 eloquence nor logic, nor even geometrical reasoning 
 ever decide any great conflict of opinion, as was 
 said by Hobbes more than two hundred years ago. 
 If it had been contrary to the interest of men who 
 were the ruling power in a country that the three 
 angles of a triangle should be equal to two right 
 angles, that doctrine would have been suppressed 
 in that country. 
 
 It was the opinion of Philip of Macedon that he 
 
1 6 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 could subdue the States of Greece, and that he was 
 under no moral obligation not to use his power for 
 that purpose. Except to enthusiastic schoolboys 
 it appears absurd to suppose that any words, though 
 uttered by the greatest speaker known among men, 
 could either turn Philip from his purpose or turn 
 the Greeks of that time into the Greeks who had 
 fought at Marathon and Salamis, or turn himself 
 into Miltiades or Themistocles. 
 
 It was the opinion of Charles Stuart that he had 
 certain rights over the souls, bodies, lands, goods 
 and chattels of the people of England, which rights, 
 if carried out as he sought to carry them out, did 
 not leave to the people of England any souls, bodies, 
 lands, goods and chattels which they could call 
 their own. The eloquence of John Pym, whether 
 it be called adorned or unadorned, was certainly 
 equal to the eloquence, "the unadorned eloquence," 
 to borrow the phrase of Sir Robert Peel, of Richard 
 Cobden. But it was not the eloquence of John 
 Pym that settled the controversy, it was an 
 eloquence or a logic, the nature of which is well 
 expressed in Cornet Joyce's answer to King Charles, 
 who asked if he had any authority in writing. 
 Joyce pointed to a body of about one thousand 
 soldiers mounted and drawn up behind him, and 
 
Repeal of the Corn, Laws. 17 
 
 said, " that the soldiers behind him were his com- 
 mission, being a commanded party out of every 
 regiment." The courtiers, in the great struggle 
 for liberty, laughed and jeered at the eloquence of 
 the talking members of the Commons' House of 
 Parliament. The landowners, in the struggle for 
 freedom of trade, did not drive their view of the 
 question between them and the Free-traders so far 
 as the King did his view of the question between 
 him and the Parliament ; for as the battles of 
 Marston Moor and Naseby settled the question of 
 the divine right of Kings, the pecuniary resources 
 of Lancashire, rendered more formidable by the 
 Irish Famine, settled the question of the divine right 
 of squires. 
 
 The extraordinary power of enchaining the 
 attention of their audience, displayed by Mr. 
 Cobden and Mr. Bright, particularly by Mr. Bright 
 in the latter part of his career — for some twenty 
 years ago he had not nearly the popularity he now 
 has, inasmuch as a weekly publication, intending to 
 damage a book which I published with my name, 
 did not give either my name or that of my book, 
 but described me as "a writer of Mr. Bright's 
 school," — may give occasion for a few words 
 on the old and much debated question whether 
 
 2 
 
18 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 oratory, eloquence, or the faculty of an orator is a 
 gift of nature, or can be taught by a teacher like 
 those Greek professors of philosophy who professed 
 to be able to teach eloquence, or by careful study 
 of Demosthenes and Cicero, -and other great orators. 
 Dogmatists have been heard to affirm that they 
 could by education out of any human being make 
 a great philosopher, a great statesman, or a great 
 orator, as surely as a shoemaker out of a given 
 piece of leather could make a good pair of shoes. 
 Two thousand years before this dogmatic assertion 
 was made, Socrates in the Gorgias of Plato asks 
 Gorgias what the art was which he practised. 
 " Rhetoric," answered Gorgias. " You are then a 
 rhetorician?" "A good one." "And you are 
 capable of making others so ?" "I profess to be 
 capable." It must be noted that the Greek word 
 pvrap, denoting a public speaker or orator as well 
 as a rhetorician or teacher of rhetoric, the meaning 
 of Gorgias was that he professed to be capable of 
 making men not merely rhetoricians but orators. 
 Cicero also wrote much with the object of showing 
 that eloquence or the faculty of an orator was 
 susceptible of being taught. Alas ! of the hundreds 
 of medallists, double firsts, senior, second, &c., 
 wranglers, how few have turned out great orators, 
 
Repeal of the Corn Laws. 19 
 
 and how many have shared the fate of a certain 
 senior wrangler who assured his clients that he 
 would plead their cause triumphantly before the 
 Lord Chancellor ! " But, Lord ! Sir," said the 
 clients, "the Lord Chancellor would not listen to 
 to him." Alas ! for the glory of medallists, senior 
 wranglers, double firsts, and the whole tribe of 
 such ! Eloquence is not more capable of being 
 taught than poetry. It is as true of the orator as 
 of the poet, that he must be born not made ; and 
 the votes and verdicts gained by studying Demos- 
 thenes and Cicero may be classed with the battles 
 won by lessons of tactics and strategics, and the 
 epic poems written by the rules of criticism. 
 
 It is not after a short or narrow course of 
 observation that I have come to this conclusion. 
 In early life I was one of a party of young men 
 who met at the chambers of one of them to study 
 some of the mechanical parts of public speaking — 
 such as articulation, modulation, expression in 
 reading aloud. Two of those who thus met became 
 eminent — one as a parliamentary speaker, the other 
 as a philosophical writer, and late in life as a clear 
 and logical parliamentary speaker. But neither of 
 these two men, who may be said to have studied 
 oratory, became nearly so great, either as orators 
 
 2 * 
 
20 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 or debaters, as Mr. Disraeli, who did not, as 
 far as I know, study Demosthenes or practice 
 at a debating society; nor as Mr. Cobden and 
 Mr. Bright, who also did not study Demosthenes 
 or practice at a debating society. And one 
 remarkable element among the materials on which 
 my conclusion rests, that eloquence cannot be 
 taught, is my having had an opportunity of 
 observing Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright, who were 
 formed by nature, and not by any professional 
 teacher like Gorgias, or any model like Demosthenes 
 or Cicero. 
 
 Mr. Cobden once said to me that the first time 
 he got up to speak in public he was so nervous 
 that he hardly knew what he was saying. That 
 nervousness would, of course, wear off in time, 
 or at least diminish ; for some public speakers have 
 said that to the last they never got up to speak in 
 the House of Commons without a feeling of nervous- 
 ness. But Mr. Cobden would appear to have 
 attained an extraordinary command over his mental 
 resources when addressing a public audience. I 
 should not think that he ever wrote out a speech, 
 or even particular passages of a speech, on a 
 question which he considered of special importance. 
 He did sometimes make, or intend to make, a 
 
Bepeal of the Corn Laws. 21 
 
 few short notes. I say intend to make, from the 
 following circumstance. One evening when I was 
 going from Spring Gardens with him and Mr. C. P. 
 Vilhers in a cab to one of the meetings of the 
 Anti-Corn Law League, in Covent Garden Theatre, 
 Mr. Cobden, as he tore up and threw out of the 
 cab window a piece of paper which he held in his 
 hand, said that, as he was obliged to speak that 
 evening at Covent Garden, he had intended to 
 write down some notes of what he might say, but 
 that he had been interrupted by people wanting 
 to see him on business, and had therefore been 
 unable to write down anything. The result was 
 an excellent and most effective speech. 
 
 Even when an orator appears to treat certain 
 topics in a manner bearing some resemblance to the 
 manner of Demosthenes, we should not be entitled 
 to conclude that such orator was imitating or even 
 had ever read Demosthenes. I do not remember 
 ever meeting with such a resemblance between 
 the manner of a modern orator and the manner of 
 Demosthenes as occurs in a passage of a speech of 
 Robespierre. The words of Robespierre are : — 
 " Non, nous n'avous point failli ; j'en jure par le 
 trone renverse, et par la Republique qui s'el^ve ! " 
 These words bear a certain resemblance to the 
 
22 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 celebrated passage in the " De Coron^": — ""Ouat 
 €(7Ti,v, ovK ecTTLV, oTra><; ■^jjidpreTe, dv8pe<} 'AOTjvaioi, tov 
 virep TYj^ atravTOiv e\evdepia<; koX ucorripia'; Kivovvov 
 dpafievoi ; 6v /j,a Tbv<; ev M.apa6wvi, •7rpoKivBvvev<TavTa<;. 
 —K. T. \." 
 
 I have heard a successful candidate relate that .1 
 man who stood against him for Preston — a man 
 famous for his power of coarse invective, and of 
 whom Mr. Pitt, when he once met him in company, 
 said, " A clever man, but too coarse," — called some 
 one he was inveighing against, "an aristocratic 
 spitting-box." I think it was Lord Stanley he 
 thus designated. This is the nearest approach 
 that has come within my observation to the Greek 
 oratory. The designation given by Demosthenes 
 to ^schines — tov KaTd-KTvarov tovtovI — is very 
 lamely and imperfectly reproduced by the words 
 " this despicable fellow," in Mr. Kennedy's trans- 
 lation. The power of invective, that is of applying 
 to an opponent the language of reproach, depre- 
 ciation, and contempt, has always been reckoned 
 one of the weapons of an orator. But there is a 
 species of language which goes beyond this, and 
 may be described as foul and abusive — lanffuasre 
 such as is used by the lowest ruffians. I do not 
 remember in any English orator any specimens of 
 
Repeal of the Corn Laws. 23 
 
 such filth as is discharged by Demosthenes and 
 ^schines against each other. For instance, calling 
 jEschines " this spat-upon fellow," and insulting 
 the poverty of jEschines's youth and attacking the 
 character of his mother, which last is on a level 
 with the London waterman's scurrility, of which 
 Johnson gave a caricature when he returned the 
 answer to an abusive attack from a passing boat — 
 " Your mother is a receiver of stolen goods under 
 the pretence of keeping a brothel." 
 
 Lord Macaulay says, in the beginning of his 
 article on " History," that it would be impossible 
 to alter a word in some speeches of Demosthenes 
 without altering it for the worse. The article on 
 " History" was published in 1828. I doubt if he 
 would have expressed the same opinion in 1844, 
 when the article on " Bar^re " was published. I 
 have read again lately the Leptines and Midias 
 of Demosthenes and the Seventh Book of Thucy- 
 dides. Demosthenes may have great power of 
 abuse combined with little regard to truth, and 
 Thucydides has narrated some things well ; never- 
 theless, I place Macaulay above Demosthenes for 
 power of invective, and above Thucydides for 
 power of narrative ; and I could not name any 
 historian, ancient or modern, whom it is a pleasure 
 
24 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 to read except Macaulay. Mr. Kennedy's version 
 of TO J/ KaTCLTTTvcTTov TovTovl into " this desplcablc 
 fellow" is only one of many proofs that Demos- 
 thenes is untranslatable. The character of the 
 invective partakes too much of the filth of Swift 
 to be fit for translation into English, at least in 
 the nineteenth century. It may have been fit 
 when Swift wrote at the beginning of the eighteenth 
 century, and it may be — (Bn meliora !) — again in 
 the twentieth century. But perhaps Macaulay's 
 article on "Barfere" may give some idea to an 
 Englishman of the effect on an Athenian of the 
 power of Demosthenes in invective. 
 
 Whether the invective of Demosthenes or that of 
 iEschines surpasses an3rthing that human genius 
 can ever again produce, as far as my limited 
 observation extends, Lord Macaulay's invective on 
 "Bar^re" appears to be a censure of no slight nature. 
 I will venture to quote one or two sentences of 
 Lord Macaulay's article on " Bar^re:" — 
 
 " In two tilings he was consistent, in his love of Chris- 
 tianity and in his hatred to England. If this were so, we 
 must say that England is mnch more beholden to him than 
 Christianity. 
 
 tF tP "w 'tp 
 
 " Renegade, traitor, slave, coward, liar, slanderer, murderer, 
 hack writer, police spy — the one small service which he 
 
Bep6al of the Corn Laws. 25 
 
 could render to England was to hate her : and such as he 
 was may all who hate her be !" 
 
 Barfere, it appears, adhered to the Christian 
 faith through the whole Revolution ; through 
 all that time when he made his Reports, — which 
 were popularly called Carmagnoles, of which, as 
 Lord Macaulay says, whoever has read Lord 
 Ellenborough's proclamations can form a complete 
 idea ; — through that time, when on the day on 
 which the Queen was dragged to her doom, he 
 regaled Robespierre and some other Jacobins at a 
 tavern ; where, in the intervals between the beaune 
 and the champagne, between the ragout of thrushes 
 and the partridge with trufBes, he preached his 
 political creed : " The vessel of the Revolution can 
 float into port only on waves of blood." 
 
 This, — that is, the union of love of Christianity 
 and hatred to England, — this, says Lord Macaulay, 
 
 " Makes the character complete. Whatsoever things are 
 false, whatsoever things are dishonest, whatsoever things are 
 unjust, whatsoever things are impure, whatsoever things are 
 hateful, whatsoever things are of evil report, if there be 
 any vice, and if there be any infamy, all these things, we 
 know, were blended in Barere. But one thing was still 
 wanting, and that M. Hippolyte Carnot has supplied. When 
 to such an assemblage of qualities a high profession of 
 piety is added, the effect becomes overpowering. We sink 
 
26 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 under tlie contemplation of such exquisite and manifold 
 perfection ; and feel, with deep humility, how presumptuous 
 it was in us to think of composing the legend of the beatified 
 athlete of the faith St. Bertrand of the Carmagnoles." 
 
 Besides the extreme coarseness of invective of 
 the Athenian orators, the orators, rhetors, and 
 historians " indulged," says Mr. Grote,* " in so 
 much exaggeration and untruth respecting this 
 convention that they have raised a suspicion against 
 themselves." " The passages of these orators 
 (iEschines, " De Fals. Legat.," c. 54, p. 300, and 
 " Andokides or the Pseudo-Andokides," De Pace, 
 c. 1 ) involve so much hoth of historical and chrono- 
 logical inaccuracy that it is unsafe to cite them, 
 and impossible to amend them except by con- 
 jecture."f " The loose language of these orators 
 (Demosthenes, Lykurgus, Isokrates) renders it 
 impossible to determine what was the precise limit 
 in respect of vicinity to the coast."| 
 
 Nevertheless, it may be seen, as James Mill has 
 said in his article Colony in the supplement to 
 " Encyclopedia Britannica,^' from the Athenian 
 orators that the licence of the rich and powerful 
 
 * Grote's History of Greece, v. 453. 
 
 t Ibid., V. 450, note (1). t Ibid., v. 452, note (1). 
 
Repeal of the Corn Laws. 27 
 
 and their means of oppressing the body of the 
 people were excessive. And so far, notwithstanding 
 the loose language and inaccuracy of the orators, 
 some information may be gathered from them 
 which the historians do not furnish. 
 
 In regard to what has been said respecting the 
 opinion that oratory can be taught, it may indeed 
 be contended that to some extent — for instance, 
 as regards the voice and action — oratory may be 
 viewed as an acquired art. I will take two men 
 whose power as orators was admitted to be great, 
 Wedderburn and Erskine, both Scotchmen, and 
 consequently both more or less under the dis- 
 advantage of a Scotch accent when addressing 
 an English audience. Wedderburn had practised 
 at the Scotch Bar, before he was called to the 
 English Bar, and is said to have taken lessons 
 in elocution from an actor ; but I never heard that 
 Erskine took any lessons to eradicate his Scotch 
 accent, beyond the lessons he learnt in knocking 
 about the world, when as a boy he passed three 
 years in the Navy, and then from eighteen to 
 twenty-one passed three years in the Army. The 
 Une of defence adopted by Erskine for his client 
 prosecuted by the House of Commons for publishing 
 the Rev. Mr. Logan's tract on Hastings's impeach- 
 
28 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 ment, leads Erskine to make a reference to his 
 adventurous youth or boyhood : — 
 
 " Gentlemen," lie said, " I think I can observe tliat you 
 are touclied witli this way of considering the subject ; and 
 I can account for it. I have not been considering it through 
 the cold medium of books, but have been speaking of 
 man and his nature, and of human dominion, from what I 
 have seen of them myself, amongst reluctant nations sub- 
 mitting to our authority. I know what they feel and how 
 such feelings can alone be expressed. I have heard them in 
 my youth from a naked savage, in the indignant character of 
 a prince surrounded by his subjects, addressing the governor 
 of a British colony, holding in his hands a bundle of sticks, 
 as the notes of his unlettered eloquence —' Who is it,' said 
 the jealous ruler over the desert encroached upon by the 
 restless foot of English adventurers, 'who is it that causes 
 • this river to rise in the high mountains, and to empty itself 
 into the ocean ? Who is it that causes to blow the loud 
 winds of winter, and that calms them again in the summer ? 
 Who is it that rears up the shade of those lofty forests, and 
 blasts them with the quick lightning at his pleasure ? The 
 same Being who gave to you a country on the other side 
 of the waters, gave ours to us ; and by this title we will 
 defend it,' said the warrior, throwing down his tomahawk 
 upon the ground, and raising the war-sound of his nation. 
 These are the feelings of subjugated men all round the 
 globe ; and depend upon it, nothing but fear will control 
 where it is vain to look for affection." 
 
 It is said that Pitt, Ts^hen Erskine besjan his 
 
Repeal of the Corn Laws. 29 
 
 first speech in the House of Commons, took a 
 piece of paper and a pencil as if he intended to 
 make notes, but was observed, after listening 
 attentively for a time, to put up the pencil and 
 drop the paper. 
 
 Wedderburn, though he did not stand so high 
 as an advocate at the bar as Erskine, stood con- 
 siderably higher as a debater in Parliament. 
 Perhaps Wedderburn's most successful forensic 
 display was his Privy-Council speech, of which 
 nothing remains but a small portion of his invective 
 against Franklin, referring to some letters of a 
 colonial governor, which, it was alleged, had come 
 unfairly into the hands of Franklin, then agent of 
 the American colonies in England. Wedderburn's 
 invective against Franklin, one of the three — one 
 of the triumviri, very different from the Roman 
 triumviri — 
 
 " Henry, the forest-born Demosthenes, 
 Whose thunder shook the Philip of the seas ; 
 And stoic Franklin's energetic shade, 
 Robed in the lightnings which his hand allayed ; 
 And Washington, the tyrant- tamer," 
 
 is partly taken from a tragedy then well known 
 and popular, now never heard of, a sort" of attempt 
 
30 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 of Young to rival or at least imitate Shakspeare 
 
 — a vain attempt — and concludes thus : — 
 
 " Amidst tranquil events here is a man who, -with the 
 ntmost insensibility of remorse, stands up and avows himself 
 the author of all. I can compare him only to Zanga, in 
 Dr. Young's Revenge : — 
 
 ' Know, then, 'twas I. 
 
 I forged the letter — I dispos'd the picture — 
 I hated — I despis'd — and I destroy.' 
 
 I ask, my lords, whether the revengeful temper attributed to 
 the bloody African is not surpassed by the coolness and 
 apathy of the wily American ?" 
 
 It is said that Franklin, though he betrayed no 
 emotion in the public room, when he got back to 
 his lodgings, took off the suit of clothes he wore, 
 and never wore it again till he affixed his name to 
 the treaty by which the independence of America 
 was acknowledged. 
 
 Those who have had the means of the closest 
 observation admit to the full Mr. Cobden's merits 
 — the ability that he displayed in the organization 
 of the movement — his perception very early that 
 it could only be maintained by money — his know- 
 ledge of the Lancashire capitalists and his skill in 
 convincing them of the expediency of employing 
 their capital for the purposes of the Anti-Corn 
 Law League, till the movement rea,ched the point 
 
Bepeal of the Corn Laws. 31 
 
 when The Times, observing the amount of the fund 
 collected, declared it was " a great fact," and never 
 after deserted the cause. In the summer of 1845, 
 Mr. Cobden avowed to some of his friends that he 
 was weary of the whole concern. Still he kept in 
 mind that if the crops failed, and there was general 
 distress in the towns, there was a large fund at 
 once to draw upon and go to work with. And 
 that was what happened. The report of the total 
 loss of the food of the Irish was announced before 
 our crops were gathered : and these w'ere announced 
 as greatly defective. Then Sir Robert Peel showed 
 signs of uneasiness, which did not disappear till he 
 proposed, his Bill for Abolition in February, 1846. 
 I have reason to think, from what I have heard 
 from those who had the best opportunities of 
 watching closely the whole course of the move- 
 ment, that those who subscribed the money firmly 
 believed at the time that the success was entirely 
 due to the fabulous amount of money which had 
 been subscribed, and which the Council of the 
 League had in hand to carry on the agitation. 
 Much the greater part of the money came from 
 Lancashire, chiefly perhaps from Manchester ; and 
 what made many of the subscribing capitalists 
 impatient at the time was that this was not fully 
 
32 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 admitted; and that, having paid for the article, 
 they were not properly credited with what they 
 had done. 
 
 They knew perfectly well that the fund was 
 enormous when the famine broke out in Ireland, 
 and that Peel surrendered from fear of the agitation 
 being continued more fiercely than ever in conse- 
 quence of the famine ; and not ten men in a thousand 
 believed the cock-and-bull story of his having been 
 converted by Cobden's "unadorned eloquence," 
 and that too after Cobden's very earnest and argu- 
 mentative speaking had almost ceased, which it 
 had done in the middle of 1845, two months before 
 the Irish famine. 
 
 And what influenced Peel as much as anything 
 was that the farmers were getting discontented, 
 and, whatever they might think of the Manchester 
 school, were coming over to the opinion that they 
 had been deceived by the parliamentary protection 
 promised them. 
 
 Of the dependence to be placed on fluency of 
 words, or eloquence, when anything difiicult is to 
 be done, an idea may be obtained from what has 
 been said by the most eloquent writer and one of 
 the most eloquent speakers of his time. Lord 
 Macaulay, in the ninth chapter of his History of 
 
Bepeal of the Corn Laws. 33 
 
 England, has given a portrait of two men whose 
 power, such as it was, lay in fluency of speech, 
 one of whom has been selected for an example of 
 patriotism by an eminent writer who, before his 
 death, became Prime Minister of England. The 
 two individuals characterized by Lord Macaulay 
 are Sir Patrick Hume and Wildman. 
 
 " Sir Patrick Hume," says Lord Macaulay, 
 " who had since his flight from Scotland lived 
 humbly at Utrecht, noAV emerged from his obscurity, 
 but fortunately his eloquence could, on this occa- 
 sion, do little mischief, for the Prince of Orange 
 was by no means disposed to be the lieutenant of 
 a debating society such as that which had ruined 
 the enterprise of Argyle. The subtle and restless 
 Wildman, who had some time before found England 
 an unsafe residence, and had escaped to Germany, 
 repaired from his retreat to the Prince's court," 
 But neither Hume nor Wildman succeeded in 
 obtaining the smallest influence upon the enter- 
 prise of a man who Avas a statesman as well as a 
 soldier. 
 
 Free discussion at public meetings, a free press, 
 and a free parliament, although a vast amount of 
 nonsense and worse than nonsense may be uttered 
 or printed, are inseparable from a free people. 
 
34 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 Yet it has been remarked by those who have long 
 observed closely the working of political machinery, 
 that great powers of speech united to small powers 
 of judgment are the curse of free governments. 
 The man who is fitted to give the best counsel in 
 a difiicult crisis is almost never the man fitted to 
 take the lead in a debating society or in a tumul- 
 tuous assembly of any kind. There may be cases 
 which may look hke exceptions to this remark; 
 nevertheless it has been often desired by those 
 who have reflected on the matter that the blessings 
 of a free government could be obtained without 
 the addition of a curse which almost brings back 
 some of the worst evils of despotism, under which 
 free speech is a thing forbidden. 
 
 Those who watched the movement for the repeal 
 of the Corn Laws from its commencement to its 
 close noted four men as the leading spirits in that 
 movement—General Perronet Thompson, elected 
 Member of Parliament for Hull, June, 1835; the 
 Right Hon. C. P. Villiers, elected M.P. for Wolver- 
 hampton, January, 1835; Richard Cobden, Esq., 
 elected M.P. for Stockport, August, 1841; the Right 
 Hon. John Bright, elected M.P. for Durham, 1843. 
 The extracts from the letters and speeches of 
 Mr. Cobden, with notices of his life, fill nearly a 
 
Repeal of the Corn Laws. 35 
 
 thousand printed pages. The extracts from the 
 speeches of Mr. Bright, with notices of his Hfe, fill 
 upwards of eleven hundred printed pages. 
 
 As so much has been written about Mr. Cobden 
 and Mr. Bright I purpose to write a few words 
 about General Perronet Thompson and the Right 
 Hon. Charles Pelham Villiers, two men who did 
 something towards showing what effect the Corn 
 Laws had on the condition of all classes of men in 
 Great Britain, and whose exertions on behalf of 
 the poor are not assailable by such weapons as the 
 Quarterly Reviewer has employed when he says 
 in his review of Mr. John Morley's " Life of 
 Cobden" : — " Mr. Morley has afforded ample proof 
 that Mr. Cobden' s misfortunes were brought about, 
 not by his love for the poor, but by his passion 
 for speculation." 
 
 3 * 
 
36 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THOMAS PERRONET THOMPSON. 
 
 General Thomas Perronet Thompson was born 
 at Hull on the 15tli of March, 1783. He was the 
 eldest of three sons of Thomas Thompson, a 
 merchant and banker of that town, and for several 
 years M. P. for Midhurst, a borough which, before 
 the Reform BiU of 1832, belonged to his partner 
 Robert Smith, created Baron Carrington of Upton, 
 CO. Notts, October 20th, 1797. In October, 1798, 
 Thomas Perronet Thompson commenced keeping 
 terms at Queen's College, Cambridge, and took his 
 B.A. degree after keeping the requisite number 
 of terms. His name appears in the Cambridge 
 University Calendar in the list of honours for the 
 year 1802, as Seventh Wrangler. The name of 
 his youngest brother, Charles Wilham Thompson, 
 appears in the same Calendar for 1805, as Seventh 
 Senior Optime. Notwithstanding this difference 
 
Thomas Perronet Thompson. 37 
 
 of rank in the Cambridge list of honours, the 
 Seventh Wrangler always spoke of his brother 
 Charles as a man very superior to himself in 
 ability. 
 
 Charles William Thompson was Travelling 
 Bachelor of Queen's, and Lieutenant and Captain 
 in the 1st Foot Guards. He w^as killed in action 
 near Biarritz in the South of France on the 12th 
 December, 1813. He w^as standing at the head of 
 his company, who were kneeling and firing at a 
 house occupied by the French, who were tiring also. 
 The Serjeant of Captain Thompson's company 
 suggested to his officer that he should also kneel. 
 He did so, and immediately after a ball went 
 through his brain. Lieutenant Thomas Perronet 
 Thompson, " in the irresistible desire of seeing his 
 face once more," says General C. W. Thompson in 
 his Obituary Notice of his father — but, as stated in 
 a letter which I have seen, part of the inducement 
 was the desire of recovering a small bit of gold 
 which he wore attached to a piece of ribbon — had 
 him taken up a few days after and re-interred in 
 the garden of the Mayor of Biarritz, where he rests 
 with two other officers of the smae regiment, over 
 whose graves the owner of the garden has placed a 
 stone with an appropriate French inscription. 
 
38 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 General Perronet Thompson's father was averse 
 to his eldest son's entering the Naval Service, and 
 he made it a condition of his giving his consent 
 that his son should first make a voyage in one of 
 his ships from Hull to the Mediterranean. The 
 youth accordingly made a voyage in a certain brig, 
 which from the General's not unfrequently alluding 
 to his first voyage in that brig was called by some 
 of his children " the celebrated brig." The General's 
 life had been a most adventurous one, and like the 
 old Hetman of the Ukraine he might sometimes 
 "track his seventy years of memory back." In 
 regard to the " celebrated brig," one story I 
 remember was that in the Adriatic they were on 
 the point of being attacked by a pirate and had 
 made the best preparations they could for resistance 
 when something occurred — probably the appear- 
 ance of an English ship of war — which made the 
 pirates retreat. 
 
 I may add that if he, like other men after 
 a life not only long but adventurous, had many 
 memories of the past which he was apt to recall 
 to himself and others, he told his stories or 
 anecdotes with clearness, conciseness and point. 
 One anecdote I will attempt to give from memory 
 in the General's own words, the rather that a 
 
Thomas Perronet Thomfson. 39 
 
 person to whom he had told it gave it in a news- 
 paper in a form which spoiled it. At one of 
 Mr. Wilberforce's elections a body of his supporters 
 had followed him to his own house, shouting 
 " Wilberforce for ever." Seeing a young lady at 
 oiae of the windows, they shouted " Miss Wilber- 
 force for ever," to which she immediately replied 
 —"God forbid! gentlemen, God forbid!" The 
 report of this slight anecdote in the newspaper 
 represented the young lady as making a speech to 
 the " Worthy and Independent Electors " after the 
 orthodox form of an Election Address before the 
 passing of the Reform Bill of 1832 ; and is about 
 as near truth as the stories told by the celebrated 
 Mr. Pell of the Pickwick Papers, a practitioner in 
 the London Insolvent Court, who represented him- 
 self as standing so high in the estimation of the 
 Lord Chancellor, that his lordship said, " Mr. Pell, 
 you are an honour to your profession — you could 
 get any man through the Insolvent Debtors' 
 Court." 
 
 Indeed the reporter of this anecdote in the news- 
 paper, reminds one of a writer who professed to be 
 acquainted with a certain attorney who has been 
 supposed to be Mr. Pell of the Pickwick Papers, 
 according to the description of Mr. Weller, senior, 
 
40 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 who gives the following extract from Mr. Pell's 
 conversation : — 
 
 " The late Lord Chancellor, gentlemen," said Pell, " was 
 very fond of me. ... I remember dining with him on one 
 occasion : there was only us two, but everything as splendid 
 as if twenty people had been expected ; the great seal on a 
 dumb-waiter at his right hand, and a man in a bag- wig and 
 suit of armour guarding the mace with a drawn sword and 
 silk stockings, which is perpetually done, gentlemen, night 
 and day." 
 
 In 1803, after having when a youth under nine- 
 teen obtained the degree of Seventh Wrangler, he 
 sailed as a midshipman in the " Isis," of fifty guns, 
 the flag-ship of Vice- Admiral Gambler, afterwards 
 Lord Gambler. Being rather under the average 
 height he nearly lost his life from having been 
 unable to obtain the support intended to be given 
 by the rope under the yard-arm from the outer 
 extremity, of which he had to make his Avay — so 
 that he said he was so exhausted that he thought 
 he should have to let go his hold and drop into the 
 sea. In the following year he was elected to a 
 Fellowship at Queen's, " a sort of promotion," he 
 remarked, " which has not often gone along with 
 the rank and dignity of a midshipman." At Ports- 
 mouth in September, 1805, he saw Nelson embark 
 
Thomas Perronet Thompson. 41 
 
 on board the " Victory," for Trafalgar, which 
 closed the prospect of active service in the Navy. 
 In 1806 he joined the " old 95th Rifles " as a 
 second lieutenant. In the Spring of 1808 he was 
 sent, at the age of twenty-five, as Governor to 
 Sierra Leone, through the influence of Mr. Wilber- 
 force, an early friend of his father's. During the 
 eighteen months that Lieutenant Thompson was 
 Governor of Sierra Leone he had fourteen fevers ; 
 and also had a narrow escape with his life from the 
 claws of a panther that he kept as a pet — a sort of 
 successor to a Greenland bear which he kept when 
 a boy at Cattingham, his father's house between 
 Hull and Beverley. As he related the incident to 
 me, some one had given the panther the whole 
 carcase of a kid with which the panther retired 
 into the council-room which was unoccupied. The 
 Governor went into the council-room and took the 
 kid from the panther which did not make much 
 resistance ; but walked quietly two or three times 
 round the room, and then suddenly sprung upon 
 the Governor who had taken the carcase of the kid 
 from it. After a struggle they came down together, 
 and the Governor said he felt the claws of the 
 panther upon his shins as if they were razors. 
 Fortunately some persons came to his assistance, 
 
42 Notes on' the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 and the panther was prevented from doing further 
 mischief. 
 
 In 1811 he joined the 14th Light Dragoons in 
 Spain as lieutenant, and was present at tlie actions 
 of Nivelle, Nive, Orthes, and Toulouse, for which 
 he received the Peninsular War-medal with four 
 clasps. During the campaign of 1814, he was 
 taken off regimental duty and attached to the staff 
 of General (afterwards Sir Henry) Fane, of whose 
 kindness and ability he preserved a grateful recol- 
 lection. " Some old Dragoons, discharged on eight- 
 pence a day," he writes in a passage which T quote 
 from an Obituary Notice of him written by his 
 second son. General Charles William Thompson, 
 and printed in the Obituary Notices of the Royal 
 Society, No. 116, 1869, "may remember that he 
 was a careful leader of a patrol, a good looker-out 
 on piquet, could feel a retiring enemy, and carry off 
 a sentry for proof, as weU as another, a great hater 
 of punishment, and a man of very small baggage, 
 consisting of something like a spare shirt and an 
 Arabic grammar." 
 
 Captain Thompson — he was promoted at the 
 peace of 1814 — exchanged into the 17th Light 
 Dragoons serving in India. In 1819 he accom- 
 panied Sir William Grant Keir as Arabic interpreter 
 
Thomas Pen-onet Thompson. 
 
 to the Expedition against the Wahabees of the 
 Persian Gulf. When the main body of the 
 Expedition returned to Bombay, he was left in 
 charge of Ras al Khyma, with eleven hundred 
 men, Sepoys with a detachment of European 
 Artillery. 
 
 It was not the intention to introduce here any of 
 the details of General Perronet Thompson's active 
 career, except those connected with his exertions 
 for the repeal of the Corn Laws. There is, how- 
 ever, one incident of his military life which may be 
 glanced at as throwing some light on the late 
 fighting in the Soudan. His son. General Charles 
 William Thompson, in a letter to me dated 28th 
 March, 1884, says :— 
 
 " The accounts of the late fighting in the Soudan, especially 
 of Baker Pasha's defeat on 4th February, remind me strongly 
 of my father's description of the way in which the Sepoys 
 ' ran like sheep,' after firing their muskets in the air, and in 
 many cases allowing the Arabs to drag them oiit of the ranks 
 by their cross belts with one hand, and cut them down with 
 the other — as if afraid of enraging them by resistance. I see 
 that someone else has been struck by the resemblance, and 
 has published a letter which I send, and which you can keep 
 if you like, as I hare another copy. It is fairly written and 
 pretty correct, except a few mistakes which I have corrected 
 in the margin, without altering the text." 
 
 The letter referred to is headed by General 
 
44 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 C. W. Thomijson " 15th March, 1884." The slip 
 of printed paper containing the letter is headed 
 " Letters to The Standard — A forgotten page 
 of History." The letter commences thus — 
 " 0. R. Low, author of the ' History of the Indian 
 Navy,' writes : — 
 
 " The Britisli public appears surprised at the reckless 
 gallantry of the Desert Arabs ; but the actions of El Teb and 
 Tamati are not the first in which our troops have been 
 engaged in close and deadly confl.ict with the Arab race. By 
 a strange coincidence also it was the 1st Tork and Lancaster 
 (then known as the 65th Regiment), that before took a 
 prominent part in the sanguinary fighting." 
 
 In the following passage of the letter, I have 
 availed myself of General C. W. Thompson's 
 corrections which he has made in the margin, 
 without altering the text. The letter as corrected 
 thus proceeds : — 
 
 " In 1820, the Beni-Boo-Ali Arabs, who iahabit the country 
 near Ras-ul-Had, in Arabia, having committed some excesses, 
 a force of three hundred and twenty Bombay Sepoys, with 
 four guns, manned by European Artillerymen, and about two 
 thousand troops of the Imaum of Mascat, under command of 
 Captain (the late General) Perronet Thompson, of the I7th 
 Dragoons, the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf, landed on 
 the Arabian coast and marched inland to inflict chastisement 
 on the Arabs. On the 9th November, the opposing forces came 
 
Thomas Perronet Thompson. 45 
 
 into conflict, and the Arabs broke into tbe Britisb column 
 wheeling into line, and a terrible scene of slaughter took place. 
 Six out of eight officers engaged and two hundred and seventy 
 men were slain, besides the loss suffered by the forces of 
 the Imaum, who was himself wounded while endeavouring 
 to save an Artilleryman, for which Act of gallantry the 
 Go verner- General of India presented his Highness with a 
 magnificent sword. The Bombay Government speedily 
 despatched an Expedition, under Sir Lionel Smith, consisting 
 of one thousand seven hundred Sepoys and one thousand 
 three hundred European soldiers, including the 65th Regi- 
 ment, the 1st Bombay Fusiliers, a troop of Horse Artillery, 
 and an Indian Naval Brigade, with guns. On the 10th 
 February, 1821, the Arabs made a night attack on the British 
 camp (similar to what was attempted, with ill success, on 
 Wednesday last), in which our loss was one officer and six- 
 teen men killed, and three officers, including Brigadier Cox, 
 and twenty-three men wounded. On the 2nd March took 
 place the decisive action, when the Arabs sought to repeat 
 their tactics of charging the British square, broadsword and 
 target in hand. But the 65th and 7th Native Infantry, f oi'ming 
 the Right Brigade, on whom the main attack was directed, 
 proved steady, and repelled the Arabs, who, out of less than 
 one thousand warriors, left five hundred on the field, the 
 British loss being twenty-nine killed and one hundred and 
 seventy-three wounded." 
 
 Such is the account of this affair given by the 
 author of the History of the Indian Navy. I 
 will now give the account of General Perronet 
 Thompson, with annotations by his son, General 
 
46 Notes on the Anti- Corn Lato Struggle. 
 
 Charles William Thompson, who was then a little 
 boy, having been born in India, and can remember 
 the Imim with his hand in a sling on board ship 
 afterwards. 
 
 A misunderstanding having arisen between the 
 Bombay Government and the Arabs of Al Ash- 
 karah on the coast of Oman, who had plundered 
 certain boats, the former sent an order to Captain 
 Thompson to act against them from Kishme in the 
 event of their clearly appearing to be piratical, but 
 to address a letter to them previously to any attack 
 being made. This attempt at negotiation failing 
 through the murder by the hostile tribe of the 
 messenger bearing the letter, the injunction to 
 communicate appeared to be fulfilled and answered. 
 Military men will see the duty of acting with 
 decision under these circumstances. Landing at 
 Soor, on the Arabian coast, forty-six English miles 
 from the town of the hostile tribe of Beni Bou Ali, 
 Captain Thompson's small force of three hundred 
 and twenty Sepoys and four guns was joined by 
 the Imam of Maskat with two thousand men of 
 his own. The force of the enemy was reported to 
 be nine hundred bearing arms. On the 9th of 
 November, 1820, as the column was toiling through 
 the sand, the hostile sheik, Mohammed Ben Ali, 
 
Thomas Perronet Thompson. 47 
 
 advanced to the attack, sword in hand. What 
 followed is best described in Captain Thompson's 
 own words, written in a private letter the next 
 day : — 
 
 " The Arabs made the guns the point of attack, and 
 advanced npon them. The instant I heard a shot from the 
 light troops, which showed the Arabs to be in motion, I 
 ordered the Sepoys to charge with the bayonet. Not a man 
 moved forward. I then ordered them to fire. They began 
 a straggling and ineffectual fi.re, aided by the Artillery, the 
 Arabs all the while advancing brandishing their swords. The 
 Sepoys stood till the Arabs were within fifteen yards, when they 
 turned and ran. I immediately galloped to the point where 
 the Sepoys were least confused, and endeavoured to make 
 them stand ; but they fired their muskets in the air and went 
 off. The Imam's army began a fire of matchlocks, and 
 went off as soon as the Arabs approached. I rode to the 
 Imam and found him wounded. The people just ran like 
 sheep. I saw some of the European- Artillerymen and ran to 
 endeavour to make them stand ; but they were too few to do 
 anything." 
 
 In the melee Captain Thompson was struck on 
 the shoulder by a matchlock ball, which passed 
 through coat and shirt, grazing the skin, as he 
 used to say, " like the cut of a whip." The rem- 
 nants of the force were rallied at the town of Beni 
 Bou Hassan, about three miles from the scene of 
 action, and after repulsing a night attack, were led 
 
48 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 back overland to Maskat by Captain Thompson in 
 person, eight days after the fight. 
 
 There can be little doubt that the cause of 
 Captain Thompson's defeat was the misbehaviour 
 before the enemy of the officers and men under 
 his command— though in the opinion of the court- 
 martial — while he was " honourably acquitted " of 
 the other charges — ^he was deserving of a repri- 
 mand for " having addressed an Official Eeport 
 to Government, in which he unjustly, and without 
 foundation, ascribed his defeat to the misbehaviour 
 before the enemy of the officers and men under his 
 command." 
 
 I will not presume to oiFer any opinion of my 
 own on the question, but I will give from the letter 
 of 28th March, 1884, already quoted, the words 
 of a veteran soldier, respecting this case of an 
 English officer having to lead troops who, instead of, 
 like the English troops, as Wellington said, getting 
 a man out of a mistake if he made one, would get 
 a man who had made no mistake into a disaster 
 which nearly broke his heart at the time, and left 
 traces for life on his mind and spirits. There is 
 this difference between the Government of India 
 of 1820, and the English Government of 1883-4, 
 that the Government of India of 1820 left Captain 
 
Thomas I'erronet Thov/^json. 49 
 
 Perronet Thompson no option of engaging the 
 Wahabees — Arabs of the Desert^-with an army 
 of Sepoys, while the English Government of 1883 
 left it to the option of Generals Hicks and Baker to 
 engage the Soudan Arabs with an army of Egyp- 
 tians who appear to be much lower in the scale of 
 soldiers than Outram placed them. Napoleon used 
 to say there were only two sorts of troops — good 
 and bad. The Egyptians have proved themselves 
 to belong to the latter category. TiU lately little 
 or nothing seems to have been known about them. 
 The words I allude to are these : — 
 
 " I have often wondered "what would have been the change 
 (if any) in my father's career if he had been successful at 
 Beni Bou Ali, as he deserved, after all the pains he took, and 
 the coolness and science with which he endeavoured to check 
 the Arab attack — and would have done so if the wretched 
 Sepoys had only stood. But when they turned and fled at 
 the approach of the enemy the chance was lost as completely 
 as when a fencer's sword breaks in making a to«w de force. 
 I may be contradicted by the assertion that the Imam's 
 troops in the field were not all natives of Maskat. If so, 
 they were Arabs of a different breed from the Wahabees of 
 Beni Bou Ali, who were a warlike and religious sect of 
 Mahometan reformers, something like Cromwell's party as 
 opposed to the Royalists. It strikes me to be a mistake to 
 call the natives of the Soudan ' Arabs,' who are, strictly 
 speaking, natives of Arabia and not Africa. They may be 
 
 4 
 
50 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 Mahometans or even Wahabees, but they are no more 'Arabs ' 
 than they are ' rebels,' though it suits the newspapers to call 
 them so." 
 
 I was desirous of obtaining General C. W. 
 Thompson's opinion respecting the difference 
 observable between the Arabs of the desert and 
 the natives of Maskat ; and writing to him on the 
 subject I received the letter, part of which I have 
 already quoted; and the part of which I now 
 quote seems to explain the apparent inconsistency. 
 He says : — 
 
 " I think it will be found on inquiry that the natives of 
 Maskat subject to the Imam (from whom my mother and I 
 met with much kindness and civility more than sixty years 
 ago, both on shore and afloat) were, and probably are, a very 
 diflierent race from the Arabs and Wahabees of the desert — 
 much more civilized, commercial, and peaceable than the 
 latter ; less rude, ferocious and bigoted, and less inclined to 
 risk their own or their neighbours' lives in any quarrel, 
 religious or political, whatever. A corps of two thousand 
 of them led by the Imam in person, and comparatively 
 disciplined, were with my father at Beni Bou Ali on the 
 9th November, 1820, and although they did not run away 
 like the Sepoys, and the Imam displayed great gallantry 
 in endeavouring to save a European Artilleryman, in doing 
 which the Imam was shot through the hand (I can 
 remember him with his hand in a sling on board ship after- 
 wards) — yet his Maskat troops showed no anxiety to retrieve 
 the day, and many of the friendly sheikhs who had joined 
 
Thomas Perronet Thompson. 51 
 
 them on the marcli began to drop off in a manner that 
 enforced the retreat of the remainder, and the abandonment 
 of the Expedition." 
 
 In 1822, his regiment being ordered home, 
 Captain Thompson returned with his wife and 
 child by the Eed Sea, the Nile, Cairo and Alexan- 
 dria, Italy, and France. More than a year was 
 consumed in reaching England. In 1827 he was 
 promoted to a majority in the 65th Kegiment, 
 then in Ireland, and in 1829 to an unattached 
 lieutenant-colonelcy of Infantry. His subsequent 
 promotions bore date — colonel, 1846; major- 
 general, 1854 ; lieutenant-general, 1860 ; and 
 general, 1868. 
 
 When General Thompson returned to England, 
 
 he devoted his attention to Political Economy, and 
 
 in 1826 published a work under the title of " An 
 
 Exposition of Fallacies on Rent, Tithes," &c. 
 
 This work he republished in 1827 under the title 
 
 of " The True Theory of Rent," in opposition to 
 
 Mr. Ricardo and others. This work will be found 
 
 in the fourth volume (p. 399 et seq.) of General 
 
 Thompson's writings, published in 1843 in six 
 
 volumes, under the title of "Exercises, Political 
 
 and Others. By Lieut. -Colonel T. Perronet 
 
 Thompson." 
 
 4 * 
 
52 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 Jolm Stuart Mill who — though some have 
 thought him inferior in mental power to his 
 father, James Mill — certainly on some, indeed, on 
 many, subjects saw farther than his father, showed 
 his superiority in mental vision in this matter. 
 The pamphlet of Colonel Thompson, above-men- 
 tioned, in the first edition was described as " An 
 Exposition of Fallacies on Rent, Tithes, &c., in 
 the form of a Review of Mr. Mill's Elements of 
 Political Economy." Of course it will be under- 
 stood that this is James Mill's " Elements of 
 Political Economy," a very different book from 
 John Stuart Mill's " Principles of Political 
 Economy." I have seen James Mill come forward 
 and shake hands with Colonel Thompson very 
 heartily when they met in the house of a common 
 friend. But James Mill, though his mind was 
 both powerful and original, and conscientiously 
 sought after truth, was impatient of contradiction, 
 and might consider it a piece of presumption in 
 Colonel Thompson to put forth a " true theory" 
 in opposition to him and Ricardo, which title 
 implicitly calls their theories false, and he differed 
 from his son in some points very much. For James 
 Mill might see where Thompson was wrong, but 
 either did not see, or did not admit that he saw, 
 
Thomas Perronet Thompson. 53 
 
 when he was right, whereas John Stuart Mill, 
 while he shows wherein he considers the author 
 of the pamphlet wrong, does him ample justice in 
 the criticism of his " Catechism on the Corn Laws." 
 It is in this quality of trying to do justice to all 
 men, by patient investigation and incessant labour, 
 that John Stuart Mill stands alone among all the 
 men that have come under my observation in the 
 course of my life. 
 
 John Stuart Mill, in an article on the Corn 
 Laws, in the thirteenth number of The Westminster 
 Review., which came out in January, 1827 — the 
 book named at the head of the article being the 
 " Catechism on the Corn Laws," third edition, 
 London, 1827 — in the course of some remarks on 
 the new proposal for the amendment of the Corn 
 Laws, says : — 
 
 " Mr. Canning commenced his speech by declariag that 
 the conflicting opinions did not diifer so widely as was com- 
 monly supposed. He proceeded to explain himself by saying 
 that no person advocated a perfectly free trade in corn ; that 
 the necessity of some protection to agriculture was univer- 
 sally acknowledged, and that the only question was how 
 much. We respect Mr. Canning's honest intentions, and 
 admire his eloquence ; but really, when we find him uttering 
 with a grave face the above assertion, we can neither give 
 him credit for much knowledge of the subject, nor even for 
 
5i Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 much acquaintance with the commonest writings upon it. 
 We will take upon ourselves to affirm that not only some, 
 but almost all the writers against the Corn Laws, have 
 advocated, and do advocate, a perfectly free trade in corn. 
 ITrom Adam Smith to the author of the tract which we havfe 
 prefixed to this article, they have universally represented any 
 tax on the necessaries of life as among the most impolitic 
 and injurious of all modes of taxation," 
 
 J. S. Mill thus proceeds : — 
 
 " We have thus far omitted to notice the little tract at the 
 head of the present article, not because it was not highly 
 deserving of our attention, but because we were desirous, in 
 the first place, to express our sentiments on the subject of 
 immediate interest, the present state of the corn question. 
 The author (who signs himself T. Perronet Thompson*) has 
 
 * There is a long note to the article at this place from 
 which it appears that when he wrote this article J. S. Mill 
 knew nothing more of the author of the " Catechism on the 
 Com Laws " than was to be learnt from the signature at the 
 end of the Preface, " T. Perronet Thompson, Queens' College, 
 Cambridge." 
 
 The note is so important that I will quote here part of 
 it, which explains that if political economists generally have 
 possessed the qualities of vigour and lucidity of mind, it 
 could not be said of them, as has been said of J. S. Mill, that 
 " the vigour and lucidity of the understanding are mirrored 
 in the style." The note runs thus : — 
 
 " Mr. Thompson has published another pamphlet, entituled 
 ' An Exposition of Fallacies on Rent, Tithes,' &c., which has 
 
Thomas Perronet Thompson. 55 
 
 given, after some prefatory matter, of which we do not think 
 so highly as of the work itself, an enumeration of a hundred 
 and sixty fallacies on the Corn Laws : or, to speak more 
 accurately, ten or twelve fallacies exhibited in a hundred and 
 sixty different shapes. Mr. Thompson is master of his subject, 
 and has disposed of the fallacies with great philosophical 
 accuracy, and considerable clearness, conciseness, and felicity 
 of expression. As this mode of combating those Proteus- 
 
 recently been advertised under the title of ' The true Theory 
 of Rent, in opposition to Mr. Ricardo and others.' This 
 pamphlet appears to us a striking exemplification of the 
 mistakes of an ingenious mind, more accustomed to think 
 in solitude than to discuss, and compare its ideas with those 
 of other men. Mr. Thompson does not perceive that his 
 theory of rent differs from that of Mr. Ricardo only in the 
 expression. . . . Mr. Thompson's opinions on tithes and other 
 taxes on the land are indeed different from those of Mr. 
 Ricardo. But if he will read Mr. Ricardo's work again care- 
 fully, he will perceive that his opinions on those topics are 
 not corollaries from his doctrine of rent, but from a peculiar 
 and altogether erroneous opinion on profits, which he con- 
 ceives to be regulated, like wages, by the proportion between 
 numbers and demand. We have not space to be more explicit, 
 nor can we venture to refer any but the very laborious reader 
 to Mr. Thompson's work ; for, erroneous as we deem its 
 conclusions, it is to the full as difficult of comprehension as 
 it could be if it were the quintessence of pure reason. Nor 
 is this to be ascribed to any defect in the author's style. On 
 the contrary, our copious extracts from his ' Catechism on 
 the Corn Laws ' afford sufficient proof that he possesses 
 
56 Notes on the Anti- Corn Laio Strugrjle. 
 
 like fallacies, which are formidable less from their native 
 strength than from the multiplicity of shapes in which they 
 appear, seems to us to have peculiar advantages, we shall 
 make room for the exposure of some of the most potent 
 among these instruments of deception." 
 
 The reviewer then devotes more than half-a- 
 dozen pages to extracts from the " Catechism on 
 the Corn Laws." It will be unnecessary to repro 
 duce any of these extracts here, as they have been 
 now for many years before the public. The 
 reviewer concludes with observing that the " Cate- 
 chism" had attracted the attention of Lord King, 
 who had fought the battle of Free Trade in the 
 House of Lords, and recommends it as a specula- 
 tion worthy the attention of a bookseller to make 
 a collection of all that Lord King has said on this 
 subject in Parliament since it began to be dis- 
 
 an uncommon talent for explaining whatever he under- 
 stands." > 
 
 Colonel Thompson refers to this controversy in a letter 
 published in the sixth volume of his "Exercises," p. 368, 
 in which he mentions " the dispute whether rent jorms jpart 
 of the price of corn ;" and says : — 
 
 " The main point of dispute with Mr. Ricardo and his 
 followers is whether rent makes price, or price makes rent ; 
 and though attempts have been made to ridicule the distinc- 
 tion as one of words only, it diverges into marked hostility 
 on the subject of tithes." 
 
Thomas Perronet Thompson. 57 
 
 cussed in 1825, find print it in a pamphlet as a 
 companion to the " Catechism on the Corn Laws." 
 The writers adds : — 
 
 "The exertions of Mr. WLitmore and of Lord Milton 
 deserve no less praise ; and their merit is enhanced by the 
 disgraceful reception — disgraceful even in the eyes of indif- 
 ferent spectators — which they have experienced from the 
 House. But their country will weigh them and their 
 opponents by a different standard, and will esteem and 
 venerate them as deeply for having set at defiance the fury 
 of the band of enraged monopolists by whom they have been 
 insulted, as it would have despised them if they had stooped, 
 with the vulgar herd of public men, to court the applause of 
 those monopolists by the sacrifice of the best interests of their 
 country." 
 
 The opinion of General Thompson appears to 
 have been that the cause of rent was the limited 
 quantity of land, and that the difference in the 
 qualities of land was not the cause of rent, but 
 only the measure of the difference in its amount ; or, 
 in short, the measure of its amount. If Malthus 
 and Ricardo had been clear writers, a good deal 
 of controversy on the subject might have been 
 avoided. It is just that Colonel Thompson's own 
 words should be quoted on this point. Colonel 
 Thompson, in his paper on " Saint- Simonianism," 
 in The Wesfminsfer Ffv/'ew i'ov A])n\, 1832, says:— 
 
58 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 "Malthus and Ricardo are stated to have arrived at the 
 conclusion ' that the difference in the qualities of land permits 
 a part of the produce of some land to be applied to other 
 purposes than the maintenance of the cultivators.' Passing 
 over any error in this conclusion, whose ever it may he, which 
 consists in representing the difference of qualities of land as 
 the cause of the existence of rent, instead of being only the 
 cause of the differences in its amount — they are blamed for 
 coming hastily to the conclusion that rent should be at the 
 disposal of the owner of the land. And here the debate 
 must be cut short by coming at once to the question of utility, 
 and asking whether honest rent is to be left in the hands of 
 the owner of the land, or is to be given to a Saint- Simonian 
 committee that wants to have the disposal of it." 
 
 It is not altogethei" unimportant to bear in 
 mind that M. Augusts Comte commenced his career 
 in the manufacture of a new religion and pseudo- 
 philosophy as a disciple of this Saint- Simonian 
 scheme of government. Comte has been thought 
 by some to have been more indebted to Saint- 
 Simon for his speculations than he was disposed 
 to admit. It is curious to me to look back on 
 the impression made by Saint- Simon on General 
 Perronet Thompson and by Comte on J. S. Mill. 
 The latter modified very much his opinion of 
 Comte, as is shown by comparing the later editions 
 of his Logic with the first edition. Yet in his final 
 estimate of Comte, Mill says, " We think M. Comte 
 
Thomas Perronet Thompson. 59 
 
 as great as either of these philosophers (Descartes 
 and Leibnitz), and hardly more extravagant." 
 
 General Thompson's " Letters of a Representa- 
 tive to his Constituents," during the sessions of 
 1836 and 1837, are a most valuable and at the 
 same time picturesque record of the state of the 
 question of the Corn Laws during the two years 
 immediately preceding the year 1838, when Mr. 
 Villiers made his first motion and his first speech 
 on the Corn Laws. 
 
 In a letter dated 13, Hanover Terrace, Eegent's 
 Park, 1st August, 1835, to the Secretary of the 
 Hull Reform Association, General (then Colonel) 
 Thompson, who had been returned to Parliament 
 for Hull on the 20th of June, 1835, by 1428 
 votes against 1423, says : — 
 
 " SiE, — As tlie only communication I have received from 
 Hull since tlie abandonment of the petition against the elec- 
 tion has been through the newspapers, I feel apprehensive 
 that we may have been waiting for each other; and so 
 proceed to put an end to it. 
 
 " On the subject of that petition and its consequences, I 
 have no hesitation in stating my personal conviction that I 
 have been laid down and robbed at the door of the House of 
 Commons, with the single object of holding out an example 
 of the punishment to be inflicted on an individual who is 
 bold enough to allow himself to be returned to Parliament 
 
60 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 by a majority of his fellow-townsmen. The smallness of our 
 majority, in the first instance, was effected by subornation of 
 perjury on the part of our opponents ; for which I refer to 
 the' evidence before the Committee of the House. And they 
 afterwards rendered it impossible that I should avoid the 
 contest by advancing against me disreputable charges, of 
 no one of which did they attempt any proof before the 
 Committee. There are few terms of disgrace which public 
 opinion would not justify me in applying to such conduct ; 
 but I choose, for conciseness, to comprehend them all by 
 stamping each and every of the parties concerned with the 
 elaborate infamy of robbing by means of charging with 
 disreputable offences. 
 
 " As your representative, I take the opportunity to point 
 out to the Hull Reform Association, and through it to every 
 association of the same nature throughout the country, the 
 insulting falsehood contained in asserting that you, or any 
 other set of electors, have freedom of election. You are free 
 to elect whom you please, under the understanding that he 
 shall be mulcted in his personal property to any extent the 
 adversaries may choose to effect by the expenditure of perhaps 
 a much inferior sum of their own. To take the present case: 
 here am I, a man of comparatively small property, and no 
 means of increasing it, — one in fact who could just, consis- 
 tently with prudence, produce the moderate sum necessary 
 to defray the legitimate expenses of an election, — robbed of 
 the provision of my children to the amount of, I suppose, 
 several thousand pounds, by possibly a conspiracy of the 
 richest and most powerful individuals in the kingdom, — 
 men, for aught we know, not confined to the rank of members 
 of the Commons House of Parliament, but extending upwards 
 
Thomas Perronet Thompson. 61 
 
 to the yery steps of the throne. For that the ostensible 
 instruments are not the substantial ones is matter of public 
 evidence and notoriety. And this is your freedom of election. 
 
 " But the inference I "want to draw from the exposure of 
 this falsehood is the practical inutility, in the existing state 
 of the laws, of you or me or anybody attempting to arrive 
 at political amelioration through the instrumentality of the 
 House of Commons. Calculate, for example, how much the 
 money and trouble which has been extracted from you and 
 from me in the present attempt to obtain one vote in the 
 House of Commons would have effected if applied in the 
 way which was our natural channel, — the raising of that 
 ' pressure from without ' which is daily recommended to us 
 by the terrors of our opponents. I do not advise you hastily 
 to lay aside altogether the pursuit of improvement by the 
 first and feeble mode, but I do advise you to make it entirely 
 subordinate to that more politic and useful mode in which 
 your natural strength lies, and to give no effort to the one, 
 except what you have not the means or opportunity of applying 
 to the other. 
 
 "It is scarcely necessary for me to say that the power 
 lodged in a Committee of finding a petition ' frivolous and 
 vexatious,' is no security against the recurrence of a case like 
 ours. We had the option of expending perhaps ten thousand 
 pounds more, for the chance that the Committee would give 
 us a claim on, it may be, half that sum lodged as security. 
 
 " Trusting that we shall all learn from experience, 
 
 " I remain, Sir, your very obedient servant, 
 T. Peekonet Thompson. 
 
 " 13, Hanover Terrace, Begent's Parle. 
 " Augu.'^f 1, 1835." 
 
62 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 In the short biography of General Thomas 
 Perronet Thompson by his son General Charles 
 William Thompson, included among the Obituary 
 Notices of the Proceedings of the Eoyal Society, 
 No. 116, 1869, it is stated that Colonel Thompson 
 "was, as he expressed it, 'laid down and robbed 
 at the door of the House of Commons ' to the 
 amount of £4000 by a petition of which none of 
 the charges were proved before the Committee." 
 
 There are some touches in Colonel Thompson's 
 Letters to his Constituents that give a picture of 
 the interior of the House of Commons. In a letter 
 dated London, February 11, 1837, he says: — 
 
 " The debate on the Irish Municipal Corporations, which 
 had been adjourned at twelve on Tuesday night, was resumed 
 
 on Wednesday Sir Robert, in place of his usual 
 
 argumentative manner, was boisterous and loud, and he 
 indulged to excess in the not very agreeable habit of turning 
 his back to the Speaker and the House, and in that position 
 keeping the little boys on his own benches in a roar of 
 ' Counterfeited glee 
 At all his jokes, for many a joke had he.' 
 
 " On the present occasion he quoted Tom Thumb and 
 others of the classics with eminent success. The school-boys, 
 in the House and out of it, will be the death of us." 
 
 As already remarked, since the question of the 
 Corn Laws began to be discussed in Parliament in 
 
Thomas Perronet Thompson. 63 
 
 1825, those who ventured to speak against the 
 Corn Laws were assailed and insulted by the band 
 of enraged monopolists who had so long revelled 
 on the plunder of their country with all the fury 
 of a band of robbers who had carried on their trade 
 successfully and were threatened with resistance 
 by some of their victims. In a letter to his con- 
 stituents dated " London, March 18, 1837," General 
 Thompson gives a description of the reception a 
 motion for an alteration in the Corn Laws met 
 with in the House of Commons in 1837 in the 
 following words — and as Mr.Villiers made his first 
 motion in the following year he might have a fore- 
 taste of what he was to expect : — 
 
 " On Thursday Mr. Clay brought on his motion for an 
 alteration in the Corn Laws. As soon as Mr. Clay had 
 finished speaking, an agricultural member (Mr. Cayley) rose 
 with the seconder, and endeavoured to stop proceedings by 
 counting out the House. The number was found above forty, 
 and the seconder went on. Their first movement having 
 thus failed, the landowners mustered kin and clan, and finally 
 came down to the number of above two hundred. The 
 ordinary routine of a thousand-times-answered fallacies was 
 put forward, and received as might be expected in an assembly 
 where every man had made an oath that he had a pecuniary 
 interest in the question before him. At the instance of 
 friends about me, I made repeated attempts to offer reply, 
 as also to explain my reasons for not voting upon the actual 
 
64 Notes on the Atiti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 question, but was unable to obtain a hearing. Thank God ! 
 I have many better places. If I had been a jobber in a 
 railroad or a dabbler in some monopoly, wishing to make a 
 similar explanation, I should have been heard with reverential 
 sympathy, to the extent that human organs could supply. 
 Sir "William Molesworth entered upon a demonstration of 
 the mode of operation of the competition generated by the 
 limitation of food, which was perfect in its way, but confined 
 to a portion of the field. Mr. Hume was received with 
 groans and hideous laughs when he attempted to open the 
 case of that part of the comm.unity who have not three 
 hundred pounds a year in land ; and when he proceeded to 
 connect the question with the new Poor Law, the sounds 
 that issued from the landed benches had a touch of the New 
 Zealander. If there is a horrible sound on earth, it is the 
 laugh of two or three hundred aristocrats all sworn to a 
 contrary interest, when an honest m.an presents himself 
 before them to plead the cause of the industrious and the 
 poor. And now I turn to the people of England — to that 
 portion of them who do not believe that to swear to a 
 pecuniary interest is the way to constitute a judge — to the 
 portion who are born to work and to suffer, and not to 
 receive rents and to spend, — a portion with whom I believe 
 I possess some influence, from whom I enjoy some confidence, 
 whom I have at all events endeavoured faithfully to serve, 
 whose cause I have pleaded till the hair that was dark has 
 turned grey, whose cause I would and could plead now, if 
 we had a tribunal where physical force and sworn interest 
 were not opposed to our having a hearing. 
 
 ***** 
 " Mr. Hume's speech is of great importance, because it 
 
Thomas Peri'uuet Tlujinpson. 65 
 
 sliows that lie is come over to the people's side on the question 
 of the Poor Laws as connected with the Corn Laws. Through 
 living in the same part of the town, I have the 'privilege,' 
 as some of our Hull friends would say, of coming home with 
 him almost every night from the House of Commons, and it 
 is not long since he in some sort rated me for my Poor Law 
 heresies at Preston. The member for Middlesex is always 
 right in the end, but he is not hasty in his conclusions. 
 He is surrounded by numbers of doctrinaires, which only 
 makes his escape to the popular side of more importance. 
 
 " Another point on which I am glad to find the member 
 for Middlesex is confirming my preconceived opinions with 
 the weight of his authority, is in believing that the abolition 
 of the Corn Laws is the key to the whole of our enemies' 
 position. Our oppressors are strong, because they contrive 
 to live upon our resources ; because, through the Com Laws, 
 they draw our wealth into the shape of rents, and make us 
 pay for the hoof that tramples on us." 
 
 On April 22, 1837, he writes :— 
 
 " The House of Comm.ons, as it at present exists, is an 
 engine for securing the minimum of publicity and information 
 which is compatible with the actual state of popular power. 
 To give a single instance ; there is no liberty of speech, 
 except for a certain number of professional speech-makers. 
 Heaven knows I have troubled nobody at any great length, 
 but from the moment I entered the House of Commons I 
 have been trampled on because I belonged to no clique." 
 
 He then mentions two questions respecting which 
 he possessed special opportunities of knowledge, 
 
 5 
 
66 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 and on which he attempted to say a few words, 
 but his mouth was stopped, and he was not allowed 
 to say a word. He then proceeds thus : — 
 
 " Was it decent, again, according to tlie supposed rales of 
 popular assemblies, that on the question of the Corn Laws, 
 on which, if some do not know, others do, that I have 
 bestowed a greater quantity of continuous labour than any- 
 other man in the House can show, and have something not 
 unlike a tail in some parts of the country in consequence, I 
 should not be allowed to say one word ? " 
 
 I quote these passages as evidence of the state 
 of things just one year before Mr. Villiers first 
 brought forward the question of the Repeal of the 
 Corn Laws in the House of Commons. I have 
 said just one year, but I ought to have said about 
 a month less than one year, for Colonel Thompson 
 wrote what has been quoted on April 22, 1837, 
 and Mr. Villier's first Motion on the Corn Law 
 question was made March 15, 1838. 
 
 In reading General Thompson's Letters to his 
 Constituents it is evident that he had not, in 1836 
 and 1837, gained the ear of the House; and indeed 
 I doubt whether he ever gained the ear of the 
 House, which amounts to the same thing as what 
 he terms " liberty of speech, there being no liberty 
 of speech except for a certain number of professional 
 
Thomas Perronet Thompson. 67 
 
 speech-makers." If these speech-makers were 
 agreeable speakers the evil might be more endurable. 
 But are they agreeable speakers ? What he did for 
 the Repeal of the Corn Laws was done by his 
 "Catechism on the Corn Laws" and other writings, 
 and by his speaking at public meetings in various 
 parts of England, Scotland, and Wales, particularly 
 in that journey with Mr. Cobden to the principal 
 towns of Scotland, in reference to which the Earl 
 of Dalhousie, who had known Colonel Thompson 
 when he was in the House of Commons as Mr. 
 Fox Maule, afterwards mentioned at a public 
 meeting as a proof of his Liberal principles that 
 he had gone to Glasgow to meet the apostles of 
 Free Trade, Mr. Cobden and Colonel Thompson. 
 Lideed many members of Parliament have obtained 
 a hearing from their first speech to their last without 
 possessing the knowledge or eloquence of some 
 Avho have been refused a hearing, but who in time 
 overcame the obstacles opposed to them and became 
 leaders of parties whose words commanded atten- 
 tion. For some time after Mr. O'Connell entered 
 the House of Commons he was received in such a 
 manner that he said to a member from whom I 
 heard it that he thought of giving up the attempt 
 to obtain a hearinof. I have also heard that the 
 
68 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 hooting and roars of laughter with which Mr. 
 Disraeli's first attempts at parliamentary oratory 
 were received disheartened him to such a degree 
 that he would have abandoned the attempt to 
 speak in the House, had he not been dissuaded 
 from such a course by a member of the House of 
 some parliamentary experience. The individual 
 alluded to, who related the circumstance to a friend 
 of mine, said that one day he met Mr. Disraeli in 
 the city accompanied by a lady, his wife, to whom 
 he said : " Allow me to introduce you to this 
 gentleman to whose advice I am indebted for my 
 parliamentary career, since, but for his advice 
 that I should not be disheartened, I should have 
 abandoned the attempt of being a speaker in 
 Parliament." 
 
 General Thompson seemed to have been much 
 interested by his journey to Scotland as one of the 
 Free Trade delegates. He often referred to it, and 
 was fond of relating little anecdotes connected with 
 it; or I should rather say relating some of the 
 observations he had made in the course of his 
 journey. It might be inferred too from some of 
 the slight incidents he mentioned that in his 
 addresses to the citizens of the Scotch towns with 
 their Provosts and Bailies, he evinced a degree of 
 
Thomas Perronet T}io7n.pson. 69 
 
 tact that was well calculated to leave a favourable 
 and friendly feeling in the audience towards those 
 delegates of the Anti-Corn Law League, whom 
 Lord Dalhousie went to Glasgow to meet, and 
 designated the apostles of Free Trade. 
 
 One remark of General Thompson's I remember 
 was the impression made on him as an old soldier 
 by the appearance of the men he saw working on 
 the roads. They looked, he said, like veteran 
 soldiers — old Grenadiers — for they were, he said, 
 tall, tough, wiry, weather-beaten men — -just the 
 sort of men to stand the wear and tear of a 
 soldier's life. He added : " To judge from the 
 appearance of those labourers working on the 
 roads, I am inclined to think that the English must 
 in the old time have had rather tough work in 
 their jfights with them, notwithstanding the general 
 superiority of the English armour and horses." 
 
 General Thompson used to mention an expression 
 made use of by a minister in a sermon he heard 
 when on his Free Trade expedition in Scotland. 
 The preacher used the words " a fund of righteous- 
 ness," which furnished food or materials for 
 thinking to General Thompson's acute and inquiring 
 mind. Did the word " fund" mean a capital stock 
 of " righteousness " on which the owner might 
 draw as occasion might require? Had it some- 
 
70 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 thing of the signification that might be attached to 
 the word "grace" in the story ^whether the story 
 be truth or fiction — that has been told of Cromwell 
 on his death-bed, that Cromwell asked one of his 
 chaplains whether " it was possible to fall from 
 grace?" The chaplain replied, " It is not possible." 
 " Then," said the dying man, " I am safe, for I 
 know I was in grace once." This, if accurately 
 reported, seems to indicate that Cromwell was 
 himself conscious that he had deviated from the 
 path of honesty. 
 
 Neither General Thompson nor, as far as 1 
 know, any other member of that small party of 
 politicians to which he belonged, would ever pay 
 money for the votes of electors. General Thompson, 
 after having declined to purchase one hundred votes 
 at five pounds a vote, was defeated at Maidstone in 
 1837 by Mr. Disraeli. Mr. John Stuart Mill was 
 defeated at Westminster in 1868 by Mr. "W. H. 
 Smith. In 1869 the Committee of the House of 
 Commons which was sitting on Parliamentary 
 and Municipal Elections, recommended a provision 
 prohibiting the use of rooms in public-houses ; and 
 Baron Martin, when his advice was asked by the 
 Parliamentary Committee, said, "I have a very 
 strong opinion indeed that the public-houses ought 
 to be closed on the day of polling. I think the 
 
Thomas Ferronet Thompson. 71 
 
 quantity of drink on the day of polling, and the 
 state in which many voters were alleged to have 
 come up to vote, were perfectly scandalous ; they 
 were so drunk in two or three cases that they did 
 not know who they came to vote for." The three 
 Judges appointed for the trial of election petitions 
 all recommended an enactment that extravagant 
 or unreasonable expenditure should vacate a seat. 
 Mr. Justice Blackburn suggested that any expen- 
 diture exceeding five shillings a-head should for 
 this purpose be declared unreasonable. 
 
 I have stated that Mr. John Stuart Mill, who 
 like Colonel Thompson would not expend a farthing 
 in bribery, was defeated in 1868 at Westminster, 
 for which he had sat since 1865, by Mr. W. H. 
 Smith. Baron Martin, one of the three Judges 
 appointed for the trial of election petitions, when 
 his advice was asked by the Parliamentary Com- 
 mittee on this point of expenditure at elections, 
 said : " I think it well worthy of consideration 
 whether there should not be an enactment that 
 extravagant general expenditure, and I wiU limit 
 it to that, should void the seat ; whether £7000 
 at Bradford,* or £9000 at Westminster, should not 
 
 * Baron Martin probably alludes to the election at Brad- 
 ford ; at which election 168 rooms in public-houses were 
 
72 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 of itself void the seat." This remark is the more 
 important that Baron Martin was the Judge who 
 tried the petition against the return of Mr. W. H. 
 Smith for Westminster in 1868. But the Judges 
 experienced great difficulty in cases of exceptionally- 
 large expenditure in obtaining proof of such infrac- 
 tion of law as would void a seat under the statute. 
 There was much evidence brought before the 
 Committee of 1869 on the subject of drunkenness 
 at elections. But the Committee, while declaring 
 their opinion that the closing of public-houses at 
 elections would tend to the tranquillity and purity 
 of elections, expressed a fear that the public incon- 
 venience arising from such a measure would be so 
 great as to outweigh its advantages. But three 
 
 hired by one of the candidates. In such a proceeding there 
 seems to be a cynical demonstration of contempt for all 
 professions of political morality ; ■which reminds me of a 
 case (before 1832) of a man who purchased a borough from 
 
 Lord . The man went down to his lordship's agent who 
 
 said, "I have got all the electors at my house." The purchaser 
 of the borough accompanied the agent to his house, in the 
 yard of which a portion of the electors were lying about 
 drunk. " These," said the agent, " are the men I can depend 
 upon. The rest are locked up in the garden, enclosed by a 
 
 wall sixteen feet high — all except three, whom Lord has 
 
 got hold of and shut np in prison." 
 
Thomas Perronet Thompson. 73 
 
 members of the Committee, Mr. C. Villiers, Mr. 
 Leatham, and Mr. Fawcett, opposed the passage in 
 the Eeport of the Committee, which expressed a 
 fear of public inconvenience. When the Committee 
 made their report there were two days — the 
 nomination day and the day of poUing. The 
 ballot has got rid of the nomination day, and the 
 inconvenience from the closing of pubHc-houses, if 
 encountered, would now be reduced from two days 
 to one day. 
 
 The Committee of the House of Commons, sitting 
 in 1869, naturally sought to avail themselves of 
 the knowledge and experience which the Judges 
 had acquired in their election trial circuits. On 
 the point of reduction of expenditure, Mr. C. 
 Villiers asked the following question of Mr. Justice 
 Willes : — " Ought you not to discourage as much 
 as possible anything that is unnecessary in the way 
 of expenditure?" "Undoubtedly," replied the 
 Judge, "otherwise you give a rich dullard the 
 advantage over a poor man of intellect." 
 
 This raises a nice question. I will quote in the 
 next chapter some words of General Thompson, 
 that " the world wants honest law -givers not pious 
 ones;" and it may be added that an honest law- 
 giver, though he may not be a brilliant genius. 
 
74 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 is more desirable than a dishonest law-giver of 
 great genius. Julius Caesar was a poor man 
 of intellect ; and what did he, with all his 
 genius and valour, do for the world ? George 
 Washington, having a competent estate, and if not 
 a brilliant genius, a competent understanding, 
 might be, as compared with Julius Caesar, desig- 
 nated a " rich dullard." I should very much 
 prefer a rich dullard of such kind to a poor man 
 of intellect of the other kind. 
 
 There is a good deal of misconception on the 
 subject of parliamentary seats. The importance 
 formerly attached to a seat in Parliament, when a 
 man's name at the corner of a letter gave the letter 
 a sort of mysterious and sacred character over the 
 United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, 
 made many persons incur expense and inconvenience 
 to have the privilege of sitting with their hats on 
 upon the green leather benches, and having the 
 talismanic letters M.P. placed after their names on 
 the covers of all letters addressed to them. There 
 were also ambitious young men who might have 
 discovered at school and college that they possessed 
 that sort of ability which has received the name 
 of parliamentary ability. Lord Macaulay says of 
 Charles Montague : — ■ 
 
Thomas Perronet Thompson. 75 
 
 " It soon became clear that in the new order of things 
 parliamentary ability must fetch a higher price than any 
 other kind of ability ; and he felt that in parliamentary 
 ability he had no superior." 
 
 " Parliamentary ability " does not here, J think, 
 include the ability of a counsel in conducting a 
 case before a Parliamentary Committee ; and I 
 think it might be shown that ability of a superior 
 order in conducting a case before a Parliamentary 
 Committee fetches at the present time, or at least 
 it fetched a quarter of a century ago, a higher 
 price than what is called parliamentary ability. 
 
 I had the honour, at the time of the Eeform 
 Bill of 1832, to be consulted by a Member of 
 Parliament, who said he had been asked to 
 recommend a candidate to a certain constituency, 
 and he asked me if there was any of the men whom 
 I knew as likely to meet the exigencies of the 
 case. I was at that time a member of a debating 
 society, where a short time before I had heard a man 
 make what then appeared to me to be a very good 
 speech. I recommended this man. The Member 
 of Parliament did not seem to think he could 
 recommend this man, seeing he had had a quarrel 
 with him. With some trouble I overcame this 
 difficulty, and the Member of Parliament went 
 
76 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 down with the candidate and secured his election. 
 Shortly after the same Member of Parliament 
 applied to me again. I now applied to a friend of 
 greater age and experience than myself, and he 
 named a man as the " best parliamentary man " he 
 knew. The Member of Parliament opened a 
 correspondence with him. In the negotiation some 
 hitch occurred which put a stop to it. It is 
 instructive to note the result. 
 
 The man first referred to became an eminent 
 and formidable parliamentary speaker and debater ; 
 but he entered Parliament a poor man, and he died 
 a poor man, after a long parliamentary life. The 
 second man referred to became the most eminent 
 parliamentary counsel ever known and made a large 
 fortune by the exercise of his profession. The 
 extent of his fortune may be partly indicated by 
 the fact that during the last year he practised at 
 the (parliamentary) bar he made £37,000 — thirty- 
 seven thousand pounds. 
 
 It would appear from this that the ability exer- 
 cised by this parliamentary counsel fetched a higher 
 price than the ability strictly called parliamentary 
 ability. At the same time in justice to many men 
 who seek a seat in Parliament, it may be said that 
 the money price of parliamentary ability is not 
 
Thomas Perrutiet TJmnpson. 77 
 
 their only consideration. Of some men the money 
 appetite may be as great as that of Charles 
 Montague; of others it may be as small as that 
 of the younger William Pitt. Charles Montague 
 secured for himself as a place of refuge the 
 Auditorship of the Exchequer. The younger 
 William Pitt held in 1784 the same offices which 
 Montague had held in 1698. Pitt was a much 
 poorer man than Montague, and had at his own 
 disposal a lucrative sinecure place. But Pitt gave 
 away this place in such a way as to reward merit 
 and relieve the country from a burden. 
 
 If the " rich dullard " should chance to be a 
 man like the younger William Pitt, and the " poor 
 man of intellect" a man like Charles Montague, 
 the rich dullard is very much preferable as a 
 member of Parliament to the poor man of intellect. 
 
 " In the intellectual qualities of a statesman, Montague was 
 probably not inferior to Pitt. But the magnanimity, the 
 dauntless courage, the contempt for riches and for baubles, 
 to which, more than to any intellectual quality, Pitt owed his 
 long ascendency, were wanting to Montague."* 
 
 No professions of regard for the welfare of the 
 people can be considered as of any value as long 
 as those making such professions pay money for 
 
 * Macaulay's History of England, vol. iv., p. 279. 
 
78 Notefi on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 election purposes. And the same principle which 
 forbids any payment of money for election purposes 
 forbids also that the occupation of a member of 
 Parliament should be taken up, like other profes- 
 sions, with a view chiefly to its pecuniary returns. 
 J. S. Mill objects to the payment of members of 
 Parliament on the ground that such payment — 
 
 " Would become an object of desire to adventurers of a low 
 class ; and six hundred and fifty-eight persons in possession, 
 with ten or twenty times as many in expectancy, wonld be 
 incessantly bidding to attract or retain the suffrages of the 
 electors, by promising all things, honest or dishonest, possible 
 or impossible, and rivalling each other in pandering to the 
 meanest feelings and most ignorant prejudices of the vulgarest 
 part of the crowd. . . . Such an institution would amount 
 to offering six hundred and fifty-eight prizes for the most 
 successful flatterer, the most adroit misleader of a body of 
 his fellow-countrymen."* 
 
 Among the letters published by General Thomp- 
 son, in the sixth volume of his writings, will be 
 found at page 389 a letter dated Blackheath, 2nd 
 September, 1841, and addressed to Mr. James 
 Sinclair, Secretary of the Charter Association, 
 Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in reply to General Thomp- 
 son, to be one of the securities required for the 
 
 * J. S. Mill's Considerations on Representative Govern- 
 ment, p. 210. London, 1861. 
 
Thomas Perronet Thompson. 79 
 
 prosecution of the petition from Newcastle. 
 General Thompson says : — 
 
 " The effect of the law of elections is in the first place to 
 make the election dependent on the exercise of bribery and 
 intimidation, and in the next, to provide a vindictive power 
 capable of being used against those who shall appeal to the 
 professed remedy. 
 
 " I do not speak on either of these points without some 
 personal experience. In July, 1837, I stood for Maidstone. 
 The night before the election, a hundred voters sent to my 
 friends, and stated that they would vote for me for five pounds 
 a-piece, and they should ask a Tory eight. I declined ; and 
 the consequence was, that on the poll I was one hundred and 
 forty behind instead of sixty a-head, as would have been the 
 case if I had accepted the offer. Not very long afterwards 
 another election took place ; and though the state of the 
 borough was notoriously as has been described, yet when the 
 Liberal party were unwise enough to make an appeal to the 
 existing law, their appeal was declared by a hostile majority 
 to be frivolous and vexatious, and the individuals who were 
 the securities were subjected to loss, in the same manner that 
 I feel assured would be applied to myself, if I was found in 
 the same position. 
 
 " On the other point I have more recent experience still. 
 It is within your knowledge that I stood at the election of 
 1841 for Hull. I suppose nobody will dream of denying that 
 bribery, the most extensive and orderly, was practised on 
 every side but ours.* The Whigs in fact began it as early as 
 
 * That is on every side but the Radical. The Radical 
 
80 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 July, 1839 ; when they set on foot the plan of purchasing 
 men their freedoms, on their written promise to vote as a 
 named individual should direct ; and the channels, the sums 
 disbursed (three hundred sovereigns at the first swoop), were 
 all matters of notoriety, and brought before the cognizance of 
 a public meeting at the time. Of course it is not an occasion 
 to be hard upon the Tories for following the example. 
 Rightly does Sir Robert Peel say, ' There was something 
 besides the Chandos clause that carried the election at Hull.' 
 If he will come to Hull, we will show him to his heart's con- 
 tent. . . . And when we ask to have the strength of bribery 
 and intimidation weakened by the Ballot, the Whigs tell us 
 they will make it an open question, as the best means of 
 putting it down ; and the Tories call it our ' cowardly, mean, 
 lying, hypocritical, sneaking, un-English, unmanly invention,' 
 though' all the time, the lords and honourable gentlemen who 
 call the Ballot a ' cowardly, mean, lying, hypocritical, sneak- 
 ing, un-English, unmanly invention,' are using it in their own 
 
 being the only party that does not practice bribery, some 
 remarks of a Tory leader in Mid- Lothian, on September 16, 
 1884, are extraordinary. This Tory leader who, after a 
 panegyric on fox-hunting, said that " what was true of the 
 chase of the fox was also true of the chase of the Radical," 
 may be reminded of the answer of John, Duke of Argyle, 
 to Queen Caroline. Her Majesty in her displeasure at the 
 execution of Porteous, said she would make Scotland a 
 hunting-field. " In that case, Madam," answered the Duke, 
 with a profound bow, " I will take leave of your Majesty, 
 and go down to my own country to get my hounds ready." 
 
Thomas Perronet Thompson. 81 
 
 associations, wherever they find it to be for their conveni- 
 
 ence. 
 
 General Thompson's Political Letters — par- 
 ticularly those addressed to the Secretary of the 
 Hull Eeform Association, and one addressed to the 
 Secretary of the Hull Working Men's Association! 
 remindmemore of Swift's "Drapier's Letters " than 
 any letters that I am acquainted with. Whether 
 or not can be said of General Thompson what has 
 recently been said of Swift ^ ith reference to the 
 Drapers', or as Swift chose to spell it Drapier's, 
 letters that they demonstrate his tact and sagacity 
 as a political leader ; they are free from the 
 monstrous exaggeration and sophistry of Swift. 
 They are also specunens of pure and idiomatic 
 English, and of eloquence perfectly natural and 
 unadorned — as natural as that of Mr. O'Connel, 
 which I once heard an eminent member of Parlia- 
 ment describe as the sort of speaking which a man 
 might address to his soldiers on the best practicable 
 
 * " Exercises, Political, and others." By Lient.-Colonel 
 T. Perronet Thompson, vol. vi., pp. 389, 390. 
 
 t This letter will be found at p. 312 of the fourth volume 
 of General Thompson's "Exercises, Political and others," in 
 which volume will be found also his " Letters of a Represen- 
 tative," and his " Catechism on the Corn Laws." 
 
 6 
 
82 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 means of passing an unfordable river. There is one 
 sentence which I will venture to transcribe from 
 General Thompson's letter, dated London, 3rd 
 February, 1838, to the Secretary of the Hull 
 Working Men's Association : — 
 
 " I assume nothing but the same faculty of judging of con- 
 sequences from appearances, that makes one of your sailors 
 take in a top-gallant sail, when he sees the squall chasing him 
 astern."* 
 
 This sentence could not have been written, but 
 by a man who had been a sailor as well as a soldier ; 
 as some of Erskine's best speeches could only have 
 been spoken by a man who had been a sailor as well 
 as a soldier. 
 
 In answer to the plea that the farmers were 
 entitled to compensation for wet harvests, Colonel 
 Thompson said that the farmers and owners of land 
 are bound to make their reckonings on an average 
 of seasons, and carry their cultivation of land just 
 so far and no farther. " If they do not know how 
 to do it," he continued, " that is their business and 
 not other people's. Suppose an underwriter was 
 to make his calculations on all his ships coming 
 home safe, and then was to run to the landed 
 
 * " Exercises, Political, and others." By Lieut.-Colonel 
 T. Perronet Thompson, in 6 vols., vol. iv., p. 315. 
 
Thomas Perronet Thompson. 83 
 
 interest and say, ' By the act of Providence and a 
 windy season, two out of ten of my ships have 
 foundered at sea. Remunerate me out of your 
 rents.' Just as good a joke is the claim of the 
 agriculturalists to consideration for wet harvests." 
 
 In a subsequent chapter I shall have to touch on 
 the question of the influence of Free Trade on 
 foreign policy. Those who look only to a larger 
 market for their manufactures ^re very apt to fall 
 into traps, such as that of the Channel Tunnel — 
 the trap of drawing a nation which nature has 
 placed in an insular situation out of that advan- 
 tageous position, and placing that nation on a level 
 with the nations which had not that advantage, 
 only to put money into the pockets of certain 
 speculators who use the words "free trade" to 
 serve their passion for speculation. 
 
 There is a passage in one of General Thompson's 
 letters to his Constituents, dated London, 20th 
 February, 1836, which bears on this question in 
 some degree, and which I will quote as showing, 
 or at least giving some indication that General 
 Thompson would not have voted for a Channel 
 Tunnel. 
 
 " Lastnight," he says— that is, 19th February, 1836— " there 
 was a long debate on Russia, Poland, and Turkey, arising 
 
 6 * 
 
84 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 out of a motion for papers by Lord Dudley Stuart. The 
 House was very thin, and the proceedings languid on the 
 whole. Tte Member for Birmingham (Mr. T. Attwood) was 
 all for active measures ; and his speech would have been 
 received thirty years ago with immense applause as a speci- 
 men of the ' truly British spirit.' The ablest speech of the 
 night was that of the Member for Bath (Mr. Eoebnck), who 
 was all for peace ; but went, in my estimation, as much too 
 far in one direction as the Member for Birmingham in the 
 other. It really does not seem difficult to trace the proper 
 line between the two, by a simple reference to the duties of 
 private life, A man is not to go out ' colonelling ' and run 
 his head into scraps in search of remote wrongs and dubious 
 grievances. But neither is he to sit at home in his veranda, 
 with his hookah luxuriously before him, and hear the cries of 
 ' murder ' and the rest of the four* pleas of the Crown — con- 
 tenting himself with what he calls his ' moral influence ' — 
 and trusting to the height of his garden wall. Nations, like 
 individuals, are, within certain limits, bound by a common 
 interest on this point of repressing injustice. If England 
 luckily has a high garden wall, or what is better, a deep fish- 
 pond all around, the inference is that England is bound to 
 apply these advantages to the general good." 
 
 The words in italics show that General Perronet 
 
 * I have here substituted "four" for "five." General 
 Thompson writes, " the 'rest of the five pleas of the Crown." 
 I assume that he was thinking of Scott's " Old Mortality," 
 chapter 25 — where Scott's words are "running or screaming, 
 division upon all those crimes which the lawyers call the four 
 pleas of the Crown, namely, murder, fire, rape, and robbery.'' 
 
Charles PelJiam Villiers. 85 
 
 Thompson, though a strenuous advocate of Free 
 Trade, was not an advocate for destroying the 
 advantages afforded to England by her being 
 an island, and for promoting the rise of the 
 dividends of a certain railway company by the 
 sacrifice of all the advantages of England's insular 
 situation. It is a hard fight against the rage for 
 wealth which shuts out of view aU other considera- 
 tions but the gratification of its own auri sacra 
 fames^ which words may be translated accursed 
 hunger for gold. 
 
 The reference to the duties of private life in the 
 above quotation from General Thompson, reminds 
 one of a reference by a celebrated writer to the 
 conditions of private property in illustration of the 
 English Constitution. That writer says : — 
 
 "The power of King, Lords, and Commons, is not an 
 arbitrary power. They are the trustees, not the owners of 
 the estate. The fee simple is in us. They cannot alienate. 
 They cannot waste." 
 
86 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CHARLES PELHAM VILLIERS. 
 
 The Right Hon. Charles Pelham Villiers was 
 born in London in 1802 ; the third son of the Hon. 
 George Villiers, and Theresa, the only daughter 
 of the first Lord Boringdon. His eldest brother, 
 George Villiers, succeeded to the title of Earl of 
 Clarendon, a title which passed out of the family 
 of Hyde into that of Villiers in this way. Thomas 
 Villiers, second son of the second Earl of Jersey, 
 having married the eldest daughter of the third Earl 
 of Essex of the family of Capel, by Jane Hyde, 
 daughter and co-heir of the last Earl of Clarendon, 
 of the family of Hyde, was created Baron Hyde of 
 Hindon in 1756, and Earl of Clarendon in 1776. 
 
 There are reasons for saying a word or two 
 about Mr. Villiers's family. In his speech at 
 Colchester, July 8, 1843, Mr. Villiers stated that 
 he bore no iU-will to the landed interest; that by 
 
Charles Pelham Villiers. 87 
 
 birth lie was connected with the landed interest, 
 and had no kind of connection whatever with 
 manufactures. 
 
 There was in the beginning of the seventeenth 
 century a family of the name of Villiers seated at 
 Brookesley Hall, in Leicestershire, on an estate 
 which had been in that family for four hundred 
 years. Sir George ViUiers, of Brookesley, was 
 twice married. From his first marriage descended 
 Edward ViUiers, created Baron Villiers of Hoo, 
 and Viscount Villiers of Dartford, both in the 
 county of Kent, 20th March, 1691; and created 
 Earl of the Island of Jersey, 13th October, 1697. 
 From his second marriage descended George 
 Villiers, created Viscount ViUiers in 1616 ; Earl 
 of Buckingham, 5th January, 1617; Marquis of 
 Buckingham, 1st January, 1618; and Duke of 
 Buckingham, 18th May, 1623. 
 
 The dates of the peerages of Edward Villiers, 
 Earl of Jersey, compared with the dates of the 
 peerages of the descendants of the second marriage 
 of Sir George Villiers of Brookesley — namely, 
 George Villiers, created Viscount Villiers, 1616, 
 and Duke of Buckingham, 1623 ; John Villiers, 
 created Viscount Purbeck, 1619 ; and Christopher 
 ViUiers, created Earl of Anglesey, 1623 — show 
 
88 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 that the peerages of the descendants of the second 
 marriage, were all creations of James the First, 
 whereas the peerages of Edward ViUiers, Viscount 
 Villiers, and Earl of Jersey, were creations of 
 William the Third. The connection, indeed, of 
 Charles Pelham Villiers with the English peerage 
 is quite independent of the Duke of Buckingham 
 branch of the ViUiers family. I cannot say that 
 there is no connection with any Stuart peerage since 
 the peerages of Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, and the 
 peerage of Capel, Earl of Essex, were Stuart 
 peerages. 
 
 It appears then that Charles Villiers, the advocate 
 of the abolition of the bread-tax, was descended 
 from an ancient and honourable English or Anglo- 
 Norman family, and not from an upstart Court 
 favourite of the times of the Stuarts. It is 
 true that when the Government is monarchical, a 
 Jack Ape can make any man a duke, and George 
 Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, possessed the power 
 of governing James I., as much as the Duchess of 
 Marlborough possessed the power of governing 
 Queen Anne. But even when the Government is 
 what it was under James I. and Queen Anne, it is 
 possible thatthe diflference may be very great between 
 the Court favourite of one reign and that of another. 
 
Charles Pelham Villiers. 89 
 
 The husband of the Duchess of Marlborough, who 
 governed Queen Anne, possessed mental quahties 
 of a very different order from those which 
 Buckingham had possessed, a genius for politics 
 not inferior to the genius of Richelieu, a genius for 
 war not inferior to the genius of Turenne. 
 
 With the Princess Anne on the throne of England, 
 Marlborough might look forward to a time when 
 the armies of England would be commanded by a 
 man with a genius for war very different from that 
 of the Dutchman, — in whose case even the genius 
 of Macaulay has been unable to disprove the 
 maxim that without originality there is no great- 
 ness, — by a man whose memorable march into 
 Germany, won the admiration of Napoleon Bona- 
 parte, by whose order a " Histoire de Jean 
 Churchill, Due de Marlborough " (three volumes, 
 octavo, Paris, 1808), was written in a fair spirit. 
 The consummate skiU with which the objects of the 
 march into Germany, in 1704, were concealed from 
 the enemy, until it was too late to prevent his real 
 design on the Danube, has been reckoned by 
 competent judges among the greatest achievements 
 of military genius. The successes of Marlborough, 
 too, were gained with an army in which the native 
 British contingent did not exceed 20,000 men, and 
 
90 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 three-fourths of which army were composed of 
 Dutchmen, Hanoverians, Hessians, Danes, and 
 Prussians ; and his plans were in almost every 
 enterprise thwarted and marred by the timidity or 
 obstinacy of the Dutch deputies. 
 
 The descendants of Sir George VHliers, of 
 Brookesley, by his first wife, and the descendants 
 of the same Sir George Villiers by his second wife, 
 were kinsmen only of the half-blood. And by the 
 old law of England, " the heir need not be the 
 nearest kinsman absolutely, but only suh modo ; 
 that is, he must be the nearest kinsman of the wTiole- 
 blood ; for if there be a much nearer kinsman of 
 the half-hloodi^ a distant kinsman of the whole- 
 blood shall be admitted, and the other entirely 
 excluded ; nay, the estate shall escheat to the 
 lord, sooner than the half-blood shall inherit.* 
 
 So that by the old law of England, the Duke of 
 Buckingham, and the other children of Sir George 
 Villiers of Brookesley by his second wife, could not 
 have succeeded their half-brothers in the estate of 
 Brookesley which remained in the line of the 
 family of Villiers represented by Edward Vilhers, 
 created Earl of Jersey in 1697. The law of descent 
 
 * 2 Bl. Comm., 227. 
 
Charles Pelham VilUers. 91 
 
 has indeed been materially altered by tbe Stat. 
 3 and 4 Will. 4, c. 106 ; but though the half-blood 
 is not excluded, it is enacted that a relation of the 
 whole-blood, and his or her issue, shall be preferred 
 to a relation of the same degree of the half-blood, 
 and his or her issue. 
 
 The term half-blood appears from a passage in 
 Shakspeare's King Lear, Act V., Scene 3, to have 
 been used in a depreciatory sense. The term 
 half-blooded is applied by the Duke of Albany 
 to Edmund, the bastard son of the Earl of 
 Gloucester. 
 
 " ^ZS.^The let-alone lies not in your goodwill. 
 
 " Edm. — Nor in thine, lord. 
 
 " ^Z6.— Half-blooded fellow, yes." 
 
 The descendants of the first marriage of the 
 Leicestershire knight and the inheritor of the 
 estate of Brookesley, might look upon their half- 
 blood relations of the second marriage with a 
 feeling the reverse of pride, notwithstanding the 
 wealth and titles of honour they had received from 
 a court of which it might be said, as has been 
 said of the Eoman Republic, its enmity might be 
 dangerous, but its friendship was fatal — none ever 
 escaped with life and honour from that deadly 
 embrace. 
 
92 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 The ancestor of Charles Pelham Villiers was 
 
 raised to the peerage neither by the first, nor the 
 
 second, nor the third, nor the fourth of those four 
 
 persons bearing the name of Stewart or Stuart, 
 
 whatever was their lineage^whether fiddler, lackey, 
 
 king or nobleman, — who had borne the title of 
 
 King of England for some fourscore years, and 
 
 were of those of whom it has been said — 
 
 " Many a despot men miscall 
 
 " Crown'd and anointed from on high." 
 
 Edward Villiers was created Viscount Villiers and 
 Earl of Jersey by a King, under whom England 
 resumed her old rank in Europe of a first-rate 
 power, from which the Stuart dynasty had degraded 
 her, to a second or a third-rate power. In the file of 
 the Doges of Venice a black veil is painted over 
 the place of Marino Faliero. The history of the 
 Stuarts in England might be told by a black veil 
 painted over their place in the file of the Kings of 
 England. 
 
 The honour conferred on royalty by Robert 
 Bruce, has been counter-balanced by the dishonour 
 brought on it by those who called themselves 
 Robert Bruce's heirs — dishonour so great that a 
 descendant of Robert Bruce might forego the great 
 honour of such a descent to escape the ignominy 
 
Charles Pelham Villiers. 93 
 
 of any possible imputation of blood relationship to 
 the son of Mary Stuart, who succeeded Elizabeth 
 on the throne of England. 
 
 Hume tells us in his life that he devoted two 
 years to his History of the Eeigns of James I. and 
 Charles I. He probably devoted more time to his 
 Inquiry concerning the Human Understanding which 
 contains the Section on Miracles. I am inclined to 
 think that Hume might have found in James I. 
 a subject for intellectual anatomy of a more 
 interesting kind, than that James was only a 
 jolly fellow, like James Boswell, who promoted 
 a cheerful glass, " strongly inclined," says Hume, 
 " to mirth and wine and sports of all kinds — he 
 apprehended the Puritans' censure for his manner of 
 life, free and disengaged. ... In all history, it 
 would be difficult to find a reign less illustrious, 
 yet more unspotted and unblemished, than that of 
 James in both kingdoms."* 
 
 * Hume's devotion to philosophical truth forms a curious 
 contrast to his occasional deviation from historical truth. In 
 the first section of his " Inquiry concerning the Human 
 Understanding," Hume, after referring to the labour of the 
 investigation, says, " we must submit to this fatigue, in order 
 to live at ease ever after ; and must cultivate true metaphysics 
 with some care, in order to destroy the false and adulterated." 
 Inthesecond page of the first chapterof his " Examination of Sir 
 
94 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 And this is said of a man who truly or falsely 
 has been accused of some of the most frightful 
 crimes in all history. Besides the grossness of 
 manners, amounting to filthiness, that lies on the 
 surface, there is an ominous cloud made up in part 
 of frightful crimes distinctly traced out, and in part 
 of crimes still more frightful, remaining in shadow, 
 which imparts to that court, and in some degree 
 to that time, a strange, repulsive, pestilential air 
 and aspect, hardly belonging in an equal degree to 
 any other period of modern history. The wars of 
 the Roses and the Tudor tyranny that followed and 
 completely destroyed the warlike Anglo-Norman 
 nobility rendered this possible, and permitted the 
 protracted existence of a King on the throne of 
 England, of whom the barons of the iron hand and 
 the iron time would have made very short work. 
 
 William Hamilton's Philosopliy," J.S.Mill says: — "England's 
 thinkers are again beginning to see, what they had only 
 temporarily forgotten, that a true Psychology is the indis- 
 pensable scientific basis of Morals, of Politics, of the science and 
 art of Education ; that the diflSculties of Metaphysics lie at the 
 root of all science ; that those difficulties can only be quieted 
 by being resolved, and that until they are resolved positively 
 whenever possible, but at any rate negatively, we are never 
 assured that any human knowledge, even physical, stands 
 on solid foundations." 
 
Charles Pelham Villiers. 95 
 
 But if Hume and those who, like Isaac Disraeli 
 and Mr. Gifford, have taken a view similar to 
 his, that the unfavourable opinion of James L is 
 a re-echo of the yell of the Nonconformists of 
 James's time, had ever read Clarendon carefully, 
 they might have seen cause for grave reflection on 
 the significance of Clarendon's guarded disclosures 
 respecting the court of James. Clarendon has 
 displayed great ability both in what he has told 
 and in what he has left untold. Those who impute 
 this to a fondness f©r mystery, forget that 
 Clarendon's History and his Life, taken together, 
 may be truly viewed as an elaborate defence of the 
 Stuarts, conducted in a manner very creditable 
 to Clarendon's skill as an advocate. The case 
 resembled those cases in which the characters of 
 " personages " are involved, and in which the most 
 consummate advocates at the bar are retained 
 with the highest fees. The fee which Clarendon 
 ultimately received was a large one ; but it was 
 earned by the tact and adroitness of the advocate 
 in marshalling the strong points of his case and 
 keeping the weak points out of sight. 
 
 "What a strange story for instance, is half 
 revealed, half kept in sombre shadow, in his History, 
 taken together with what he lets out in his Life, 
 
96 Notes on the Anti-Oorn Law Struggle. 
 
 of the habits and character of Sir Edward Sackville, 
 Earl of Dorset, and of his own means of obtaining 
 an intimate knowledge of them ; of his having, 
 when a young man in the Temple, spent much 
 time " in the eating hours with the Earl of Dorset, 
 the Lord Conway, and the Lord Lumley, men who 
 excelled in gratifying their appetites;" of Dorset's 
 " person, beautiful and graceful and vigorous;" of 
 his wit and learning such " that he could not miscarry 
 in the world." Lord Clarendon then glances at 
 the unrestrained scope Dorset gave to his sensual 
 appetites at that season of life — in the latter years 
 of James I. — when the court of England presented 
 a scene, such as could only be paralleled by the 
 court of Henry III. of France. Clarendon then 
 alludes to the duel in which the Earl of Dorset 
 killed the Lord Bruce under the walls of Antwerp, 
 " upon a subject very unAvarrantable." It could 
 not have been under such a King as Hume has 
 described James in the words above quoted, that the 
 men lived to whom Clarendon referred when he 
 said that when he looked back to those days of 
 his own early life, when he herded with such 
 associates, that he had much more cause to be 
 terrified upon the reflection than the man had who 
 viewed in the morning Rochester Bridge, which he 
 
Charles Pelkaiit Villierti. 97 
 
 had galloped over in the night, and saw that it was 
 broken.* 
 
 Such might have been the reflections of many a 
 man who survived to die quietly in his bed after 
 having come in contact even in the slighest degree 
 with that court. But it is to be borne in mind 
 that Clarendon, though he could not always repress 
 his natural feelings, wrote his History, in the 
 character of counsel at the bar of the world for the 
 family on which the royal power in England had 
 been settled for far the greater part of the seven- 
 teenth century. When we read therefore Claren- 
 don's characters of the Stuarts, we must bear in 
 mind that we are reading the discourse, however 
 able, adroit, and even subtle in its analysis of 
 human character, of the avowed advocate of the 
 Stuarts before the tribunal of posterity. 
 
 1 am willing to take one case on which to try 
 this question ; and that one case shall be the 
 tragedy of Gowrie House, Perth, which King 
 James called the Gowrie Conspiracy. If the 
 champions of King James can prove the truth of 
 the royal version of that strange story they will 
 have achieved a feat of no slight difficulty. 
 
 * Clarendon, Hist., i., 106, 107, Oxford, 1826. Clarendon, 
 Life, i., 75, Oxford, 1827. 
 
 7 
 
98 Notes on the Anti- Corn Laio Strvggle. 
 
 Having examined the whole of the evidence 
 bearing on the tragedy of Gowrie House ; having 
 carefully perused the depositions of the witnesses, 
 the letters alleged to . have been written by 
 Logan to the Ruthvens, and which I have 
 proved to be forgeries executed seven or eight 
 years after the event to which they refer, and 
 all the papers relating to the matter ; having most 
 anxiously sought to arrive at the truth by a careful 
 examination and comparison of all the various 
 parts of which the evidence consists, in order to 
 learn how firmly or how loosely, how coherently or 
 how incoherently it hangs together, I have arrived 
 at the conclusion that the assertion of the existence 
 of the alleged corispu'acy on the part of the two 
 murdered boys, the Earl of Gowrie and his brother 
 Alexander Ruthven, is based only on a vast fabric 
 of circumstantial falsehood, propped up by perjury, 
 torture, forgery, and murder.* 
 
 Among the reviews of Essay V. of my " Essays 
 on Historical Truth," was one in The Scotsman 
 
 * THe examination of the Gowrie tragedy forms the bulk 
 of Essay V. of my "Essays on Historical Truth " (London: 
 Longmans and Co., 1871). The book should have been 
 entitled — "An Inquiry into the credibility of some portion 
 of English and Scottish History." 
 
Charles Pelham Villiers. 99 
 
 of December 26, 1871, the writer of which, who 
 had devoted more than ordinary attention to the 
 question of the Gowrie Conspiracy, says : — 
 
 " The question of the genuineness or spuriousness of the 
 Logan Letters may be considered the crucial test of the truth 
 or falsehood of the Gowrie Conspiracy." 
 
 I am willing to accept this test ; and I say, that if 
 the letters had been then in existence they would 
 have been produced at the trial of Sprot. My opinion 
 is that they were fabricated in the interval between 
 the trial of Sprot and the trial of Logan's bones. 
 At the same time I admit that my reviewer — who 
 says " we have subjected the letters to a very 
 searching examination, on which we entered with 
 strong misgivings about their genuineness " — has 
 some advantages over me in having " had the 
 opportunity of comparison with three undoubted 
 signatures of Logan — one of them appended to a 
 document in Lord Napier's possession; the other 
 two occurring in the Public Records;" and the 
 further, he says, " we pushed our investigation, the 
 more did our suspicions disappear, till the evidence 
 of genuineness became so overwhelming that we 
 could no longer resist it." 
 
 On this it is necessary to remark that the 
 
 7 * 
 
100 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 reviewer appears to attach an undue or unwarranted 
 authority to what has been termed the evidence of 
 handwriting; and, like Mr. Pitcairn, Lord Dover, 
 and Mr. Patrick Fraser Tytler, to ground his con- 
 clusions chiefly upon the assumption of the authen- 
 ticity of Logan's handwriting. The cases that 
 have come before the English courts show that, as 
 Mr. Justice Coleridge said, in the case of Smyth v. 
 Smyth and others, tried at the Gloucester Assizes 
 in August, 1853, " The identity of handwriting 
 is very much a matter of opinion, and anybody 
 might be deceived in a matter of evidence like 
 that." 
 
 It is, indeed, a rule of English law that evidence 
 of handwriting based on the comparison between 
 the handwriting of a party to a document and other 
 documents proved or assumed to be his hand- 
 writing, as well as evidence of handwriting by 
 knowledge acquired from specimens, is not receiv- 
 able.* Among the cases collected by Mr. Best, 
 there are two which strikingly show the deceptive 
 
 * See Best on Presumptions of Law and Fact, p. 221 et 
 seq., and the cases there collected (London: S. Sweet, 
 Chancery Lane, 1844). 
 
Charles Pelharn VilUers. 101 
 
 nature of this kind of evidence. The first is 
 related by Lord Eldon. A deed was produced at 
 a trial, purporting to be attested by two witnesses, 
 one of whom was Lord Eldon.* The genuineness 
 of the document was strongly attacked; but the 
 solicitor for the party setting it up, who was a 
 most respectable man, had every confidence in the 
 attesting witnesses, and had in particular compared 
 the signature of Lord Eldon to the document with 
 that of several pleadings signed by him. Lord 
 Eldon had never attested a deed in his life. 
 
 This case it will be observed is precisely similar 
 to the case of the reviewer stated above, comparing 
 the signature attached, to what I maintain are the 
 forged documents called the Logan Letters, with 
 three undoubted signatures of Logan. 
 
 The other remarkable case occurred in Scotland, 
 where on a trial for forgery of some bank-notes, 
 one of the banker's clerks, whose name was on 
 a forged note, swore distinctly that it was his 
 signature, while to another which was really his, 
 he spoke with hesitation. " Standing alone," says 
 Mr. Best, " any of the modes of proof of hand- 
 
 * In the case of Engleton v. Kingston, 8 Ves. jun. 476. 
 
102 Notes on the Anti- Com Law Struggle. 
 
 writing by resemblance are worth little — in a 
 criminal case, nothing."* 
 
 One of the Logan letters which was alleged to 
 have been written in July, 1600, specifies "extir- 
 pating of our names " as a necessary consequence 
 of treason ; whereas the abolition of a surname — a 
 family or clan name — was introduced in November, 
 1600, by special parliamentary enactment in the 
 case of the Earl of Gowrie and his brother. The 
 recurrence of such a proceeding in 1603, in the 
 case of the Clan Gregor, would be apt to make a 
 person writing the Logan letters in 1608 forget 
 that the extirpating a family or clan name was not 
 a matter of course, and even forget that in July, 
 1600, it was unprecedented. 
 
 The writer of these letters never names any 
 conspirator but the Earl of Gowrie and " M. A. R." 
 [Mr. Alexander Ruthven], sometimes " Mr. A. 
 his lo-brother," and in letter fourth to the Earl of 
 Gowrie " M. A. your lo-brother." The letters, 
 five in number, are all professedly written by 
 Logan. The first, third, and fifth letters are " to 
 . . . ." and all commence with the words " Eight 
 
 * Best on Presumptions of Law and Fact, p. 233. 
 
Charles Pelham VilUers. 103 
 
 Honorable Sir." If we take the proportion of 
 letters to this " Right Honorable " phantom, as 
 a measure of the proportion of weight which he 
 bore in the alleged conspiracy, we find that he 
 bore to the Earl of Gowrie the proportion of three 
 to one, and to Alexander Ruthven, the Earl of 
 Gowrie's brother, the proportion of three to nothing. 
 It appears from this that the King and his ministers 
 in 1608, had altogether abandoned the course of 
 proceeding they had followed in 1600, which was 
 to assert that Gowrie was too cautious to have any 
 accomplices in ihis alleged designs. Finding that 
 their former device had obtained no credit, they 
 now tried another device to make the " story hang 
 more handsomely together;" and from representing 
 Gowrie as a person of the greatest caution, repre- 
 sent him as so incautious and rash as to put his life 
 and fortune in the power of a drunken debauchee, 
 by a compact which was to deprive him of his 
 valuable estate of Dirleton. And how came it to 
 pass that this " right honorable " phantom, who 
 according to the Logan letters hypothesis was the 
 head and front of the alleged conspiracy, should 
 altogether vanish, while the royal wrath is wreaked 
 on the house of Gowrie ? 
 
104 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 That was the age of jugglers, and this story called 
 the Gowrie Conspiracy presents some examples. 
 The name of Spottiswood, who was then Arch- 
 bishop of Glasgow, stands third in the list of those 
 who sat upon the trial of George Sprot, the notary, 
 from whose repositories the Logan letters were 
 professed to have been produced. Spottiswood 
 was also one of those who were on the scaffold 
 at Sprot's execution, and his name stands first in 
 the list of those who subscribed Sprot's final 
 deposition there made. 
 
 " ' A little before tlie execution,' Calderwood says,* ' when 
 Mr. John Spotswood, bishop of Glasgow, said to Mr. Patrick 
 Galloway, "I am afraid this man make us all ashamed," 
 Mr. Patrick answered, "Let alone, my lord, I shall warrant 
 him ;" and indeed he had the most part of the speech to himself 
 upon the scaffold.' Well may Mr. Napier say, ' Had the 
 treasonable letters been produced on Sprot's trial, or even 
 one well-authenticated letter, there would have been little 
 reason for the courtly bishop expressing his fear that the 
 wretched man on the scaffold would ' make us all ashamed.' 
 .... This fact shakes the credit of this criminal process 
 and the farce that followed to the very foundation.''^ 
 
 * Cited in Mr. Mark Napier's note to Spottiswood's Hist., 
 vol. iii., p. 277. 
 t Note, Ibid., p. 277. 
 
Charles Pelham Villiers. 105 
 
 Spottiswood distincly confirms what has been 
 stated from the records, that no letter was produced 
 at Sprot's trial. In his History, after saying that 
 Sprot had deponed — 
 
 " That lie knew Robert Logan of Restalrig, who was dead 
 two years before, to have been privy to Gowrie's conspiracy, 
 and that he understood so much by a letter [not letters] that 
 fell in his hand, written by Restalrig to Gowrie, bearing that 
 he would take part with him in the revenge of his father's 
 death, and that his best course should be to bring the King 
 by sea to Fast Castle, where he might be safely kept till 
 advertisement came from those with whom the Earl kept 
 intelligence," — 
 
 He adds the following sentence : — 
 
 " It seemed a very fiction, and to be a mere conceit of the 
 man's own brain ; for neither did he show the letter, nor could 
 any wise man think that Gowrie, who went about that 
 treason so secretly, would have communicated the matter with 
 such a man as this Restalrig was known to be."* 
 
 King James was a tough morsel for courtly 
 writers such as Archbishop Spottiswood and Sir 
 Walter Scott. Spottiswood settles the matter by 
 
 * The History of the Church of Scotland, by John Spottis- 
 wood, Archbishop of St. Andrew's, vol. iii., pp. 199, 200 
 (Bannatyne Club Edition, Edinburgh, 1850). 
 
106 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 quoting an epitaph on James setting forth that 
 Kings are not men but gods — 
 
 " Princes are gods, do not then 
 Rake in their graves to prove them men." 
 
 Sir Walter Scott and Calderwood give very con- 
 flicting statements of Sprot's execution, the former 
 saying that Sprot asserted to the last that the 
 letters were genuine, and that being desired to 
 give a sign of the truth of his confession, after 
 he was thrown oiF the ladder he clapped his 
 hands three times. Such is Scott's account of 
 what Calderwood represents as the trick by which 
 Dunbar, James's Prime Minister for Scotland, 
 whose place was no sinecure when he had to attend 
 executions as assistant-hangman, gave a sign when 
 Sprot's dying speech should be interrupted by his 
 being cast off the ladder so as to give to his words 
 a sense the reverse of that which they seemed 
 intended to convey.* 
 
 * Calderwood says, " The people -wondered wherefore 
 Dunbar should attend upon the execution of such a mean 
 man ; and surmised, that it was only to give a sign when 
 his speech should be interrupted, and when he was to be 
 cast over the ladder " (Calderwood : printed by the Wodrow 
 Society, vol. vi., p. 780). 
 
Charles Pelham Villiers. 107 
 
 One more question I would ask : Why were no 
 letters of the Ruthvens produced? If there had 
 even been any letters from the Ruthvens, those 
 letters would have been more likely to be preserved 
 than the letters alleged to be found in the custody 
 of those who had been connected Avith Logan. 
 
 " In this way it is in the power of any man — by writing 
 letters referring to an enterprise of a treasonable nature, and 
 keeping the letters in his own custody — to make circum- 
 stantial evidence of criminality in any shape against any 
 other man."* 
 
 In this case, however, the letters were written 
 not by Robert Logan, but by those who were far 
 more powerful than Robert Logan. 
 
 I have said that the letters were alleged to 
 have been found in the custody of those who had 
 been connected with Logan. Robert Logan, laird 
 of Restalrig, died in the month of July, 1606 ; and 
 the state in which he left his property at the time 
 of his death throws some curious light on the 
 selection of him as a candidate for the honour of 
 being associated with the Ruthvens, in what King 
 James denominated " the Gowrie Conspiracy." It 
 
 * Bentham's Rationale of Judicial Evidence, vol. iii., 
 pp. 43, 44. 
 
108 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 appears that the Earl of Dunbar, Prime Minister 
 of Scotland, and Lord Balmerinoch, Secretary of 
 State, had engaged in money transactions to a 
 great amount with Logan, and were deeply indebted 
 to his estate. 
 
 " From tlie record of the Great Seal it appears," says Mr. 
 Mark Napier, " tliat in the year 1605, Logan's estate of 
 Restalrig had passed into the hands of Balmerinoch by pur- 
 chase. But the purchase money had not been paid ; and 'when 
 the laird of Restalrig died, the Secretary was in his debt no 
 less than eighteen thousand marJes,* a large snm in those days. 
 This is proved by the register of confirmed testaments, where 
 Logan's is recorded ; and by the same it appears that the 
 Earl of Dunbar was also Logan's debtor to the amount of 
 fifteen thousand marks."t 
 
 It further appears by extracts from the Register 
 of the Privy Seal, also furnished to Mr. Mark 
 Napier by Mr. David Laing, that George, Earl of 
 Dunbar, obtained from the King " the gift of the 
 escheit and ferfaultour of the sowme of fyftene 
 thousand markis Scotis money," remaining unpaid 
 by him to the late Robert Logan of Restalrig, for 
 
 * A mark is 13s 4d. 
 
 t Mr. Mark Napier's note in the Bannatyne Club Edition 
 of Spottiswood's History, vol. iii., p. 298. 
 
Charles Pelham Villiers. 109 
 
 completing the sum of thirty-eight thousand marks 
 agreed on for the lands of Flemyng-town. There 
 is also a grant to Alexander Home of Renton, the 
 Earl of Dunbar's cousin-german, of certain leases 
 and titles that had belonged to the late Eobert 
 Logan of Restalrig. 
 
 King James destroyed a good deal of documentary 
 evidence relating to the deaths of Prince Henry and 
 Sir Thomas Overbury, but the Gowrie business 
 was a job too tough for him, even with the help of 
 such faithful coadjutors as the Earl of Dunbar and 
 Lord Balmerinoch, who were dangerous men to sell 
 estates to in those days, when Scotland had the 
 felicity to be ruled by the sixth James Stuart. 
 
 For the accomplishment of their own and their 
 royal master's purpose this Prime Mmister Dunbar, 
 and this Secretary of State Balmerinoch, fixed upon 
 a certain notary named George Sprot, This Sprot 
 had the character of being very expert in imitating 
 handwriting, and was made use of by the Earl of 
 Dunbar, to be an agent in his scheme of making his 
 Majesty's story of his adventures at Gowrie House 
 "hang more handsomely together;"* being partly 
 
 * These are the words of a MS. letter in the State Paper 
 
110 Notes on the Anti-Gorn Law Struggle. 
 
 bribed by promises of benefit to bis wife and 
 children, partly tortured into bis statement as to 
 Logan's correspondence with the Ruthvens. But 
 this addition to the original story instead of con- 
 firming it proves its falsehood. 
 
 As to the character attributed to the laird of 
 Restalrig, who was so unfortunate as to be a man 
 of considerable landed property in Scotland, when 
 no man's landed property was safe under a King 
 whose favourites might take any man's property 
 which they took a fancy to, the words ' ' ane godless, 
 drunkin deboschit man in his tyme,""|" describe the 
 character exactly of a man whom Hume has white- 
 washed into an angel of light, and who according 
 to Bacon, throughout the inquiries respecting 
 Overbury's murder "had shown to the world, as 
 if it were written in a sunbeam, that he was the 
 Lieutenant of Him with whom there is no respect 
 
 Office, from John Chamberlain to Dudley Carleton, dated 
 London, Nov. 11, 1608. These words are very significant as 
 showing the general, one might say the universal, opinion at 
 that time in England, and even in James's court, respecting 
 the Gowrie story. 
 
 t Wodrow MSS. in the Advocates' Library, cited Pitcairn's 
 Criminal Trials, vol. ii., p. 275. 
 
Charles Pelham Villiers. Ill 
 
 of persons." Possibly Logan has been blackened 
 as much as the other has been whitened; and if 
 Hume were to have tried his brush upon him he 
 might have come out as a jolly good fellow, 
 " strongly inclined to mirth and wine— though he 
 apprehended* the Puritans' censure for his manner 
 of hfe, free and disengaged." 
 
 The strange tragedy of Gowrie House was a 
 story dark and terrible as that of Ugolino. The 
 Torre della fame of Pisa did not witness a crime 
 more horrible, more revolting, or more deserving 
 of a terrible retribution than that perpetrated in 
 the Black Turnpike in that old tower of Gowrie 
 House at Perth. King James professed to take 
 the " redacting noble houses, and men and women 
 of noble blood, to slavish offices,"" to be one of 
 his prerogatives granted by Holy Writ. James's 
 practice was quite consonant with what Tacitus 
 calls the mos regius^ in reference to the Emperor 
 Tiberius. And with such a King as this James 
 
 * Johnson gives four meanings of the word apprehend, the 
 fourth is probably the meaning used here " to think on with 
 terror ; to fear." Then what does Hume mean by "free and 
 disengaged "? 
 
 t King James's Works, p. 199, folio, 1616. 
 
112 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 Stuart, possessed of power to perpetrate with 
 impunity crimes such as the murder* of Alexander 
 Ruthven and his brother the Earl of Gowrie, of 
 whom it has been said : — 
 
 " Unhappy boys ! to perisli by such a fate, and to leave 
 behind them, though perishing so young, a blackened 
 memory ! 
 
 quia nee fato, merita nee morte peribant ; 
 Sed miseri aute diem."t 
 
 The English and Scottish nobility were in as 
 bad a condition as the Roman nobility during the 
 latter years of Tiberius, when that monster had 
 retired to hide himself and his crimes amid the 
 rocks of Caprese ; and sent forth his emissaries to 
 select his victims from the noblest houses of Rome, 
 with power to employ force if necessary to effect 
 their purpose. 
 
 * Sir Walter Scott, not content with turning King James's 
 romance, called " The Gowrie Conspiracy," into hisbory, has 
 characterized the basest and most cowardly act of a life of 
 cowardice and baseness, as one in which King James "showed 
 the spirit of his ancestors" ("The Fortunes of Nigel," 
 chapter v.). Which of his ancestors ? Robert Bruce or 
 Signior Davie ? 
 
 t " Essays on Historical Truth," p. 213 (London : 
 Longmans and Co., 1871). 
 
Charles Pelham Villiers. 113 
 
 Hume, in Ms History of the Reign of James I., 
 refers to an anecdote related in the preface to 
 Waller's works. Hume's manner of telling this 
 anecdote shows how little he knew of what he was 
 writing about. Hume says : " When Waller was 
 young, he had the curiosity to go to Court ; and 
 he stood in the circle and saw James dine ; where, 
 among other company, there sat sat at table two 
 bishops, Neile and Andrews." The words in the 
 work referred to are not " sat at tahle^' but " stood 
 behind Ms Majesty's chair T Hume seems to have 
 altered the words of his authority to suit his own 
 view of his Majesty and his Majesty's Court. I 
 cannot say on what particular occasion a subject 
 was first admitted to the honour of sitting at dinner 
 with a king or queen of England, but from the day 
 when Bishops Neile and Andrews stood behind the 
 chair of James I. to the day when William Fitz- 
 Osberne, Earl of Hereford, who as dapifer or 
 steward of the royal household, had the charge of 
 the King's table, served William I. with the flesh 
 of a crane only half roasted, and the King became 
 so angry that he lifted up his fist and would have 
 struck Fitz-Osberne, had not his half-brother Odo, 
 Bishop of Bayeux and Earl of Kent, warded off 
 the blow, no subject, however high in rank, was 
 
 8 
 
114 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 ■admitted to the honour of sitting at dinner with 
 the King or Queen of England. 
 
 It is somewhat difficult to place before the mind 
 manners and customs differing very much from 
 those we have been used to ; and it may seem 
 strange to persons living in the nineteenth century 
 as it might seem strange to Hume in the eighteenth 
 century, that in the eleventh and twelfth centuries 
 the person who had the charge of seeing that the 
 royal dinner was not served up half roasted held 
 an office which made him the most powerful man 
 in the kingdom after the King. He was not only 
 at the head of the King's palace, but of all the 
 departments of the State, civU and mihtary, chief 
 administrator of justice, and leader of the armies 
 in war. Madox is in error when he says (" Hist. 
 Excheq.," p. 28), that in the reign of William I., 
 William Fitz-Osberne was the King's Constable, 
 because he is called Magister Militum ; whereas in 
 the very same passage (of" Orclericus Vitalis") he 
 is called Normanise Dapifer, in virtue of which office 
 he would be magister militum as well as capitalis 
 justitiarius. The constable was not originally 
 magister militum, but was an officer subordinate 
 to the senescallus or dapifer. 
 
 Some English lawyers have assumed that the 
 
Charles Pelham Villiers. 115 
 
 power of the officer created pro Mc vice to preside 
 in the House of Lords at State Trials grew out of 
 those of the Chief Justiciary. If that view were 
 correct, the functionary so appointed would have 
 been styled "high justiciary," whereas he is styled 
 "lord high steward" — that is, senescallus Anglioe^ 
 and he exercises powers which had been delegated 
 to the high justiciary from the senescallus Anglioe, 
 to whom they were restored pro Jidc vice in the 
 person of the lord high steward.* 
 
 For some twenty years this King had governed 
 Scotland with a rule as absolute and much more 
 
 * Professor Stubbs is, as far as I know, the only writer, 
 legal or historical, who has come to the same conclusion which 
 I have come to as to the origin of the English Justiciarship. 
 In the first volume of his Constitutional History, p. 346, 
 he says : — " It would seem most probable that William Fitz- 
 Osberne at least was left in his character of steward, and that 
 the Norman seneschalship was thus the origin of the English 
 justiciarship." Professor Stubbs's first volume was published 
 in 1874. In July, 1838, I published in The British and 
 Foreign Review an article which John Kemble, the editor of 
 that Review, whom both Professor Stubbs and Mr. E. A. 
 Freeman cite as an authority in English history, said had 
 a historical value. That article gave an explanation of the 
 functions of the seneschal or dapifer and their relation to 
 those of the Chief Justiciary. 
 
 8 * 
 
i 16 Notes on the Anti- Com Law Struggle. 
 
 intolerable than that of the Black Douglas three 
 hundred years before. But how different were the 
 rulers ! In the one case the ruler was a veteran 
 soldier covered with honourable wounds received 
 in fighting against fearful odds, to preserve his 
 country's independence. In the other it was a man 
 who bore the same relation to the warlike ruler of 
 former dajs that Appius Claudius did to Marcus 
 Furius Camillus — the relation of a maker of 
 speeches to a winner of battles. The words in one 
 of Lord Macaulay's " Lays of Ancient Rome " 
 describe well the relation to which I have re- 
 ferred : — 
 
 " Still Caius of Coriali, his triumplis and his wrongs, 
 His vengeance and his mercy, live in our camp-fire songs. 
 Beneath the yoke of Furius oft have Gaul and Tuscan 
 
 bowed ; 
 And Kome may bear the pride of, him of whom herself is 
 proud. 
 
 A Cossus, like a wild cat, springs ever at the face ; 
 
 A Fabius rushes like a-bear against the shouting chase. 
 
 The Claudian triumphs all were won within the city- 
 towers ; 
 
 The Claudian yoke was never pressed on any necks but 
 ours." 
 
 If this King's days were evil in Scotland, they 
 were not less so when he became King of England, 
 
Charles Pelham VilUers. 117 
 
 when England had the grievous misfortune to 
 have thrust upon her for a king, a man whose 
 history is written in the history of the deaths of 
 the Earl of Gowrie and his brother Alexander 
 Ruthven, of Prince Henry, and of Sir Thomas 
 Overbury. 
 
 In an examination of the evidence, which escaped 
 the destruction by which the powerful seek to 
 efface all traces of some of their deeds, respecting 
 the death of Prince Henry, I used these words : — 
 
 " It is one of the privileges of absolute power to efface, 
 •when it desires, all traces of its footsteps." 
 
 And the words immediately preceding are : — 
 
 " It is only within the last few years, and more than two 
 centuries after the event, that any glimpse of the truth 
 respecting the fate of Overbury has been obtained ; all that 
 was before made public having been carefully prepared and 
 arranged by some of the subtlest legal intellects of their own 
 or any time to raise a false issue."* 
 
 With that man's name are linked the rumours 
 of deeds so revolting, that they suggest the words 
 
 * " Essays on Historical Truth," p. 36.3. Essay Seventh, 
 Prince Henry. (See also Essay Eighth, Sir Thomas Overbury ; 
 and Essay Fifth, Sir Walter Scott.) 
 
118 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 which in a tragedy of that time a veteran general 
 appHes to his sister whom a royal libertine had 
 
 dishonoured : — 
 
 " 'Tis, to be fcliy brother, 
 An infamy below tbe sin of coward," 
 
 James I. had as great a horror of war as the 
 gentlemen of the Peace Society. Being nearly 
 despotic he had been able to put in practice his 
 peace-at-any-price doctrines so successfully, both 
 in avoiding war and in breaking the once high 
 spirit of the English people, that the ambassadors 
 of foreign powers resident in England repeatedly 
 expressed their astonishment that the English 
 nation submitted to such disgrace and oppression 
 — calling it cowardice in the English people, some 
 of them even going so far as to say that there were 
 no men in England. England had, in fact, in this 
 disgraceful reign sunk so low that her ambassadors 
 were repeatedly insulted at foreign courts, her 
 merchant ships could not sail the sea in safety, 
 and her coasts were ravaged by the Barbary 
 pirates, who plundered the villages and carried off 
 many hundreds of the inhabitants into slavery. 
 
 No man ever engaged in the court intrigues of 
 that king's reign and escaped with life and honour; 
 and no man of average knowledge and capacity 
 
Charles Pelham Villiers. 119 
 
 ever attempted to write the history of that reign 
 and escaped without finding himself involved in 
 a suhject unsuited to an age in which Sporus and 
 Locusta cannot be brought upon the scene. I do 
 not dispute Hume's capacity, and as to his know- 
 ledge he knew enough to know that in the matter 
 called the Gowrie Conspiracy there were pitfalls 
 which even his dexterity might not enable him to 
 escape, and therefore he avoided all mention of it. 
 But though this might show prudence what did it 
 say as to his love of truth? His account of the 
 reign of James I. will remain a memorial of his 
 extraordinary interpretation of the meaning of the 
 word duty applied to a historian. 
 
 It can be shown that the first Lord Hyde of the 
 name of Villiers was a man possessed of qualities 
 very different from those of the unhappy minion 
 of court favour who died by the knife of Felton, 
 or of his brilliant and dissolute son who died at 
 Helmsley, after having wasted some of the choicest 
 gifts of nature and of fortune. The great estate 
 of Helmsley, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, 
 had been bestowed by the Parliament of England 
 on Fairfax, their general, and had been part of 
 the marriage portion which Fairfax's daughter had 
 brought to Buckingham. Helmsley was purchased 
 
120 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 for near ninety thousand pounds by a goldsmith 
 or banker, Charles Duncombe, and, 
 
 " Helmsley, once proud Buckingliain's delight, 
 Slides to a scrivener or a city knight." 
 
 The picture by the author of these lines on the 
 death of Buckingham, 
 
 " In the worst inn's worst room," &o., 
 
 is completely imaginary. He died in one of his 
 own farm houses, having taken cold one day after 
 fox-hunting, by sitting on the cold ground. This 
 threw him into an ague and fever which carried 
 him off, after three days' sickness, at a tenant's 
 house, Kirhhy-Moor-side^ a lordship of his own, 
 near Helmsley. And besides the misstatement as 
 to " the worst inn's worst room," the two lines 
 ending with the rhymes " friends " and " ends" 
 are words only meant to tickle the ear. Instead 
 of dying as in Pope's " Moral Essays," he died 
 surrounded by friends. The Earl of Arran, son 
 to Duke Hamilton; Mr. Brian Fairfax, second 
 son to Lord Fairfax's uncle, to whom that title 
 came, and other friends were with him when he 
 died. However, Macaulay's words are true; for 
 though his death was not in " the worst inn's worst 
 
Charles Pelham ViUiers, 121 
 
 room," it was under a humble roof, and on a coarse 
 pallet, that Buckingham closed his chequered life. 
 
 " The spacious domain," adds Macaulay, " passed to a new 
 race ; and in a few years a palace more splendid and costly 
 than had ever been inhabited by the magnificent ViUiers rose 
 amidst the beautiful woods and waters which had been his, 
 and was called by the once humble name of Duncombe." 
 
 There are among the Mitchell Papers some 
 letters from Sir Thomas Villiers, created Lord 
 Hyde in 1756, and Earl of Clarendon in 1776, 
 to Sir Andrew Mitchell, his successor at the Cotirt 
 of Berhn as the representative of England, which 
 show that this member of the elder branch of the 
 family of Villiers of Brooksley, was a man of a 
 totally different character from either the first or 
 the second Duke of Buckingham of the name of 
 Villiers. In a letter dated 27th June, 1761, to 
 Mitchell, Lord Hyde says : — 
 
 " My deae Mitchell, — Though I can't say that I am fond 
 of unnecessary writing or unnecessary talking, I was happy 
 in receiving a letter from an old friend that I love ; having 
 heard that his health which endured the follies of youth had 
 been injured by ministerial tpils. By matrimony it seems I 
 am freed from both, and enjoy life in a plain, insignificant 
 way, with a wife that I value, and three boys and a girl. I 
 give no flattery and receive no favours. I am not out of 
 humour, but see things, as far as my sight will reach, without 
 
122 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 prejudice or partiality. How long this state of anniliilation 
 ■will last I can't determine as I have taken no resolutions on 
 it, but considering my great indolence and little merit, I 
 shall scarce be again in an active station ; so my friends will 
 scarce ever have anything of me, but my wishes which would 
 have accompanied yours had I known they had tended to 
 Augsbourg, I mean for yourself, for as to me I am happy 
 that Lord Egremont is at the head of our Ministers there. 
 Lord Granville is much as he was as to spirits and dignity, 
 at least to us who see him daily and partially. We often talk 
 you over, and wish for the stories we are to have when you 
 return. Lord Jersey has rather more gout than he had, in 
 other respects the same. ... I wish my poor friends in 
 your parts were as I left them. I often feel for you and for 
 Fritsch as much as for any. Let those who are alive, who 
 are not many, and fall in your way, be assured of my regard, 
 esteem, and compassion, and be yourself convinced that I am 
 unalterably yours. — H. 
 
 " My wife begs her compliments of friendship and esteem." 
 
 In a letter dated " The Grove, 24th Sept., 
 
 1763," Lord Hyde says: — 
 
 "Mt dear Mitcheli,, — I am very glad to find by your 
 favour of the 3rd that your health is better, and that you are 
 not so Germanized but that you wish to be among us ; all 
 who know you wish for your return. Ton will find terrible 
 gaps in our acquaintances ; death has made cruel havoc ; we 
 that remain, according to Prussian discipline, should stand 
 the closer." 
 
 And in a letter dated " Upper Grosvenor Street, 
 1st Dec, 1763," Lord Hyde says: — 
 
Charles Pelham VilUers. 123 
 
 " If anybody besides yourself thinks of me wliere you are, 
 you may confidently assert tliat I retain warm gratitude for 
 Berlin, but I imagine most of my ministerial and military 
 acquaintances are gone gradually or precipitately to their last 
 home. Should ever opportunity be so blindly favourable as 
 to permit you to lay my duty and respects at his Prussian 
 Majesty's feet, you may with great truth add that I shall 
 ever feel, as I ought, the honour done me by his Majesty's 
 most gracious opinion. Is there any historian attempting to 
 describe and keep pace with his wonderful achievements ? 
 Were I as young and as unengaged as when I first knew 
 that part of the world, I would again embark in that agitated 
 sea. But as it is I must be contented to tell old stories to 
 my wife and children, and to read and explain the Gazettes. 
 Was there any hope of your assistance in these domestic 
 amusements we should be all the happier. My wife joins in 
 hearty wishes for your welfare, and in that perfect esteem 
 with which I unalterably remain, 
 
 " My dear Mitchell. 
 
 " Most cordially yours, 
 
 " Htde." 
 
 Mr. C. P. Villiers was, at the age of sixteen, 
 sent to the East India College at Haileybury, 
 where he had the advantage of studying for two 
 years under Mr. Malthus and Sir James Mackin- 
 tosh, then the Professors of Political Economy and 
 International Law at Haileybury. Circumstances 
 having induced Mr. Villiers to give up the inten- 
 tion of going to India, he had his name entered 
 at St. John's College, Cambridge, and took the 
 
124 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 degrees of B.A. and B.L. in 1824, and the degree 
 of M.A. three years later. 
 
 While an undergraduate at Cambridge, Mr. 
 Villiers was a member of the " Union," a debating 
 society, in which whether he was or was not a 
 frequent speaker I cannot say, for though at that 
 time I was an undergraduate of Trinity College, 
 Cambridge, I was not a member of the " Union," 
 and the only members of the " Union " whose 
 names emerged beyond the walls of the " Union" 
 debating-room were T. B. Macaulay and W. M. 
 Praed. There were others who became noted 
 afterwards, among whom may be named Sir Alex- 
 ander Cockburn, Lord Chief Justice of the Queen's 
 Bench; Charles Buller, and Charles Austin, whose 
 unequalled success as a parliamentary counsel, by 
 keeping him out of Parliament, possibly prevented 
 him from being Prime Minister. 
 
 When Charles ViUiers went to St. John's College, 
 Cambridge, towards the end of the first quarter of 
 the nineteenth century, an intensely aristocratic 
 spirit prevailed over every part of Great Britain, 
 and manifested itself in great force at the Univer- 
 sity of Cambridge. Rent of land was looked upon 
 as the only respectable source of revenue. The 
 profits of trade were only fitted for the pedlar class 
 
Charles Pelham Villiers. 125 
 
 of mankind, while the receivers of rent were the 
 class that produced the English gentleman, who 
 considered himself as entitled to satisfaction if he 
 received an insult even from emperors and kings. 
 The King, who in 1820 succeeded to the throne 
 of England, set an example when he graciously 
 pei-mitted " Young Dukes" to hear him "declare 
 His royal sense of operas or the fair." It was 
 more than ten years before the Eeform Bill of 
 1832, and whatever shortcoming that Reform Bill 
 might have been guilty of, one thing it accom- 
 plished. The middle classes ceased after a time 
 to be the standing jest of such writers as the 
 authors of "Vivian Grey" and "Pelham," and, as 
 the latter observed, that joke would not do any 
 longer. 
 
 When Charles Villiers went to Cambridge, the 
 qualifications for killing game, or rather the 
 exemptions from the penalties inflicted by the 
 Statute Law, were — 1, The having a freehold 
 estate of £100 per annum; that is one hundred 
 pounds being required to enable a man to kiU a 
 partridge, when forty shillings enabled him to vote 
 for a knight of the shire ; 2, A leasehold for ninety - 
 nine years of £1 50 per annum ; 3, Being the son 
 and heir apparent of an esquire, or person of 
 
126 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 superior degree ; 4, Being the owner, or keeper, of 
 a forest, park, chase, or warren.* 
 
 But though shooting partridges and grouse 
 might be very well, fox-hunting was the amuse- 
 ment befitting a gentleman. A Prime Minister, 
 if he could not ride to hounds, was looked down 
 upon as not quite a gentleman, according to the 
 proper standard. Even Field Marshal the Duke 
 of Wellington was not quite up to their mark in 
 horsemanship. Their talk was of horses and dogs, 
 fox-hunting, horse-racing, and tandem -driving. 
 The walls of their rooms were covered with prints 
 such as might be considered congenial to their 
 cultivated minds; with portraits of celebrated 
 racers and hunters, and dogs remarkable for their 
 courage or sagacity, particularly when such courage 
 and sagacity had been exhibited like those of the 
 dog Billy, of rat-catching reputation. With those 
 young men, though kings and lords were not as 
 other men, of the earth earthy, but had a sort of 
 divinity hedging them round about, so that their 
 chaff was better than other folks' corn; yet even 
 
 * 4 Bl. Comm., 175. By the statute 1 and 2 Will. 4, c. 32, 
 the qualification for killing game was abolished ; and every 
 certificated person may kill game, subject only to the law of 
 trespass. 
 
Charles Pelham VilUers. 127 
 
 kings and lords, who could not ride quite to their 
 satisfaction, were to be regarded as slow coaches 
 and spoons. 
 
 This question has another aspect. 
 
 It has been thought by some that the genius of 
 Walter Scott, which delighted in the romantic and 
 chivalrous aspect of feudalism, has had consider- 
 able influence in obtaining for the aristocratic 
 spirit the ascendancy it held in England for the 
 first quarter of the nineteenth century. It seemed 
 a vain imagination in Wordsworth to attempt to 
 establish a respectable pedlar in the roll of honour 
 which was appropriated to bold buccaneers and 
 respectable* cow-stealers. Indeed, what was that 
 foray which closed with the Battle of Otterburne? 
 Does not the old ballad say 
 
 " Douglity Douglas was boun' to ride 
 To England to drive a prey " ? 
 
 An ancient name and lineage were indispensable, 
 and really Scott had wonderful success in stamping 
 impressions that 1 can hardly admit were a very 
 
 * By " respectable " here is meant a cow-stealer who 
 was in a large way of business, and would have thought 
 it beneath the character of a gentleman to steal a single 
 cow, or anything less than a herd of cows with the bull or 
 bulls. 
 
128 Notes mi the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 useful or healthy part of a boy's education — 
 impressions that associated with the gloom of 
 Gothic castles and the high-fretted roofs and 
 pictured windows of Gothic abbeys or colleges, 
 the idea of grandeur, of glory and honour that 
 were once bright and true, on the hypothesis that 
 they had been earned by labour and won by heroic 
 deeds. The result may perhaps be dimly indicated 
 by some of Scott's lines which describe the entrance 
 of Deloraine into the chancel of Melrose Abbey — 
 
 " By a steel-clenclied postern door, 
 They enter'd now the chancel tall ; 
 The darken'd roof rose high aloof 
 
 On pillars lofty, and light, and small." 
 
 " Full many a scutcheon and banner riven. 
 Shook to the cold night-wind of heaven, 
 
 Around the screened altars pale ; 
 And there the dying lamps did burn. 
 Before thy low and lonely urn, 
 gallant Chief of Otterburne ! 
 
 And thine, dark Knight of Liddesdale ! 
 fading honours of the dead ! 
 O high ambition, lowly laid ! " 
 
 In the same poem Scott gives a striking picture 
 of the state of the country on the borders of 
 
Charles Pelham Villiers. 1^9 
 
 England and Scotland in the words of Wat 
 Tinlinn— 
 
 " They cross'd the Liddel at curfew hour, 
 And burnt my little lonely tower; 
 The fiend receive their souls therefor ! 
 It had not been burnt this year and more. 
 Barn-yard and dwelling, blazing bright. 
 Served to guide me on my flight ; 
 But I was chased the live-long night. 
 Black John of Akeshaw, and Fergus Grasme, 
 Full fast upon my traces came, 
 Until I turn'd at Priesthaugh Scrogg, 
 And shot their horses in the bog. 
 Slew Fergus with my lance outright — 
 I had him long at high despite, 
 He drove my cows last Fastern's night." 
 
 Scott himself, in his History of Scotland, has 
 given a good explanation of the effect of his own 
 genius in describing that of the genius of Shak- 
 speare upon the Scottish tale of Macbeth. 
 
 " The genius of Shakspeare," says Scottj* " having found 
 the tale of Macbeth in the Scottish chronicles of Holingshed, 
 adorned it with a lustre similar to that with which a level 
 beam of the sun often invests some fragment of glass, which, 
 though shining at a distance with the lustre of a diamond, 
 is, by a near investigation, discovered to be of no worth or 
 
 * History of Scotland contained in " Tales of a Grand- 
 father," vol. i., p. 16, note (Robert Cadell, Edinburgh, 1846). 
 
 9 
 
130 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 estimation. . . . Early authorities shows no such persons 
 as Banquo and his son Fleance. Neither were Banquo or 
 his son ancestors of the house of Stewart." 
 
 Scott has in another of his works some instruc- 
 tive remarks on the effect of times which may be 
 said to have something of a revolutionary character. 
 In the "Monastery," Murray (the Regent) says: — 
 
 " In times hke these we must look to men and not to 
 pedigrees. Times of action makes princes into peasants and 
 boors into barons. All families bave sprung from one mean 
 man ; and it is well if they have never degenerated from his 
 virtue who raised them first from obscurity." 
 
 " My Lord of Murray will please to except the house of 
 Douglas," said Morton haughtily; "men have seen it in the 
 tree, but never in the sapling — have seen it in the stream, 
 but never in the fountain. In the earliest of our Scottish 
 annals, the Black Douglas was powerful and distinguished 
 as now." 
 
 " I bend to the honour of the house of Douglas," said 
 Murray somewhat ironically ; " I am conscious -we of the 
 Royal House have little right to compete with them ia 
 dignity. What though we have worn crowns and carried 
 sceptres for a few generations, if our genealogy moves no 
 farther back than to the humble Alanus Bapifer !"* 
 
 * Sir W. Scott (see " Monastery," Note N) seems to have 
 succeeded in overthrowing Chalmers's scheme of the Douglas 
 pedigree from Theobaldns Flammaticus. Scott says : — " The 
 lands granted by the Abbot of Kelso to Theobaldus Flam- 
 
Charles Pelham VilUers. 131 
 
 It happened to me to have a singular opportunity 
 of observing this intensely aristocratic character 
 in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, 
 pervading English Society. It was at that time 
 customary, I know not if it is the custom now, for 
 the college tutor at Trinity College to take com- 
 passion on the unhappy Freshman who was to dine 
 for the first time in haU, so far as to appoint him 
 to come to his rooms a few minutes before the 
 dinner beU rang, and consign him to the care of 
 another Freshman who had been similarly intro- 
 duced to hall a day or two before, and who by the 
 arrangement of the college tutor was to mtroduce 
 into hall another Freshman as he had himself been 
 introduced a few days before. I think, to the best 
 
 maticus are not the same of which William de Douglas was 
 in possession. It would appear from comparing the charter 
 granted to Theobaldus Flammaticus that though situated on 
 the water of Douglas, they never made a part of the barony 
 of that name, and therefore cannot be the same with those 
 held by William de Douglas in the succeeding generation. 
 But if William de Douglas did not succeed Theobaldus 
 Flammaticus, there is no more reason for holding these two 
 persons to be father and son than if they had lived in different 
 provinces, and we are still as far from having discovered the 
 first mean man of the Douglas family as Hume of Godscroft 
 was in the sixteenth century. 
 
 9 * 
 
132 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 of my recollection, that the number of under- 
 graduates dining daily in the hall of Trinity College, 
 Cambridge, at that time, was about three hundred, 
 more or less. On the day of my first dining in 
 hall, I went by appointment to the rooms in 
 Neville's Court of my college tutor, and was 
 immediately introduced by him to a man of about 
 my own height, with light hair and a remarkably 
 good-humoured countenance, who went with me to 
 the hall, which was close by, and taking a seat on 
 a bench at a table covered with joints of meat and 
 dishes of vegetables, together with bread and beer 
 glasses filled or empty, carved some slices of meat 
 from a joint, put them with some vegetables on his 
 plate, and intimated to me that I was to follow his 
 example. This was keeping terms by dining in 
 hall. 
 
 When dinner was over we walked out, and my 
 companion very heartily invited me to accompany 
 him to his lodgings and take a glass of wine. But 
 as I had resolved at that time to avoid what are 
 called wine parties at Cambridge, I thanked him 
 and declined — though I afterwards went to wine 
 parties at his rooms, and he came to wine parties 
 at my rooms, for I found it advisable to change my 
 resolution in regard to wine parties. J. have to add 
 
Charles Pelham Villiers. 133 
 
 that Blake, the name of the Freshman who had been 
 asked by the college tutor to take me into hall, 
 had been some days before taken into hall by a 
 Freshman named Williamson, and these two Fresh- 
 men of that year remained among my friends as 
 long as one lived, and as long as the other remained 
 in England, for Blake told me that he was the 
 representative of the great Admiral of the Common- 
 wealth of England, whose eldest brother had gone 
 to America, and I surmise, for I never asked him 
 any questions, that he had property in the Southern 
 States of America.* But the point I wish to 
 bring out is this, that this American representative 
 of the great Commonwealth Admiral, who is reputed 
 by Sir Edward Hyde, afterwards Earl of Clarendon, 
 in a letter to Secretary Nicholas, to have said that 
 monarchy was a sort of government the world was 
 weary off — so far from holding the opinions, either 
 
 * Mr. Hepworth Dixon, in Ms Life of Robert Blake, 
 says, p. 21, " that the Admiral's eldest brother, after the 
 restoration, was persecuted for non- conformity, and at last 
 quitted this country for Carolina, where some of his descen- 
 dants still remain." 
 
 t " That you may see how brave and open-dealing your 
 friends of the new Commonwealth are, Blake, at his late 
 being at Cadiz, said openly that monarchy is a kind of govern- 
 ment the world is weary of, that it is past in England, going 
 
134 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 of Robert Blake or George Washington, as to 
 royalty — had adopted the opinions of those against 
 whom Robert Blake and George Washington 
 fought ; for he used to say it was unlucky for him 
 that Admiral Blake had served under the Common- 
 wealth since, if he had served under a King he, as 
 his representative, would have inherited a peeragei 
 a peerage which the great " admiral and general at 
 sea" would have declined. 
 
 To minds weary of the constantly recurring 
 spectacle of savage party spirit, rising at times into 
 fury, at other times wearing that degraded form of 
 malignity which has received in England the name 
 of spite — which has been described as in some 
 natures surviving all the other faculties, so as to 
 give rise to the words — " his power gone — his spite 
 immortal — a dead nettle " — there is a singular 
 pleasure in turning to the testimony of the opposite 
 party — of Clarendon, of Johnson, of Hume, to the 
 valour and integrity of Robert Blake. The subject 
 seems to rouse even Hume into enthusiasm.. " Never 
 man," he says, " so zealous for a faction, was so 
 
 in France, and that it must get out of Spain with more 
 gravity, but in ten years it would be determined there like- 
 wise." — Sir Edward Hyde to Secretary Nicholas, Madrid, 
 February 9, 1651 (Clarendon State Papers, vol. iii., p. 27). 
 
Charles Pelham Villiers. 135 
 
 much respected and esteemed, even by the opposite 
 factions." 
 
 Blake's fate as to a peerage is suggestive and 
 significant as to the peerage question. If a peer- 
 age were intended as a public recognition of great 
 public services, never man had earned a peerage 
 more truly than Robert Blake. If Blake had lived 
 at the time when peers were persons who wore a 
 coat of mail and not a footman's livery, his fate 
 would have been at least to escape the ignominy of 
 the " mean revenge " which insulted his body by 
 dragging it from the place where it had been 
 entombed " with," says Johnson, " all the funeral 
 solemnity due to the remains of a man so famed for 
 his bravery, and so spotless in his mtegrity." 
 
 Whatever weight may be attached to the inves- 
 tigation of the Lords' Committee on the subject ol 
 the Barones Majores having the right to sit in the 
 Legislative Assemblies without being summoned 
 by the King's Writ, it must be evident that peers 
 who levied war against the Plantagenets were a 
 different order of persons from peers who might 
 bear the very titles of the Nevilles and the Percies 
 under the Tudors and the Stuarts. Robert Cecil, 
 Earl of Salisbury, was a very different Earl of 
 Salisbury from Richard Nevill, Earl of Salisbury 
 
136 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 and Warwick, who fell at the Battle of Barnet, and 
 among whose dying words Shakspeare has written 
 these— "Who liv'd King, but I could dig his 
 grave ?" Whether he used these words or not it 
 is certain he and Hotspur and others were very 
 different sort of peers from the persons bearing the 
 name of peers who were the courtiers or footmen 
 of the Tudor s and the Stuarts. Footman is the 
 proper word. Is not the court dress at this day 
 the dress of a footman ? And as every peer 
 puts on that dress at certain times, by doing so he 
 transforms himself into a court footman. Is a 
 court footman a proper and fit legislator for a 
 great nation ? A great soldier, a Marlborough or 
 Wellington, owes his distinction not to being a 
 peer but to being a great soldier. Of the two 
 greatest admirals one did not live to bear the title 
 of earl; and the body of the other was torn from 
 its receptacle in Westminster Abbey, and cast like 
 that of a masterless dog — for a dog that has a 
 master is decently buried — into a pit. This was 
 the fate of a man whom even Samuel Johnson, 
 while bestowing on Hampden no more honourable 
 name than that of" the zealot of rebellion," censures 
 for acting on one occasion with temeritj'^, in terms 
 which may indicate the degree of his panegyric — 
 
Charles Pelham VilUers. 137 
 
 " We must thus admit," he says, " amidst our 
 eulogies and applauses, that the great, the wise, 
 and the valiant Blake was once betrayed to an 
 inconsiderate and desperate enterprise, by the 
 resistless ardour of his own spirit, and a noble 
 jealousy of the honour of his country." 
 
 T wiU quote here some words which I have used 
 in another place* : — 
 
 " From the time of the expulsion of the Long Parliament 
 by Cromwell, if we except Blake — who continued to fight the 
 foreign enemies of England, but who never, in any sense, 
 became the creature of Cromwellf — none of the great spirits 
 whose fixedness of purpose, intensity of will, and fierce yet 
 single-minded and unselfish enthusiasm, had fought the great 
 fight for liberty in the hall of debate as well as on the field of 
 battle, had borne down before them the opposition alike of 
 adverse opinions and of hostile armies, and extorted even from 
 enemies a reluctant admiration, ever more acted with Crom- 
 well. . . . Whatever vices or infirmities those men might 
 have had, they had not the vices and infirmities of slaves or 
 cowards — of quacks, of liars, of renegades." 
 
 * " History of the Commonwealth of England," vol. ii., 
 pp. 478, 479 (London : John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1867). 
 
 f " Neither Blake himself, nor his brother Benjamin, nor 
 his nephew Robert, ever set their hands to the declaration of 
 approval of Cromwell's expulsion of the Parliament, to which 
 Cromwell obtained the signatures of Deane, Monk, Penn, and 
 many of the captains of the ships " (Ibid., p. 478). See the 
 declaration in Granville Penn's " Memorials of Sir Wm. 
 Penn," vol. i., pp. 489-491 (London, 1833). 
 
138 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 A modern hero-worshipper who has taken Crom- 
 well for one of his heroes in reference to Cromwell's 
 expulsion of the Rump declares he knows not in 
 Avhat eyes are tears at their departure, except it be 
 their own. 
 
 A friend of mine who wrote a review that 
 that tended much to the success of a former work 
 of this writer, said to me of his work on Cromwell 
 that he had sacrificed everyone to Cromwell, and 
 had not made much of him. This hero-worshipper 
 has been very profuse of his scorn and reprobation 
 towards those members of the Rump who did not 
 lick the dust before CromweU. The fault of each 
 of those opponents of Cromwell is that he is not a 
 " royal man." He then makes another outcry for 
 "a royal man;" and all that he has to say of the 
 fate of the men who refused submission to a tyrant, 
 whether his name was Stuart or Cromwell, is such 
 cowardly scurrility as this — " peppery Scot's hot 
 head wiU go up on Temple Bar." Thomas Scot's 
 last words in Parliament, as reported in Burton's 
 Diary, are these, and they are words such as hero- 
 worshippers are not apt to use : — 
 
 " I would, be content it should ,be set upon my monument 
 — if it were my last act, I own it — I was one of the king's 
 judges. I hope it shall not be said of us, as of the Romans 
 once, ' homines ad servitutem parati !' " 
 
Charles Pelham Villiers. 139 
 
 I shall be told by the critics, as I have been told 
 by them before, that I am digressing from the 
 strict subject-matter, namely, the struggles of the 
 opponents of the Com Laws; and perhaps I shall 
 be asked what have Robert Blake and Thomas 
 Scot in common with Charles Pelham Villiers and 
 Richard Cobden? My answer is that as Robert 
 Blake and Thomas Scot strove against the Divine 
 Right of the Stuart Kings, Charles Pelham ViUiers 
 and Richard Cobden strove against the Divine 
 Right of the Landlords, whose manifesto may be 
 summed up in the words of a certain Irish- English 
 peer whose English peerage dates from 11th 
 August, 1815, and is therefore coeval with the 
 Corn Laws. The wisdom and far-seeing intelli- 
 gence of this noble lord, who had considerable 
 landed estates and held for some years the post of 
 prime minister of a country, the energy and intelli- 
 gence of the inhabitants of which have made it 
 famous and powerful over the world, in spite of such 
 prime ministers as he, prompted him in the debate 
 in the House of Lords, March 14, 1839, on Lord 
 Fitzwilliam's Resolutions condemning the Corn 
 Laws, to give utterance to these words : — 
 
 " To leave the whole agricultural interest without protec- 
 tion, I declare before God that I think it the wildest and 
 
140 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 maddest scheme that has ever entered into the imagination 
 of man to conceive." 
 
 To contend against such reasoning there was 
 need of a mind which, like that of Mr. Villiers, 
 had been trained to that rigid analysis of the 
 principles of economic science which enables it to 
 detect a fallacj' at a glance, and to set forth a truth 
 with the simple force and clearness that are best 
 fitted to give it a fair chance of success. 
 
 At the General Election of 1826, Mr. C. P. 
 Villiers was one of the candidates for the repre- 
 sentation of Hull. The writer of a letter in a 
 Hull paper of May, 1883, says : — 
 
 " Noticing that on Mr. C. P. Villiers's cards were the words, 
 ' Vote for VilHers and Cheap Bread,' it struck me that it must 
 point to the right hon. ootogenai-ian Member for Wolver- 
 hampton, whom all England will for ever hold in affectionate 
 remembrance for being the first to agitate for the removal of 
 the tax on food." 
 
 The writer of the letter also says that he copied 
 from a MS. in his possession, certain particulars 
 relating to Mr. Villiers's family, the contest at Hull, 
 the public offices Mr. Villiers had held, and took 
 the liberty of forwarding the same, requesting to 
 know if there was any truth in the statements 
 therein. Mr. Villiers replied, with his usual 
 
Charles PelTiam Villiers. 141 
 
 courtesy, and gave his testimony to the general 
 accuracy of the statements in the MS. referred to 
 as being in the possession of his correspondent. 
 So that Mr. Villiers was, in 1826, in the field which 
 General (then Major) Thompson entered in 1827, 
 by the publication of his celebrated " Catechism 
 on the Corn Laws." 
 
 In 1827 Mr. ViUiers was called to the Bar, and 
 in 1832 he was an Assistant-Commissioner under 
 the Royal Commission appointed to make a full 
 inquiry into the practical operation of the Poor 
 Laws. Being one of those employed under the 
 same Commission of Inquiry, I had then for the 
 first time the honour of his acquaintance, and also 
 the advantage to be derived from seeing the actual 
 working of the English system of Poor Laws. 
 
 Mr. Villiers would probably, after devoting to 
 the subject the time and labour required for a 
 thorough survey of it, arrive at the following 
 among other conclusions : — 
 
 That in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth 
 centuries the wages of the agricultural labourer in 
 England were such as to procure for him nearl}^, if 
 not quite, double the quantity of food which his 
 wages between 1740 and 1794 procured; and that 
 the wages obtained by him from 1834 to 1844, as 
 
142 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 measured by the quantity of produce, were con- 
 siderably less than in the period between 1740 and 
 1794. 
 
 That under the combined operation of the Poor 
 Law of 1796 and the Corn Law of 1815, the wages 
 of agricultural labour were lower, and the condition 
 of the agricultural labourer was worse, than at any 
 former period, except that in which the Poor Law 
 of Elizabeth was passed. Mr. Villiers's labour as 
 an Assistant Poor Law Commissioner " brought 
 him^" says the writer of the Political Memoir 
 prefixed to his Free Trade Speeches, " into 
 direct contact with the labouring classes, and 
 introduced him to one of the most instructive 
 branches of political science." Mr. Villiers may 
 indeed have thus seen more clearly the efifects of 
 the combined operations of two bad laws upon the 
 condition of all classes except the receiver of rent, 
 and this would be of use to him in his free trade 
 labours. 
 
 Whether his duties as Secretary to the Master of 
 the Rolls and Examiner in the Court of Chancery 
 enlarged his political views^ I cannot take upon me 
 to say. 
 
 Wolverhampton had always sought as represen- 
 tatives the opponents of the Corn Laws. It 
 
Charles Pelham Villiers. 143 
 
 returned for its first Member, Mr. Whitmore, who 
 lost no opportunity of denouncing the injustice 
 of the Corn Laws. When Mr. Whitmore died he 
 was succeeded by Mr. VUliers, and the connection 
 thus formed has not since been interrupted. From. 
 1835 to 1884 when these words are written is a 
 period of forty-nine years; and I think it would 
 be difficult, if not impossible, to find a case similar 
 to that afforded by Wolverhampton and Mr. C. P. 
 Villiers, of mutual esteem and mutual confidence 
 between the electors and the elected. 
 
 In 1837 Mr. Villiers Avas chosen by the Liberals 
 assembled at Sir William Molesworth's to become 
 their leader in the House of Commons on the 
 question of the Repeal of the Corn Laws. He 
 introduced this subject March 15, 1838, and 
 repeated his motion every year for eight years. 
 Mr. Villiers had to fight many battles against the 
 Corn Laws, so many and against such odds that, 
 — and I hope the illustration will not be deemed 
 inappropiate — when on the 10th of June, 1845, 
 Mr. Villiers brought forward his eighth and last 
 motion for the Repeal of the Corn Laws the cir- 
 cumstances of the case with its gloomy fortunes 
 in the past and the dark clouds lowering over the 
 future, may well recall the celebrated story told of 
 
144 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 the exile of Rachrin who won at last the great 
 Battle of Bannockburn. 
 
 Robert Bruce, when lying one morning on his 
 wretched bed, deliberating whether he had not 
 better resign his enterprise of making good his 
 right to the Scottish crown, and happening to look 
 up to the roof of the cabin in which he lay, saw a 
 spider hanging at the end of a long thread of its 
 own spinning, and trying to swing itself from one 
 beam in the roof to another for the purpose of 
 fixing the line on which it meant to stretch its web. 
 The spider made the attempt repeatedly and failed 
 each time. Bruce counted that it had tried and 
 failed six times; and bethought him that he had 
 fought six battles against the English. He then 
 resolved that if the spider should make another 
 effort and succeed, he would try his fortune in 
 Scotland a seventh time. The spider made another 
 exertion and succeeded in fastening its thread to 
 the beam which it had so often in vain attempted 
 to reach. Bruce seeing the success of the spider 
 resolved to try his fortune again, and as he had 
 never before won a battle he never after lost one. 
 Sir Walter Scott says : — 
 
 " I have often met with people of the name of Bruce, so 
 completely persuaded of the truth of this story, that they 
 
Charles Pelham Villiers. 145 
 
 would not on any account kill a spider ; because it was that 
 insect wliicli had shown the example of perseverance, and 
 given a signal of good luck to their great namesake." 
 
 It is interesting to compare Mr. Villiers's jSrst 
 speech on the Corn Laws in the House of Com- 
 mons, made March 15, 1838, with Mr. Cobden's first 
 speech in the House of Commons, made August 25, 
 1841. In this, his first speech in the House of 
 Commons, Mr. Villiers spake these words : — 
 
 " I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that thousands are now 
 withdrawing their confidence from the Legislature in conse- 
 quence of the manner in which they observe that it deals 
 with the general interests of the country. And with respect 
 to this question in particular, there is a tone assumed and a 
 temper shown that no wise man can view without alarm ; for 
 they proceed not from those from whom violence is to be 
 apprehended, but from those on whom we must depend 
 to suppress violence whenever it may occur — ^men whose 
 intelligence gives strength to their feelings, and who now 
 openly avow their despair of justice from this House because 
 they observe that the power of those who passed these 
 Laws, and who still insist upon maintaiaing them, has been 
 strengthened by the Reform Bill."* 
 
 This significant remark seems to have escaped 
 the observation of Mr. Cobden, who was not inclined 
 to believe that there could be much difficulty in 
 
 * Villiers's Free Trade Speeches, vol. i., pp. 3, 4. 
 
 10 
 
146 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 obtaining Repeal from the Reformed Parliament, 
 until he happened one night (February 19, 1839), 
 about two years before he became a Member of 
 the House, to be present as "a stranger" and 
 witness the treatment which Mr. Villiers, when 
 advocating Repeal,, experienced from the Pro- 
 tectionists. From a speech of Mr. Villiers' s at 
 Salford, on the occasion of unveiling Mr. Cobden's 
 statue, it appears that Cobden suddenly left the 
 House, returned to Lancashire that night, and 
 determined that he would never cease to agitate 
 until the public should be apprised of the character 
 of those laws and the difficulty of repealing them. 
 
 Mr. Cobden said, in his first speech in the House 
 of Commons, August 25, 1841 : — 
 
 " What are these taxes upon food ? They are taxes levied 
 upon the great body of the people, and hon. gentlemen 
 opposite, who show such sympathy for the working classes 
 after they have made them paupers, cannot deny my right 
 to claim on their behalf that those taxes should be a primary 
 consideration. I have heard them called Protection ; bat 
 taxes they are, and taxes they shall be in my mouth, as long 
 as I have the honour of a seat in this House. The bread- 
 tax is a tax primarily levied upon the poorer classes; it is a 
 tax, at the lowest estimate, of 40 per cent, above the price we 
 should pay if there were a free trade in corn. The report 
 upon the handloom-weavers puts down ten shillings as the 
 estimated weekly earnings of a family. It moreover states 
 
Charles Pelham VilUers. 147 
 
 that out of ten shillings each family expends five shillings 
 on bread. The tax of 40 per cent, is, therefore, a tax of 
 20 per cent, upon the earnings of every labouring man's 
 family earning ten shillings a week. How does it operate 
 as we proceed upwards in society ? The man with forty 
 shillings a week pays an income-tax of 5 per cent. ; the man 
 of £250 a year pays but 1 per cent. ; and the nobleman or 
 millionaire, with an income of £200,000 a year, and whose 
 family consumes no more bread than that of the agricultural 
 labourer, pays less than one halfpenny in every £100. 
 (Laughter.) I know not whether the laugh 'is at the 
 monstrous character of the case, or at the humble individual 
 who states it ; but I repeat that the tax upon the nobleman 
 is less than one halfpenny per cent., while upon the poor 
 man's family it is £20 per cent. I am sure there is not an 
 hon. member in the House who would dare to bring in a bill 
 to levy an income-tax on all grades of society upon a scale 
 similar to this, and yet I maintain that the bread-tax is such 
 a tax, and is levied, not for the purposes of the State, but for 
 the benefit of the richest portion of the community. That is 
 a fair statement of the tax upon bread. I can sympathize 
 with the incredulity of hon. gentlemen opposite, but if they 
 knew the case as it really is, and felt it as they would if 
 they did know it, they would also feel that they could not 
 lie down to rest in comfort or safety if they voted for such 
 a tax. . . . Let me remind the House, that the parties who 
 have so patiently struggled for three years past for a hearing 
 at your bar, have never been allowed to state their case ; that 
 the hon. Member for Wolverhampton (Mr. Charles Villiers) 
 — for whose great and incessant services I, in common with 
 millions of my fellow-countrymen, feel grateful — when he 
 
 10 * 
 
148 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 proposed that the case of those millions should be heard at 
 the bar, had the proposition scouted and spurned ; and that, 
 when they had denied them a hearing, they proceeded to 
 misrepresent their motives."* 
 
 One of the difficulties Mr. Villiers had to contend 
 with I can well understand from having experienced 
 it myself when employed in an inquiry into the 
 condition of the farm labourers in Wilts, Dorset, 
 and Somerset, in the winter of 1844-5. The 
 difficulty was that the Anti-Corn Law movement 
 incurred the disadvantage of being represented 
 — or misrepresented — as a purely manufacturers' 
 agitation, got up and set agoing for the purpose of 
 lowering the wages of their workmen, and thereby 
 enabling them to compete on more equal terms 
 with other nations. I remember making Mr. Cobden 
 very angry for a moment by telling him that some 
 of the persons I met with in Wilts, Dorset, and 
 Somerset, in December and January, 1844-5, 
 puzzled me extremely at times by saying that Mr. 
 Cobden sometimes said the Repeal would raise 
 wages, sometimes that it would lower them. 
 
 Mr. Cobden was in the position of a counsel 
 who is employed in a case of vast importance, 
 beset with complications and difficulties ; and he 
 
 * Cobden's Speeches, vol. i., pp. 3-5. 
 
Charles Pelhara Villiers. 149 
 
 showed the abilities of an advocate of a very high 
 order. I cannot undertake to say that he never 
 made the conflicting statements which have been 
 mentioned ; but I have at this distance of time a 
 distinct recollection of being met with the objections 
 above mentioned when I was on that inquiry into 
 the condition of the farm labourers in Wilts, 
 Dorset, and. Somerset, in December, 1844, and 
 January, 1845. 
 
 My impression is in agreement with that of 
 others who have laboured in the cause of Free 
 Trade and, nevertheless, were not traders. At the 
 same time, it is to be noted, with reference to Sir 
 W. Napier's expression, " the cold, calculating 
 baseness of commercial avarice," that avarice is 
 avarice, whether it be commercial or non-com- 
 mercial, civil or military ; whether it animates the 
 breasts of merchants and manufacturers, or of squires, 
 lords, kings and queens. The persons probably 
 most free from its tyranny are such persons as 
 laboured for Free Trade without being actuated 
 by any very strong passion to increase their real 
 or personal property: the objects that employed 
 their thoughts, and might be termed the objects of 
 their ambition, being looked upon as visionary and 
 fantastic by the men who considered either mon«y 
 
150 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 or land as the only things worth having and worth 
 striving for. 
 
 Mr. Villiers's position under these difficulties 
 has been described with singular clearness in the 
 Political Memoir which forms an introduction to 
 Mr. Villiers's Free Trade Speeches : — 
 
 " His keen perception made him acutely sensitive of the 
 embarrassments to whicli the predominance of one body of 
 men in the movement exposed the cause of Repeal iu both 
 Houses of Parliament ; whilst their comparative ignorance of 
 Parliamentary procedure, and the stubborn strength that was 
 arrayed against them in the Legislature, placed them in no 
 little danger, in their impatience of temporary defeat and 
 the consciousness of numerical superiority in the country, of 
 compromising the cause by such acts of indiscreet zeal as 
 could only retard the object they had in view."* 
 
 Mr. Villiers's situation was one beset with 
 difficulties which it is not easy to analyze com- 
 pletely. That Mr. Villiers's difficulties in the 
 House of Commons arose from no want of power 
 as an advocate, as far as the most honourable 
 functions of an advocate are in question, is shown 
 by the declaration of a political adversary whose 
 debating powers rendered him a competent judge 
 of parliamentary speaking. Mr. Disraeli, when 
 
 * Villiers's Free Trade Speeches, Political Memoir, p. xxxiv. 
 
Charles Pelham VilUers. 151 
 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1852 in Lord 
 Derby's administration, said : — 
 
 " I may say tliat he may look back with proud self-com- 
 placency to the time when I remember him sitting on almost 
 the last bench on this side of the House, and bringing 
 foPTvard, with the command of a master of the subject, never 
 omitting a single point, and against all the prejudices of his 
 audience, the question of the Corn Laws. There were no 
 cheers then from the followers of Sir Robert Peel. There 
 were no enthusiastic adherents then in a defunct Whig 
 ministiy. On the contrary, the right honourable baronet, 
 the meaiber for Carlisle, came forward and threw his broad 
 shield over the territorial interest of England ; and anybody 
 but the honourable and learned member for Wolverhampton 
 would have sunk in the unequal fray. I honour, respect and 
 admire him, but I cannot agree to his Resolutions." 
 
 The uphill battle that the Anti-Corn Law 
 League had to fight is exemplified in the meeting 
 held at Colchester on the 8th of July, 1843, in 
 support of the repeal of the Corn Laws. It is 
 hardly necessary to say that Colchester was a 
 stronghold of Conservatism, as far as Conservatism 
 meant the preservation of the Corn Laws, since it 
 would have been difficult at that time to find any 
 considerable town in Britain which was not such a 
 stronghold. A large majority of the landholders 
 and clergy throughout England was in favour 
 of the Corn Laws, and a large majority of the 
 
152 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 thousands of people assembled at the Colchester 
 meeting from all parts of the country was expected 
 by the Protectionists to be in favour of the main- 
 tenance of the Corn Laws and against the advocates 
 of Repeal. Indeed violence to the latter yas 
 apprehended and special constables were sworn /in. 
 Never perhaps was the eflfect of Mr. Cobd^n's 
 speaking, which, to borrow the well-chosen -v^rds 
 of Mr. Bright, " was so simple and easy and ttue," 
 more wonderfully manifested than on this occasion. 
 The farmers at first refused to listen tc/ him. 
 Before the end of his speech he won their attention 
 if not their acquiescence. ' 
 
 Mr. Villiers, who followed Sir John Tyrrell, was 
 received with great cheering, and closed hi^ speech 
 with a passage thus reported : — 
 
 " If the people get poorer, can the farmer get rich while 
 his customers are declining ? [' No.'] And if competition 
 compels him to give the highest price for his land, can 
 he pay his rent if the produce falls in price ? [' No, no.'] 
 Where then is the advantage to any one in such an unnatural 
 regulation ? The Com Laws have lasted twenty-eight years ; 
 what good have they done you ? You are now called upon 
 to make known your sentiments on the subject. Ton are 
 summoned here as jurors before your country ; and after a 
 full and fair trial of these Laws, you are bound to declare 
 your verdict upon them. What do you say ? Are the Corn 
 
Charles Pel}M7n Villiers. 153 
 
 Laws guilty or not guilty ? [Loud cries of ' Guilty ! ' and 
 some cries of 'No.'] Well, then, you who think that they 
 ought to be abolished speak out like men — in a manner no 
 longer to be misunderstood ; and never again allow yourselves 
 to be misrepresented as wishing to perpetuate a system 
 fraught with folly and injustice, and unattended with real 
 benefit to any one. Thanking you sincerely for the attention 
 that you have given me, I will now make way for those who 
 may be waiting to address you."* 
 
 Rents had been rising for a good many years 
 before the passing of the 1815 Corn Laws, which 
 in 1843 had, as Mr. Villiers says, lasted for twenty- 
 eightf years. They continued to rise steadily 
 under the Corn Laws of 1815. The landlords 
 being thus prosperous maintained that the Corn 
 Laws being good for them were good for what 
 they called the agricultural interest. The Corn 
 Laws raised rents. Did they raise profits and 
 wages ? Are men to conclude from the fact that 
 the farmers, or some of them, hunted in red coats, 
 and occasionally killed foxes, that the Corn Laws 
 had raised their profits as they had raised their 
 landlord's rents ? 
 
 * Yilliers's Free Trade Speeches, vol. ii., p. 61. 
 
 t I suppose Mr. Villiers means the Law of 1815, which, 
 together with some subsequent modifications of it, may 
 receive the plural name of Corn Laws. 
 
154 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 "I am no orator," said Mr. Yilliers* in ]iis speech in 
 Covent Garden Theatre, July 3, 1844, " I simply stated facts, 
 in support of my Resolutions, disclosing the distress of the 
 people. And I asked for an answer; I asked for a proof 
 that the Com Laws were not an injury to the people. How 
 was I met ? Do you thiuk that if they could have proved 
 that the labourers were well off they would not have done so ? 
 Do you think that if the farmers could have been shown to 
 have benefitted in one single respect, or if advantages resulted 
 to anybody but themselves from these Laws, we should not 
 have heard of it ? " 
 
 In his speech at Colchester, July 8, 1843, 
 Mr. Villiersf said: — 
 
 " We sometimes tell them in the House that the special 
 object of the Corn Laws is to keep up rents. But they 
 always say in reply that this is a vulgar view of the question ; 
 that if rent were the object of the Com Laws, there would 
 be no difficulty in getting rid of them ; that country gentle- 
 men would give them up at once. What is the object then ? 
 They say that , the farmers and farm labourers are so well 
 pleased with these Laws for the good they have done them 
 that they won't hear of their being abolished. That they 
 are reaUy the people for whom the Corn Laws are wanted. 
 The farmers depend upon them for profit, and the labourer 
 gets good work and good wages by means of them. [' No.'] 
 Nevertheless, from the beginning to the end of a discussion 
 on the Corn Laws in the House of Commons, we hear of 
 
 * Villiers's Free Trade Speeches, vol. ii., p. 186. 
 t Ibid., vol. ii., p. 52. 
 
Charles Pelham Villiers. 155 
 
 notliing but of your [the farmers'] interests. Is it not, 
 therefore, consistent with, our sincerity in this cause that 
 we should come among you, and face to face talk over the 
 matter, and so learn your real feelings on the subject — 
 because, be it remembered, all are agreed now on the mischief 
 that the Corn Laws do to all other classes, and, as I have 
 already said, you [the farmers] alone are made the pretext 
 and excuse for their continuance ? Is it not reasonable and 
 laudable in Mr. Cobden to come here to discuss the question 
 with you, when there are so many things afloat to make one 
 believe that you are not properly represented ?— when people 
 declare that the Corn Laws have done you so much good ? — 
 when, as he says, you and your landlords are all jumbled up 
 together in a sort of family party, called the landed interest, 
 and are said to be so prosperous on account of them ?" 
 
 It appears from the evidence cited by Mr. Cobden 
 and Mr. Villiers that the capital of the tenantry 
 had been disappearing in the preceding ten, twelve, 
 or fifteen years; that many of the farmers had 
 become insolvent, the wages of labourers being 
 paid out of the farmers' capital. Mr. John 
 Houghton, a land agent on property in Lincoln, 
 Bucks, Middlesex, Surrey, Sussex, Northampton 
 and Suffolk, said : — 
 
 " When I have been paying workmen in provincial towns 
 they have said, ' You have all the money of the place for 
 rents, and the tenants cannot pay us.' "* 
 
 * Villiers's Free Trade Speeches, vol. ii., pp. 55, 56. 
 
156 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 Mr. W. Cox, of Scotsgrove, Bucks, said : — 
 
 " A great part of tlie farmers have failed ; and more than 
 half the rest, if they were to reckon, would be insolvent." 
 
 Mr. John Rolfe, Beaconsfield, Bucks, was 
 examined : — 
 
 " Do yoTi mean to say that one half of the tenantry in 
 your district are insolvent? — Tes, I do." 
 
 Mr. William Thurnall, Daxford, Cambridge, 
 says : — 
 
 " The condition of the tenantry is I think verging on 
 insolvency, not only in Cambridge, but in a great part of 
 Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex." 
 
 Mr. Charles Howard, East Riding, Yorkshire, 
 when asked — 
 
 " Are the present wages of labourers paid out of the profits 
 of the farmer or out of his capital?" said — "Out of his 
 capital." 
 
 Mr. J. G. Cooper, Blythburgh, Suffolk :— 
 
 " What is the state of the farmer ? — The condition of the 
 farmer I consider to be bordering on ruin."* 
 
 In a former page I have quoted some words of 
 a Whig Minister, which are remarkable for several 
 things ; but passing over those words that are 
 intended to convey the ministerial sense of the 
 
 * Villiers's Free Trade Speeches, vol. ii., pp. 55, 56. 
 
Charles Pelham Villiers. 157 
 
 Minister's knowledge and wisdom and the ignorance 
 and folly of all who condemn the Corn Laws, I 
 will call attention to one word in particular. The 
 noble lord says :— i 
 
 " To leave the whole agricultural interest without Pro- 
 tection ; I declare before God that I think it the wildest and 
 maddest scheme that has ever entered into the imagination 
 of man to conceive." 
 
 By the word whole here prefixed to agricultural 
 interest, the noble lord makes the usual assumption 
 that, the agricultural interest comprehended the 
 farmers and the labourers in the same sense as it 
 comprehended the landlords — certainly a strong 
 assumption, since an opinion has prevailed some- 
 what extensively that rent and profits, and rent 
 and wages do not vary in a direct but in an inverse 
 ratio. 
 
 Lord Fitzwilliam's resolutions condemning the 
 Corn Laws were rejected in the House of Lords, 
 March 14, 1839, by 224 to 24. Mr. Villiers's motion 
 in the House of Commons, made March 12, 1839, 
 after a debate of five nights, was rejected by 342 to 
 195. The result was the organization of the Anti- 
 Corn Law League. The Council of the League was 
 formed of the executive committee of the Manchester 
 Anti-Corn Law Association, which the League 
 
158 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 absorbed. The central offices of the League were 
 established at Manchester. 
 
 There is an argument mentioned by Mr. Villiers 
 in his speech in the House of Gpmmons, May 26, 
 1840, contained in the answers of the handloom 
 weavers to the Handloom Commissioners, which, 
 as Mr. Villiers observes, is not urged altogether 
 without reason.* The handloom weavers say : — 
 
 " We have as good a right to have a tax imposed upon 
 machinery as the landowners have to a tax upon the produce 
 of more fertile soils. The country in the last case is taxed 
 for the benefit of a class : we have an equal claim to a tax on 
 machinery ; for the principle is the same : it is taxing the 
 community for the benefit of a few." 
 
 And they say further that if the Legislature will 
 neither act wisely as regards the public and repeal 
 the Laws, nor consistently towards them by taxing 
 machinery, then they will seek to be represented 
 more faithfully in this House than they are at 
 present. They claim the suffrage with the view of 
 getting justice ; and it is a strange spectacle to see 
 the persons who have got hold of the soil of this 
 country, or of any country, setting up a claim to 
 compel all the inhabitants of the country to go 
 
 * Villiers's Free Trade Speeches, vol. i., p. 209. 
 
Charles Pelham Villiers. 159 
 
 to their shop, and no other shop in the world, to 
 buy their bread. Sometimes it was salt in which 
 the monopoly was set up. When Strafford was 
 attempting to make Charles I. a free, that is, an 
 absolute monarch, he recommended that the King 
 should be " sole merchant " of salt because, like 
 bread, it is " of absolute necessity, and may at all 
 times be raised in price — witness the gahelles of 
 salt in France."* Witness also some other things 
 which such statesmen as Strafford leave out of 
 their reckoning. 
 
 On the 8th of April, 1844, a deputation of the 
 League, including Mr. Cobden, Mr. Bright, and 
 Colonel Thompson, and accompanied by the two 
 borough Members, Mr. Villiers and Mr. Thornley, 
 visited Wolverhampton, where a meeting was held 
 in a large pavilion erected for the occasion, it 
 having been evident from the interest manifested 
 that no building in the town was large enough to 
 contain the numbers assembled. 
 
 Mr. Villiers began his speech by expressing the 
 great pleasure he experienced in observing the 
 numbers assembled to receive and welcome and 
 give cordial thanks to the distinguished men present, 
 
 * Strafford's Letters and Despatches, vol. i., p. 193. 
 
160 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 " whom," said Mr. Villiers, " T may term the 
 apostles of Freedom of Commerce." 
 
 "You were never deceived," said Mr. Villiers, 
 "by the jargon of Monopoly, which sought to 
 prove, if it sought to prove anything, that scarcity 
 is a blessing." To which fallacy Mr. Villiers once ' 
 heard a working man give this answer : "If 
 scarcity is such a good thing for the working 
 classes, what a blessing no food at all would be !" 
 
 In the course of his speech Mr. Villiers gave 
 some interesting illustrations of that strange 
 hallucination by which the landlords jumbled up 
 together in a sort of family party themselves as 
 lords of the soil, the tenant farmers, and the 
 labourers, and gave it the name of the landed 
 interest. 
 
 " The Leagae," says Mr. Villiers, " is now grappling well 
 with its two great opponents, Interest and Ignorance. It 
 is facing those who assert their interest in the Corn Laws, 
 and it tells them that the Laws are as foolish as they are 
 wrong. It seeks to enlighten the ignorant and to infuse a 
 little spirit into those who dare not call their souls their 
 own. It has drawn the great men of monopoly from their 
 retirement ; it has brought them before the public ; it has 
 made them speak out and show cause why these Laws 
 should not be abolished. And a pretty mess the great men 
 have made of their case. The wisdom of their former silence 
 
Charles Pelham Villiers. 161 
 
 has become striking even to themselves, I should think. 
 When men have nothing to conceal they may talk freely ; 
 but not otherwise, especially if they have been found out. 
 Sir Robert Peel, I believe, has admonished his friends that 
 silence is golden ; but the League has driven the squires mad, 
 and they will not be advised — they will talk. Formerly they 
 could say many things with impunity in Parliament that 
 now they cannot say with the least safety anywhere. They 
 used to tell the House how prosperous the farmer was, how 
 happy and how contented the labourers were, and how they 
 loved their lords. The farmers and labourei's never heard what 
 they said, and the Members for Wolverhampton were told, 
 if they ventured to object, that they knew nothing of the 
 farmers and labourers. Lately, however, the squires have 
 been saying these things in the counties, and within earshot 
 of the farmers. And at last the poor farmers all over the 
 country have been roused into thinking for themselves. And 
 they are asking themselves and one another, how it is that 
 the Corn Laws can have been so heneficial to them, seeing 
 that no good at all has ever been done them ; that for the 
 last twenty-eight years they have been very badly off — never 
 certain of anything — in short, worse off than their neighbours. 
 It is a little more than they can stand, to be told that laws 
 passed to keep up rents are all for their good, and that the 
 landlord cares nothing about his rent. The farmers have 
 been questioning and thinking about this for the last year ; 
 and at last, as if they can endure it no longer, a thing has 
 happened, the like of which, I suppose, has never happened 
 in this country before : two real live farmers from different 
 parts of the country, not known to each other, but both 
 precisely the kind of farmers said to be benefitted by the 
 
 11 
 
162 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 Corn Laws, came to London, and told Mr. Cobden that, if 
 there were an opportunity, they should be perfectly ready to 
 state the real case of the farmers at Covent Garden Theatre, 
 at one of the great meetings held there by the League. 
 Accordingly, about a fortnight ago they did so, and a very 
 strange tale they told about the blessings of Corn Laws to 
 them. Such a tale, indeed, that if there is any modesty in 
 the landlords, they will never again, as long as they live, 
 mention the farmers as an excuse for their monopoly. It is 
 impossible to do justice now to the narration of all the 
 mischief that the two farmers declared the Com Laws had 
 inflicted upon them, especially as farmers. But they defied 
 contradiction of anything that they said, and they have not 
 received any. They are noted as good farmers in their 
 counties, and are well known as estimable and able men in 
 other respects."* 
 
 Now that statues have been raised and clubs 
 formed in honour of the repeal of the Corn Laws, 
 it would be no easy matter to convey an idea of 
 the extremely hostile feeling that for some years 
 prevailed against the Anti-Corn Law League. It 
 was not merely the Tory party that evinced aver- 
 sion and contempt for the " men of cotton and 
 cant," as some of their organs in the press phrased 
 it. No Tory could have despised the men that 
 formed the bulk of the Anti-Corn Law League 
 more than the ministers, Lord Melbourne and 
 
 * Villiers's Free Trade Speeches, vol. ii., pp. 93-96. 
 
Ghdvles Pelham Villiers. 163 
 
 Lord Palmerston, who, without a shadow of pre- 
 tension to ancestors whose names appeared either 
 in the Domesday Survey or among the barons of 
 Magna Carta, looked down upon the "men of 
 cotton and cant " with a scorn as lofty as if they 
 had been able to prove an uninterrupted lineal 
 descent from a genuine pirate. Perhaps they 
 might have had means of proving such a descent, 
 for those who had seen slave ships used to say that 
 Lord . Palmerston seemed to them to have much 
 the appearance of the captain of a slaver. They 
 laughed at the Anti-Corn Law League and treated 
 its efforts to influence the mind of the public as 
 the tricks of mountebanks. Lord Granville, in his 
 speech at Wolverhampton, on the occasion of un- 
 veiling the statue of the Right Hon. C. P. Villiers, 
 on June 6, 1879, said : — 
 
 " An ofEer to him to become Governor of Bombay was 
 witbdrawn, in consequence of objections raised by the East 
 India Company, exclusively owing to the political antece- 
 dents of Mr. Villiers, and the low company he had kept in 
 his communications with the Anti-Corn Law League." 
 
 It is evident from this that Mr. Villiers derived 
 nothing but loss in the world at large from his 
 exertions in the cause of Corn Law Repeal. Those 
 who have had, like Mr. Disraeli, as he expressed it 
 
 11 * 
 
164 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 in the House of Commons, " the honour and grati- 
 fication of his acquaintance," may truly say that 
 Mr. ViUiers never acted in the matter with the 
 view to make capital for himself out of it, and was 
 really too well pleased with the result of all that 
 had occurred, ever to complain of being deliberately 
 snuffed out for the sake of the greater glorification 
 of others. Mr. ViUiers himself stated that being 
 by birth connected with the landed interest, and 
 having no kind of connection whatever with 
 manufactures,* he could not have acted in the 
 matter under the stimulus of commercial avarice. 
 
 Mr. ViUiers, in one of his speeches, used some 
 words which are full of meaning, though as in 
 the case of Antony's speech over Cesar's body, 
 they are somewhat misleading since Antony, while 
 saying, " I am no orator as Brutus is," was far 
 more of an orator than Brutus. 
 
 " I am no orator," said Mr. ViUiers in His speeoli in Covent 
 Garden . Theatre, July .3, 1844 ; " I simply stated facts in 
 support of my Resolutions, disclosing the distress of tlie 
 people. And I asked for an answer ; I asked for a proof that 
 the Corn Laws were not an injury to the people. "f 
 
 * Speech at Colchester, July 8, 1843. Villiers's Free 
 Trade Speeches, vol. ii., p. 53. 
 t Villiers's Free Trade Speeches, vol. ii., p. 186. 
 
Charles PelJiam VilUers. 165 
 
 Now, in the case of Mr. Villiers, the words " I 
 simply stated facts," have a meaning ; for the 
 word " fact " has a meaning impressed on it, and 
 strengthened by constant use for a good many ages. 
 In the vocabulary, however, of several eminent 
 forensic advocates, the word "fact" has not the 
 meaning it has in the vulgar tongue. But Mr. 
 Villiers' s ambition did not aspire to any place high 
 or low in the roll of eminent forensic advocates, 
 and when he said, " I am no orator, I simply state 
 facts," he meant to convey the same meaning that 
 an average man of honour would have conveyed by 
 the words — nothing more than that. Mr. VUliers 
 had too much self-respect to lie for a client, though 
 that client might be the English nation. Therefore 
 the conduct of the League in omitting, in their final 
 proceedings, all public recognition of their Parlia- 
 mentary leader was exceedingly strange — was 
 strange even to a degree of strangeness to which 
 a much stronger word belongs — to omit all public 
 recognition of a Parliamentary advocate, of whom, 
 and of what he had done for them, they had so 
 much cause to be proud. 
 
 And the special reason they had to be proud of 
 him was that he was no orator, and simply stated 
 facts — that he did not profess to have a command 
 
166 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 over facts — to have, in other words, a power of 
 making and unmaking facts at his pleasure. What 
 does that mean? And what does "no orator" 
 mean? Does it mean that it is part of the business 
 of an orator to make facts to suit his purpose? Is 
 it? Yet I hardly think Cicero made those '•'"facts " 
 about Antony in the second Philippi, which cost 
 the orator his life. The sting lay in the terrible 
 truth of them. One charge* went deeper from 
 Cicero's stating that he spoke from personal know- 
 ledge; for even in that depraved age of Eome, 
 men who shrunk from no vice shrunk from the 
 brand of disgrace implied in such a charge. 
 
 It may be not without use to state more fully 
 the meaning of the words, a command over facts. 
 
 "A command over facts" is understood to be 
 the distinctive quality of the highest paid advocates. 
 The reader may ask, what is a command over facts? 
 A command over facts is such a power as the 
 Creator exercised when He said, " Let there be 
 light," and there was light. An advocate of this 
 high order, when he wants facts, creates them for 
 the occasion, and marshalls them in the order and 
 array best suited to the purpose he has in view. 
 
 * Cic. Phil. 2, 18. 
 
Charles Pelham Villiers. 167 
 
 Such an advocate has been thus described by an 
 eminent lawyer who had occasion to watch his 
 career : — 
 
 "No advocate had a greater command over facts. His 
 statement of his client's case, and even his reading from the 
 evidence in the cause, would enchain the attention, and often 
 extort the admiration and astonishment of his adversaries and 
 the court — as if it were a romance." 
 
 An advocate of this type may be expected to get 
 more honour and more profit than an advocate who, 
 in the exercise of his duty, if he is entrusted with 
 the defence of a prisoner for murder, and on 
 examining the evidence sees that the crime cannot 
 be proved, will get off the criminal by showing that 
 the crime cannot be proved, but will not utter a 
 single word which he knows to be an untruth. 
 Such an advocate has very small chance of being 
 Lord Chancellor. The Reverend Sydney Smith 
 says in a letter to a son who was writing a life 
 of his father, and applied to Sydney Smith for 
 assistance as one of his father's friends : — 
 
 " Curran, the Master of the Rolls, said to Mr. Grattan, 
 ' Tou would be the greatest man of your age, Grattan, if you 
 would buy a few yards of red tape, and tie up your bills 
 and papers.' This was the fault or the misfortune of your 
 excellent father ; he never knew the use of red tape." 
 
168 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 The eminent person alluded to appears to have 
 been somewhat scantily rewarded for his services 
 by his very good friends the Whig Aristocracy. If 
 a very subordinate office was all the reward they 
 thought fit to bestow, it shows that it was a better 
 recommendation to high employment under a 
 Whig Administration to be a " relation of Lord 
 Grey's or a tool of Lord Brougham's " than to be 
 ' ' a consummate master of metaphysics and moral 
 philosophy, a profound historian, and an accom- 
 pHshed orator." However, the Rev. Sydney Smith 
 seems to think that it was not so much the posses- 
 sion of the qualities above indicated and the author- 
 ship of the VindiciEB Gallicse, as the want of 
 certain other qualities that hindered the promotion 
 of the individual alluded to, who, though he has 
 been called "an accomplished orator," was not an 
 orator — for orators are powerful and often arrogant 
 and grasping. Whereas the Eev. Sydney Smith 
 says of Sir James: — 
 
 " If he had been ai'rogant and grasping ; if lie had been 
 faithless and false ; if he had been always eager to strangle 
 infant genius in its cradle ; always ready to betray and to 
 blacken those with whom he sat at meat; he would have 
 passed many men, who, in the course of his long life, have 
 passed him." 
 
Charles Pelham VtUiers. 169 
 
 I have seen the advocate referred to as notable 
 for his great " command over facts" in the Court 
 of Chancery, and I have admired the himinous 
 conciseness of his statement of facts. I have 
 heard him in the Court of a Vice- Chancellor, who 
 was a most courteous and good-humoured gentle- 
 man, enforce his argument in these words — " Your 
 Honour must feel, as a gentleman, that," &c., &c. 
 " Oh, yes ! Oh, yes !" replied his Honour, evi- 
 dently appreciating the compliment. It was most 
 curious to see this eminent advocate, when he 
 turned from addressing his Honour the Vice- 
 Chancellor to answer a question put to him by the 
 counsel on the opposite side, how instantaneously 
 the purr of the domestic cat with which he had 
 been addressing the Vice-Chancellor changed into 
 the angry growl of the tiger when he answered 
 his opponent's question. This man used to say, 
 when a somewhat dubious case was submitted to 
 him — "Well, we can get a decree" (from this 
 Vice-Chancellor) ; " but then the Chancellor will 
 upset it." 
 
 This shows, in regard to the question as to what 
 oratory can do and what it cannot do, that the 
 character of the audience is a most important 
 
170 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 factor in the problem. Where the audience is a 
 single judge, or more than a single judge, or a 
 jury, an adroit advocate may so mould his discourse 
 as to obtain their suffrages. But I do not believe 
 that the most powerful orator that ever appeared 
 upon earth would, though he spoke with the 
 tongue of men and of angels when he asked for 
 an abolition of the bread-tax, get a single vote 
 from a House of Commons or a House of Lords 
 composed of landowners who had prospered as 
 the British landlords had prospered by the high 
 price of corn and the consequent rise of rents. 
 
 It has been said with some truth that there is 
 no greatness without originality. By originality 
 I mean mental power sufficent to originate new 
 ideas. John Mill used to say that happiness 
 consisted in having work to do and doing it. A 
 friend of John Mill used to say that happiness 
 consisted in having new ideas. John Mill's esti- 
 mate of that friend may be inferred from the fact 
 that when the former was proposed as a member 
 of the Political Economy Club, he would only 
 consent to have his name brought forward on 
 the condition that his friend should be elected a 
 member of the club at the same time. The friend 
 
Charles Pelham Villiers. 171 
 
 of ]\Iill alluded to was one of the many subtle 
 thinkers who appear in this world, but live and 
 die unheard, leaving no name behind them. 
 
 The founders of the Cobden Club seem to have 
 adopted some words used by Mr. Cobden towards 
 the end of his " 1793 and 1853." The words used 
 by Mr. Cobden are " Peace on earth and good- will 
 towards men." The words used by the Club are 
 " Free Trade, Peace, Good-will among Nations," 
 accompanied by a somewhat grim effigy of their 
 new Messiah. There are certain memories sum- 
 moned up by those religious or quasi-religious 
 professions of unbounded philanthropy which 
 startle those who recall the beginning and the 
 end of the first French Eevolution. The Jacobin 
 Club did not say " Peace and Good Will among 
 nations," but it said " Liberty, Equahty, and Uni- 
 versal Philanthropy," the "universal philanthropy" 
 meaning in reality universal murder. 
 
 I will quote, on the subject of bringing religion 
 into the question when honesty would do, a writer 
 whose opinion respecting the new Messiah was 
 pretty much the same as mine, and who can 
 express much better than 1 can the peculiar points 
 of the question. General Perron et Thompson, 
 the writer I allude to, in his paper on '■' Saint 
 
172 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 Simonianism " in the thirty-second number of The 
 Westminster Review, says : — 
 
 " The thirteentli, fourteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth 
 sittings introduce religion. On which it is enough to state, 
 and leave every man to decide on its truth by his experience 
 — that there never was but one class of men that needlessly 
 introduced religion as the instrument of settling men's tem- 
 poral affairs, and but one other class that ever have submitted 
 to it. The world wants honest lawgivers, not pious ones. If 
 piety will make men honest, let them favour us with the 
 honesty, and keep the piety for God and their own con- 
 sciences. There never was a man that brought piety upon 
 the board when honesty would do, without its being possible 
 to trace a transfusion in the shape of money or money's worth 
 from his neighbour's pocket into his. The object of puzzling 
 the question with religion is clear. You cannot quarrel for 
 sixpences with the man who is helping you the way to heaven. 
 The man who wants your sixpences therefore assumes a 
 religious phraseology, which is cant ; and cant is fraud, and 
 fraud is dishonesty, and the dishonest should have a mark 
 set on them." 
 
 But as there may be clubs that profess philan- 
 thropy when they mean murder, so there may 
 be clubs that, without much profession of exalted 
 benevolence, brotherly love, and such rodomontade, 
 are really benefactors of mankind. The Political 
 Economy Club was a club of this kind. Professor 
 Bain, in his Life of James Mill, mentions an 
 
Charles Pelham Villiers. 173 
 
 iniportant service rendered to Free Trade by 
 James Mill in being one of the founders of the 
 Political Economy Club in 1821; an important 
 event which should have been recorded in the 
 Political Memoir prefixed to Mr. Villiers's Free 
 Trade Speeches. 
 
 The projector of the Political Economy Club 
 was Thomas Tooke, who drafted the Petition to 
 Parhament of 8th May, 1820, from tile Merchants 
 of London, in favour of Free Trade. The Club had 
 its origin in a small knot of Political Economists 
 who had for some time held evening meetings 
 at Ricardo's house for the discussion of economical 
 questions. 
 
 " The furthering of the Free Trade movement inaugurated 
 by the Merchants' Petition was the foremost object in the 
 view of the projectors of the Club. Mill was specially named 
 to draft the Rules, the original of which is still preserved in 
 his hand."* 
 
 Professor Bain adds in reference to the early 
 members of the Club : — 
 
 " The survivors among the early members of the Club well 
 remember Mill's crushing criticism of Malthus's speeches." 
 
 * Life of James Mill, by Alexander Bain, ll.d., Emeritus 
 Professor of Logic in the University of Aberdeen (London : 
 Longmans and Co., 1882), pp. 198, 199. 
 
174 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 Political Economy was not James Mill's strong 
 point, and if clearness of style was not Malthus's 
 strong point, James Mill made no discovery in 
 Political Economy to be compared to Malthus's 
 discovery of the principle of population. More- 
 over, as John Mill has shown, many of the con- 
 clusions of Ricardo and James Mill can only be 
 admitted if their premisses are admitted — which is 
 impossible. 
 
 Johnson defines Club (in his definition (4) of 
 that word) — " An assembly of good fellows, meet- 
 ing under certain conditions." Now, there are two 
 Clubs which demand our attention here — the 
 Pohtical Economy Club and the Cobden Club. 
 Whether or not the Political Economy Club could 
 be termed "an assembly of good fellows," it had 
 claims to be termed an assembly of sages, for 
 it contained among its members Ricardo and 
 Malthus, of whom the latter had discovered a law 
 as important to the human race as the law, the 
 discovery of which had made the name of Isaac 
 Newton immortal. 
 
 But if the Political Economy Club may be 
 called an assembly of sages, the Cobden Club can 
 hardly lay claim to such a designation. The 
 Cobden Club, indeed, at the time of the year when 
 
Charles Pelhatn Villiers. 175 
 
 after-dinner speeches are most in season, has a 
 dinner followed by speeches iu which Mr. Cobden 
 is duly glorified as the apostle of Free Trade. 
 Admitting that Richard Cobden was a remarkable 
 man, when a club assumes his name, it may be 
 asked, if so much of Cobden's mantle has fallen 
 upon the Cobden Club as to render it a remarkable 
 Club? and if so, what are its claims to distinction? 
 The Political Economy Club, though it contained 
 men of original thought, also contained men of 
 whom a subtle analysis is given in some words of 
 a letter of James Mill to Lord Brougham, dated 
 5th October, 1835, and published in Professor 
 Bain's Life of James Mill, p. 393. The words of 
 James Mill are these : — 
 
 " As for McCullocli, lie lias a knack at finding people 
 stealing from him ; though there is nothing in him to steal ; 
 for all that he has is either the opinion of some other previous 
 writer, or an error." 
 
 I do not presume to say that the Cobden Club 
 may not in the course of time favour the world 
 with discoveries. But I venture to doubt the 
 appearance of new ideas in answer to an advertise- 
 ment. The Cobden Club offers prizes for certain 
 Essays which they advertise as Cobden Club 
 Essays. I doubt if the most minute search could 
 
176 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 discover any prize essay that was worth printing. 
 The Principia of Newton and the Essay on the 
 Principles of Population of Malthus were not 
 prize essays. 
 
 There is some evidence on the subject of the 
 effect of prizes in the Calendars of the Enghsh 
 Universities. In the case of the Seatonian Prize, 
 the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cam- 
 bridge, the Master of Clare, and the G-reek Professor 
 are the judges, and have made the award now for 
 more than a hundred years. The poems which 
 obtained the prize were printed at the time; and 
 these poems have been published in two volumes ; 
 but it does not appear as yet that the effect has 
 been very great in the way of the immortality that 
 poets are supposed to desire. Indeed the success- 
 ful prizemen may be considered as somewhat 
 similarly situated with the writer who, according 
 to Byron, " cultivated much private renown in the 
 shape of Latin verses." It is not to be supposed 
 that the judges selected by the Cobden Club to 
 adjudicate the prize for the best Essay on the 
 future of Free Trade, have more chance of dis- 
 covering a pohtical economist who shall see further 
 than any preceding political economist, than the 
 judges selected by the University of Cambridge 
 
Charles Pelham VilKers. 177 
 
 have of discovering a poet who shall soar higher 
 than Shakspeare and Milton. 
 
 Mr. VUliers in a letter to me, of June 3, 1884, 
 says, there was nothing of which the man whose 
 name the Club bears had a greater horror than of 
 being made the hero of a tavern dinner. Mr. 
 VUliers in the same letter also says : — 
 
 " The Cobden Club, so far as it celebrates a great acbieve- 
 ment in our commercial History, enables a great many people, 
 by sending in tbeir subscriptions, to announce their adoption 
 of Free Trade views. The Club by means of annual sub- 
 scriptions and original payments upon entry receive, I believe, 
 a good deal of money, and much of this, as I have under- 
 stood, has been expended in the publication and circulation of 
 works on Free Trade, and of speeches of certain public men 
 which have been selected by the Secretary." 
 
 It follows that the Secretary of the Cobden Club 
 is invested with a certain amount of power bearing 
 the proportion to the power Mr. Cobden had when 
 the Anti-Corn Law League expended on the press 
 a thousand pounds a week which an unknown 
 quantity bears to a thousand pounds a week 
 
 12 
 
178 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE LANDLORDS. 
 
 Some of us who, like the old man in the story- 
 book, have " gone flying in the face of the Bible," 
 where, according to that old man's dutiful and 
 affectionate son " three score-and-ten's the mark ; 
 and no man with a conscience, and a proper 
 sense of what's expected of him, has any business 
 to hve longer," can bring up strange memories of 
 the days when George the Third was King and 
 his son was Regent. In those days of the Regency 
 the British landlords were glorious upon earth. 
 Their power seemed as firmly established as that 
 of Louis XIV. when the star of his prosperous 
 fortune was in its blazing zenith.* They had 
 
 * In a speech made in tlie House of Commons, February 
 26, 1846, Mr. Villiers said, " Up to the present time it has 
 been the boast of the landed proprietors that they have chosen 
 the Ministers of the Country." — Villiers' s Free Trade Speeches, 
 vol. ii., p. 332. 
 
The Landlords. 179 
 
 enriched themselves by a war, the most expensive 
 in which their country had ever been engaged. 
 The general who had conducted that war with 
 consummate ability was on their side. Everything 
 that had opposed them was prostrate in the dust ; 
 and the monarchical potentates of Europe were 
 banded together in a Holy Alhance to estabhsh 
 them, as Strafford wrote to Charles the First, " in 
 wealth, strength, and glory, far above any of their 
 progenitors."* 
 
 In this plenitude of power, the English, Scotch, 
 and Irish landlords could find little more for their 
 hearts to desire. Their palaces — for their old 
 manor-housesf were found too rude and too small 
 
 * Strafford's Letters and Despatches, vol. ii., pp. 61-62. 
 
 t Some of those manor-houses might suggest antiquity of 
 family. But the wars of the Roses had rooted up most of the 
 older families. I knew a manor-house from its belonging to 
 an old friend which once belonged to Robert Bruce, King of 
 Scotland. There was a moat round it of clear water full of 
 beautiful water-plants. It came to Robert Bruce in this way. 
 Bruce, Lord of Skelton and Anandale, gave Anandale to his 
 second son who complained to his father that he could not 
 get wheaten bread in Scotland. Thereupon his father gave 
 him the manor I have referred to, and another in Essex to 
 supply him with wheaten bread. I forget the name of the 
 manor in Essex, but I feel confidence in the accuracy of the 
 
 12 * 
 
180 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 for their rapidly expanding greatness — exhibited 
 every luxury that the planet on which they dwelt 
 could produce. All that the world possessed of 
 rich and rare, of gorgeous and beautiful, to tempt 
 the appetite and delight the eye, to gratify the 
 senses and feast the imagination, was theirs. All 
 the inventions of science, all the resources of art 
 contributed to their enjoyment. The most indus- 
 trious and ingenious people the world had ever 
 seen, was toiling jfrom morning to night and from 
 night to morning to procure them new pleasures, 
 to produce for them new discoveries in the arts of 
 luxury. And all this rested on a foundation of 
 military and naval force, so great that without 
 much of a metaphor it may be said, their armies 
 covered the earth, their navies swept the ocean.* 
 
 authority for this story, which I saw in. a paper in The 
 Quarterly Review, written, I believe, hy J. G. Lockhart, the 
 Editor of that Review, who was deeply read in historical 
 antiquities. 
 
 * The power of Great Britain is very well expressed in the 
 following passage of Mr. Cobden's work, entitled " 1793 and 
 1863," p. 64: — " The French have a lively recollection of the 
 terrible disasters they suffered from the implacable enmity 
 of oar government during the last war. They found them- 
 selves assailed by a feudal aristocracy, having at its command 
 the wealth of a manufacturing and mercantile people, thus 
 
The Landlords. 181 
 
 There was one element of their happiness, one 
 ingredient in their cup of prosperity; that must 
 not be passed over. They had a state-rehgion, 
 which, though it professed self-denial as the very 
 essence of it, and forbade unhcensed carnal pleasure 
 under the penalty of an eternity of carnal pain, 
 was dear to them as the very pleasantest of their 
 vices. There was a pungency of pleasure inde- 
 scribably refreshing to a faded appetite, in revelling 
 amid forbidden joys under the very eyes of the 
 hierarchs of the Church that forbade them. It was 
 true, the strict text was clear in regard to respect 
 of persons. But the living commentators could 
 expound the paradox. The ascetic precepts of 
 their state-religion might be good, very good for 
 men at large, but correctly interpreted they were 
 clearly not intended for persons of their quality, 
 and they might perhaps be of the opinion of a 
 court lady* of the time of Louis XIV. who, when 
 doubts of the salvation of the King's brother were 
 expressed in her presence, said very gravely, " I 
 assure you that with respect to people of that 
 quality, God thinks twice before damning them." 
 
 presenting the most formidable combination for warlike 
 purposes to be found recorded in the world's history." 
 
 * Madame la Marechale de Meilleraye. Nouveaux Memoires 
 cle Dangean, p. 82. 
 
182 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 A similarity has been said to be nothing but a 
 slight difference. When the difference becomes a 
 good deal more than slight, the similarity may 
 disappear and difference take its place. There is a 
 curious and interesting illustration of this subtle 
 connection between similarity and difference 
 afforded by the similarity and difference between 
 the French and English aristocracy. In the 
 eighteenth century the French aristocracy paid no 
 taxes. Was there ever a time when the English 
 aristocracy paid no taxes? In the nineteenth 
 century, as General Perronet Thompson has observed 
 in his Catechism on the Corn Laws, the English 
 aristocracy paid taxes and recovered them through 
 another tax, the Corn Law, that caused the com- 
 munity to lose the amount ten times over. On this 
 result Greneral Thompson observes, " We are pro- 
 digiously stupid. Our posterity will have very 
 little to say about the wisdom of their ancestors." 
 
 But the difference between the French and the 
 English aristocracy is here very curiously mani- 
 fested. The French aristocracy paid no taxes ; the 
 English aristocracy paid taxes but not their due 
 proportion of taxes; and recovered far more than 
 they paid through another tax, the Corn Law. 
 The French aristocracy were destroyed by the 
 people they had long robbed and oppressed. For 
 
The Landlords. 183 
 
 the English aristocracy, too, there might come a 
 day of reckoning. They were like the horse-leech 
 which had swallowed more blood than was good 
 for it, and its health required that its tail should 
 be dipped in salt. " And," says the writer above 
 quoted, " they may think themselves well off, that 
 this is all. They will have their tails salted yet, 
 they may depend upon it; as certainly as the 
 manufacturers would, if they had been all this time 
 laying a duty on home-grown corn." 
 
 The landlord class, including simple squires as 
 well as the titled nobiHty, in its relation to the 
 trading and professional classes, somewhat re- 
 sembled the French noblesse before the Revolution 
 in its relation to the bourgeoisie. For more than 
 the first quarter of the nineteenth century, even 
 the members of the House of Commons were 
 regarded by the upper portion of the landlord class 
 somewhat as the doorkeeper of the House of Lords 
 regarded them in the beginning of the seventeenth 
 century, shutting the door in their faces with the 
 words, "Good man burgess, you come not here." 
 The wives of men who would sit in the House of 
 Lords on the death of their fathers, have been 
 heard to say that the men in question would then 
 — that is, when they sat in the House of Lords — 
 be among gentlemen. If circumstances had per- 
 
184 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 mitted the fashionable morals of the Regency to 
 be continued for some generations, and the lofty 
 pretensions of the men of large rentals to become 
 loftier by the bread-tax being made perpetual, the 
 pride and luxury of the rent-receiving class, like 
 the pride and luxury of the French noblesse, 
 would have gone on advancing in extravagance 
 and audacity till they reached that condition in 
 which words that have been apphed to the French 
 noblesse before the Revolution might be applied 
 to them : — " All the old safeguards were broken 
 down, and no new ones created. Ties formerly 
 the most sacred became despised. Marriage was a 
 farce : honesty, as between man and man, was 
 obsolete. The decencies as well as the virtues of 
 life passed away ; and every licentious desire had 
 uncontrollable dominion." 
 
 When within a period of years not exceeding 
 the duration of a single life the rent of land ran 
 up so rapidly as to be more than trebled — more even 
 than quintupled— it is not very surprising to find 
 the territorial grandees, who had in some sort 
 abandoned for a time their old pretensions to 
 regard the industrial and trading classes of their 
 countrymen as little better than a subjugated race, 
 — when they saw estates, the rental of which less 
 than half a century back would have been reckoned 
 
Tlie Landlords. 185 
 
 high at twenty hundred pounds sterling a year, 
 run up in a few years to be worth twenty thousand 
 pounds sterhng a year, — resume their old attitude 
 of conquerors and look down on those with whom 
 for a portion of the eighteenth century they had 
 associated on a footing of equality, as a pack of 
 despicable pedlars. 
 
 It was the isolation of England by the great 
 war with Bonaparte, or Buonaparte as was the 
 grammatical form of the name, that made England 
 so much dependent on her own produce for food, 
 and thus raised rent so prodigiously. When 
 Bonaparte fell, the Corn Laws were resorted to as 
 a substitute for Bonaparte in the raising of rents. 
 Lord Byron in his satu'e, " The Age of Bronze," 
 which appeared, I think, in 1823, that is somewhat 
 more than two years after the death of George III. 
 and the accession of Greorge IV., has some lines 
 on this subject of rent. I wiU quote a few of 
 them : — 
 
 " For wliat were all these country patriots born? 
 
 To liunt and vote and raise the price of corn ? 
 
 # * * 
 
 Why would you trouble Buonaparte's reign ? 
 
 # * * 
 
 Why did you chain him on yon isle so lone ? 
 The man was worth much more upOn his throne. 
 
186 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 But where is now the goodly audit ale ? 
 The purse-proud tenant, never known to fail ? 
 The farm which never yet was left on hand ? 
 The marsh reclaimed to most improving land ? 
 The impatient hope of the expiring lease ? 
 The doubling rental ?" 
 
 Those who have had opportunities of observation 
 have seen the effects of the prospect of the expiring 
 lease and the doubling rental in encouraging pro- 
 fuse expenditure, and an increase of the number 
 and magnitude of the demands on the increased 
 rents. In the place of the old manor houses, costly 
 and extensive mansions were built. It was as if 
 the old manor houses, that seemed built for men of 
 moderate means, had disappeared, and in their 
 room had sprung up palaces such as kings or 
 emperors might deign to dwell in. Some large 
 landholders have been heard to declare that they 
 pulled down some of those vast palaces which had 
 been built before they came to the succession because 
 they were too large for the estate. The only 
 remedy that occurred to them being an increase 
 of rent, even beyond that which had already 
 taken place, the satirist represents their cry as 
 being — 
 
 " Down with everything, and up with rent. 
 Their good, ill, health, wealth, joy, or discontent ; 
 Being, end, aim, religion — rent, rent, rent !" 
 
The Landlords. 187 
 
 The writer of the hnes above quoted, besides 
 being a wit and a poet, was one of those who, 
 though his estates were encumbered, must have 
 profited with the other receivers of rent from the 
 influence of the Corn Laws on the price of bread. 
 Yet his rentals could hardly have risen so as to 
 treble or even to double in a few years, since his 
 biographers give us reason to conclude that the 
 interior at Newstead never exhibited the profuse 
 luxury and licentious revelry which are indicated 
 in the opening stanzas of Childe Harold. Not the 
 less, however, does Lord Byron's case serve as an 
 illustration of the eflfects of the high rents in raising 
 to a notable height the pride and arrogance of the 
 landlord class. For the profuse luxury — the lordly 
 revelry — 
 
 " The goblets "brimm'd with every costly wine, 
 And all that might to luxury invite," 
 
 — if they were above the means of men of small 
 or encumbered estates, characterized the banquets 
 of the larger landholders, whose pride was not 
 unworthy of kings. And if Lord Byron was not 
 equal in wealth, his pride was equal to the pride 
 of the largest-acred baron or squire who voted for 
 the Corn Laws. His pride was' very much pride 
 of race, as if the sword had made him a conqueror, 
 
188 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 lord of the soil, and of all who trod the soil. If 
 Lord Byron could have proved that the Byrons 
 were the same family as the Buruns, and that 
 
 " eight-and-forty manors 
 Were their reward for following Billy's banners," 
 
 the Byrons, whether Norman or not Norman, 
 were as thoroughly beaten at Marston Moor* as the 
 English were at Hastings ; and the men who beat 
 them — men who, wherever they went, never found 
 an enemy that could stand their onset, said in 
 their Remonstrance to the Parliament for justice 
 on the King : "If kings claim by right of conquest, 
 Grod hath given us the same right against them, 
 and there is an end to their pretensions as if the 
 whole people were made only for them, and to 
 serve their lusts." 
 
 The men who made that Remonstrance to the 
 Long Parliament put down in England the divine 
 
 * Some idea may be formed of the slaughter in the 
 encounter between Rupert's and Cromwell's cavalry at 
 Marston Moor, brought on by Lord Byron's impetuosity in 
 dashing over the ditch that separated him from Cromwell's 
 cuirassiers, from the fact that four of Lord Byron's brothers 
 fell. There must have been sis brothers at least, for Sir 
 John Byron, created Lord Byron, in 1643 was succeeded in 
 1652 by his brother, Richard Byron. 
 
The Landlords. 189 
 
 right of kings, which arrogated the right to treat 
 the people as if the people were made only to be 
 their slaves. The Anti-Corn Law League had to 
 contend with the divine right of squires, which 
 claimed the power of having a monopoly of the 
 food of the people. In an admirable letter which 
 I will quote presently, Mr. Bright says of the 
 Americans putting down slavery, "It is strange 
 that a people who put down slavery are not able 
 to suppress monopoly, which is but a milder form 
 of the same evil." Much as I have read on the 
 subject of Protection or Monopoly and Free Trade, 
 I never met with so clear an exposition of the text 
 of "Nations slowly wise and meanly just," as the 
 remarks of Mr. Bright which I am about to quote. 
 What we have seen in our own days goes far to 
 corroborate Mr. Bright's remark — that freedom of 
 industry wUl do much to put down great armies 
 and the peril and suffering of war. I will quote 
 a few words in illustration of this point from a 
 traveller of singular courage and great intellig- 
 ence : — 
 
 " The English," says Mr. Borrow,* " who have never been 
 at war with Portugal, who have fought for its independence 
 
 * "The Bible in Spain," chap. viii. 
 
190 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 on land and sea, and always with success, who have forced 
 themselves, by a treaty of commerce, to drink its coarse and 
 filthy wines, which no other nation cares to taste, are the 
 most unpopular people who visit Portugal." 
 
 The lowering of the duties on French wines has 
 had an effect very different from the treaty of 
 commerce with Portugal. The introduction into 
 England of French wines is beneficial to the 
 bodily health of the English'; it has also a pacific 
 tendency in proportion to the quantity of claret 
 and other French wines consumed in England and 
 the consequent numbers of Frenchmen, from the 
 capitaHst to the labourer, interested in the wine 
 trade between France and England. And though 
 treaties of commerce are not strictly in agreement 
 with the principle of Free Trade, the commercial 
 treaty which Mr. Cobden negotiated with France 
 may be admitted to have had a beneficial and a 
 pacific tendency in regard to the two great nations 
 concerned in it. 
 
 I will now give Mr. Bright' s letter from which 
 I have quoted a few words : — 
 
 " The man," says Mr. Bright in a letter* to a friend in 
 
 * Mr. John Bright to Mr. Cyrus "W. Field of New York, 
 dated January 21, 1879, and published in The Daily News, 
 February 19, 1879. 
 
The Landlords. 191 
 
 America, " who possesses a monopoly by whicli he thinks 
 he gains is not open to argument. It was so in this 
 country forty years ago, and it is so with you now. It is 
 strange that a people who put down slavery at an immense 
 sacrifice are not able to suppress monopoly, which is but a 
 milder form of the same evil. Under slavery the man was 
 seized and his labour stolen from him, and the profit of it 
 enjoyed by his master and owner. Under Protection the 
 man is apparently free, but is denied the right to exchange 
 the produce of his labour except with his countrymen, who 
 offer him much less for it than the foreigner would give. Some 
 portion of his labour is thus confiscated. In our protective 
 days, our weavers and artisans could not exchange with 
 American flour. Thpy exchanged with an English farmer, 
 who gave them sometimes only half the quantity the American 
 would have given them. Now your farmer is forbidden to 
 trade with the Englishman, and must give to an American 
 double the quantity of grain and flour for many articles he 
 is constantly requiring that he would give if your laws did 
 not forbid his trade with England. A country may have 
 democratic institutions, its government may be Republican, 
 and based on a wide suffrage, and yet there may be no 
 freedom to men for that which is the source of life and 
 comfort. If a man's labour is not free, the man is not free. 
 And whether the law which enacts this restriction be the 
 offspring of republican or autocratic government and power, 
 it is equally evil to be condemned and withstood by 
 all who love freedom and understand what it is. Nations 
 learn slowly — but they do learn; and therefore I do 
 not doubt that the time will come when trade will be as 
 free as the winds, and when freedom of industry will do 
 
192 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 much to put down great armies and tlie peril and suffering 
 of war." 
 
 I should be wanting in my duty in the publica- 
 tion of a chapter headed " Landlords," if I did not 
 at least make an effort, however inadequate, to 
 delineate a class of the species " Landlords " which 
 has produced some specimens that may well call 
 for the astonishment, if not the admiration of man- 
 kind. I have attempted to give in the third section 
 of the next chapter some very imperfect notes of 
 the treatment which the people of Scotland receive 
 from their landlords. I will here give one or two 
 examples of the treatment the people of Ireland 
 have received from their landlords. In Scotland 
 the relation of landlord and tenant may, in some 
 cases, be very unsatisfactory, but its effects do not 
 manifest themselves much beyond the sphere of 
 their immediate action. In Ireland the relation 
 of landlords and tenants is such as to produce the 
 most disagreeable effects to the inhabitants of Great 
 Britain who reap none of the profits obtained by 
 the landlords of Ireland, and consequently reap 
 nothing but loss and ignominy, while the landlords 
 of Ireland reap all the profit and all the honour, if 
 honour it can be called. 
 
 The inhabitants of Ireland have taken up a deep 
 
Tlie Landlords. 193 
 
 and murderous hatred towards the inhabitants of 
 Great Britain. The whole story of the causes of 
 this hatred would be " sad to tell and long to 
 trace." But it has manifested itself by overt acts 
 of the most murderous kind — acts which perhaps 
 should not be called overt., since they have more of 
 the character of covert than overt. One of their 
 attempts at murder on a large scale was to blow up 
 a railway train in an underground I^ondon railway 
 filled with industrious Englishmen and English- 
 women who had never done any injury or given 
 any offence to the murderous Irish who had laid 
 explosives in the railway tunnel to destroy the 
 passengers of the railway train. 
 
 It therefore seems a duty incumbent on English- 
 men to attempt to direct public attention to the 
 cause of this state of things in such a way as to 
 afford some chance of putting a stop to such 
 disgusting exhibitions of the worst and most dis- 
 graceful of human passions. But the cause of this 
 deplorable state of things is so closely connected 
 with the relation of landlord and tenant, that some 
 words explanatory of that relation in Ireland will 
 be necessary. 
 
 Everybody knows that there is a wide difference 
 between farming in England and farming in Ireland. 
 
 13 
 
194 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 In England, landlords having to deal with capitalist 
 farmers can see their own advantage in making it 
 the interest of the tenant to improve the land ; or 
 even in improving it for him. An average Irish 
 landlord does not even go so far in improving his 
 estate as to put up the fences and farm buildings 
 which everywhere else are provided by the land- 
 lord. They are left to the labourer-tenant to 
 provide ; and if a tenant is willing, by making them 
 better than ordinary, to add to the value of the 
 farm, there is nothing in the English feudal law of 
 landlord and tenant to prevent the landlord from 
 waiting till it is done, and then making his appear- 
 ance and seizing on the result, in the shape of 
 additional rent from the tenant, for the fruits of his 
 own labour, or turning out the tenant if he is 
 unable or unwilling to pay such additional rent. 
 
 In looking over the map of Ireland the eye may 
 chance to meet with the word Kilkee, not on " Gal- 
 way's shipwreck'd coast," but on the coast of the 
 adjoining county of Clare. The French showed 
 their good taste at the same time with their 
 chivalrous spirit in erecting at Coruna a monument 
 to the memory of Sir John Moore, with this simple 
 inscription : — 
 
The Landlords. 195 
 
 JOHN MOORE, 
 
 Leader op the English Abmies, 
 
 killed in battle, 
 
 16 January, 1809. 
 
 In attempting to raise a memorial to Kilkee the 
 simple brevity of the French inscription to the 
 memory of the English General killed at the battle 
 of Coruna, cannot be imitated. Yet as Sir John 
 Moore, though he wanted that perfect self-con- 
 fidence in great emergencies, which belongs only 
 to the highest order of minds, died in his duty like 
 a gallant soldier, and fills an honourable grave, and 
 his name will be for ever associated with chivalrous 
 courage, keen sense of honour, and enthusiastic 
 devotion to the duties of his profession and the 
 service of his country ; so the name of Kilkee will 
 be associated with the exertion, not merely of 
 honest industry, but of extraordinary energy and 
 enterprise in the creation of a flourishing town 
 under the blighting curse of the English law of 
 landlord and tenant — a law belonging to the pirate 
 age, and made by men who were barbarians and 
 robbers. 
 
 The disgrace of the frightful robbery committed 
 on those poor Irish labourer-tenants Avho, after 
 
 13 * 
 
196 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 tliey had increased by their labour the value of 
 the property in some instances 700 per cent, had 
 the alternative given them of either having the 
 rents at once raised to the full value of the improve- 
 ments or of being turned adrift to wander about as 
 vagabonds on the face of the earth, and carry with 
 them to America an exile's sorrows and an outlaw's 
 hate — for though it may be shown to be in accord- 
 ance with the form of law., it was a robbery of the 
 most cruel nature — a robbery that took advantage 
 of the best qualities of its victims to make those 
 very qualities the instruments of their destruction 
 — the disgrace of this frightful robbery, I say, must 
 fall not on the head landlords who, in such cases, 
 only followed the law of human nature, but on 
 those who coming forward to make laws to redress 
 the law of human nature produced the English law 
 of landlord and tenant, which had its foundation in 
 the system of government introduced into England 
 by the man who displayed the same spirit of unre- 
 lenting cruelty when he enclosed the New Forest, 
 and when he reduced the northern counties of 
 England to a desert. It is not creditable to any 
 government calling itself a Christian and civilized 
 government to allow such a law to remain on the 
 English Statute Book. If an equitable allowance 
 
The Landlords. 197 
 
 had been made foi* the Kilkee improvements by an 
 equitable law of landlord and tenant, a vast amount 
 of crime and of the consequences of crime might 
 have been avoided. 
 
 Having had occasion to examine somewhat 
 minutely the English law of landlord and tenant, 
 I will quote here a portion of what I have said 
 elsewhere on that subject : — 
 
 " The English law of landlord and tenant having during 
 the last six hundred years been made by the landlords, may 
 be expected to favour the landlords rather than the tenants. 
 The operation of the law of landlord and tenant is partly 
 seen in the numerous cases in the law reports where the 
 tenant is a man of some capital, and can make a fight in the 
 courts of law against the landlord. But another picture is 
 presented in the numerous cases where the law can be, and 
 has been made an instrument of grinding oppression in the 
 hands of those who have become the landlords of the cottages 
 and small houses inhabited by the working men, whether 
 farm labourers in the country or artificers in the towns. But 
 though the oppression in these cases is very grievous, it is 
 mercy compared to that which the English law of landlord 
 and tenant has enabled those who have got possession of land 
 in Ireland to apply to tenants completely at their mercy." 
 
 In the case of Ireland the Encumbered Estates 
 Act — though intended to substitute for landlords, 
 without capital for improvement, a better class of 
 landlords— showed the difficulty of the question 
 
198 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 dealt with, for it defeated the intentions of its 
 framers, and exchanged one set of bad landlords 
 for a set of landlords worse than the former. This 
 effect of the Act is shown in a passage quoted in a 
 note to J. S. Mill's Political Economy (vol. i., p. 413, 
 sixth edition, 1865), from a private communication 
 from Professor Cairnes. 
 
 " A class of men, not very numerous, but sufficiently so to 
 do muoli mischief, have, through the Landed Estates Court, 
 got into possession of land in Ireland, who, of all classes, are 
 least likely to recognize the duties of a landlord's position. 
 These are small traders in towns, who by dint of sheer parsi- 
 mony, frequently combined with money-lending at usurious 
 rates, have succeeded, in the course of a long life, in scraping 
 together as much money as will enable them to buy fifty or a 
 hundred acres of land. These people never think of turning 
 farmers, but, proud of their position as landlords, proceed to 
 turn it to the utmost account. An instance of this kind came 
 under my notice lately. The tenants on the property were, 
 at the time of the purchase, some twelve years ago, in a 
 tolerably comfortable state. Within that period [that is, 
 within twelve years] their rent has been raised three several 
 times ; and it is now, as I am informed by the priest of the 
 district, nearly double its amount at the commencement of 
 the present proprietor's reign. The result is that the people, 
 who were formerly in tolerable comfort, are now reduced to 
 poverty ; two of them have left the property and squatted 
 near an adjacent turf bog, where they exist trusting for 
 support to occasional jobs. If this man is not shot, he will 
 
The Landlords. 199 
 
 injure himself througt the deterioration of his property, but 
 meantime he has been getting 8 or 10 per cent, on his 
 purchase-money. This is by no means a rare case. The 
 scandal which such occurrences cause casts its reflection on 
 transactions of a wholly different and perfectly legitimate 
 kind, where the removal of the tenants is simply an act of 
 mercy for all parties." 
 
 A thorough reform of the law of landlord and 
 tenant has no chance of passing the House of 
 Lords. To a person acquainted with other parts 
 of England it seems incomprehensible that the 
 people of London should submit to the tyrannous 
 absurdity of being compelled to build houses upon 
 land which, by the terms of the lease, is, at the 
 end of ninety-nine years, to be given up, with 
 everything on it, to the landowner, while during 
 the ninety-nine years they are to pay a yearly 
 rent, called a ground-rent, for the land. The 
 device of such ninety-nine years' leases in London 
 is due to the power of the great land monopolists, 
 the Dukes of Bedford, Portland, Westminster, the 
 Marquis of SaHsbury and others. Those persons, 
 not content with having become owners of large 
 portions of national property by the liberahty of 
 Henry VIIL, James L and William IIL in giving 
 away what did not belong to them, employed the 
 most astute lawyers that could be got for money 
 
200 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 to devise schemes such as this of making a house 
 and the land on which it is built return at the end 
 of ninety- nine years to the ground landlord. This 
 device, framed by the conveyancing counsel of the 
 great landowners, is eagerly seized on by trades- 
 men, who invest their savings in land for building, 
 and have been heard to declare the delight with 
 which they would step in at the end of ninety- 
 nine years and take away the house from the 
 children of the man who built it or bought it from 
 the builder of it. To any one who has not got 
 saddled with the vampire notion that ninety-nine 
 years' leases are part of the original scheme of 
 Creation, it is at once a monstrous absurdity and 
 intolerable injustice that, when a man builds a 
 house on another man's land, for the use of which 
 he pays a yearly ground-rent representing at the 
 date of the lease not merely the full annual value 
 of the land on which the house is built, but double, 
 sometimes treble* its annual value, the person to 
 
 * A case came to my knowledge only yesterday where 
 land, the annual value of which was £6, was let for building 
 a house at a ground rent of twenty guineas. The gentleman 
 who built the house for himself at a cost of £2000, on a 
 ninety-nine years' lease, built a house that would last more 
 than double ninety-nine years. Consequently the ground- 
 
The Landlords. 201 
 
 whom the ground-rent is paid should step in and 
 take away the house from the children of the 
 builder. One direct result of such a system is the 
 erection of houses not intended to last longer than 
 the lease. But there are other results more 
 serious. Among these is the deep hatred which 
 injustice and oppression, backed by power such as 
 that of the British House of Lords, are sure to 
 produce sooner or later. The great peer sets the 
 example of oppression to the small tradesman who 
 deals in house property, and the small tradesman, 
 in his dealing with men or women poorer than 
 himself, fortifies his conscience with the reflection 
 that Providence ordained that the large fish should 
 eat the small. 
 
 It will help to explain the London ninety- nine 
 years' lease system to compare it with the system 
 of Manchester, where the houses are built upon 
 land for which a yearly ground-rent is paid. This 
 ground-rent is not limited to ninety-nine years, 
 but so long as it is paid the payer of it is absolute 
 owner of the land. An interesting illustration of 
 this is aiforded by the case of Mr. Cobden. It is 
 
 rent man will step in at the end of the ninety -nine years and 
 turn out the cliildren of the builder of this substantial house. 
 
202 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 mentioned by Mr. Cobden's biographer that Mr, 
 Cobden, having made speculative purchases of 
 land in various quarters of Manchester where his 
 imagination painted a great demand for buUdings 
 on the repeal of the Corn Laws, was compelled 
 to pay a thousand pounds a year as ground-rent. 
 But as long as the thousand pounds a year was 
 paid the land was his own, and would have increased 
 in value if houses, shops and factories had been built 
 on it. Mr. Cobden it seems kept up for twenty- 
 five years this payment, which would therefore 
 amount to a sum of £25,000, and helps us to 
 understand how Mr. Cobden was enabled to absorb 
 the amount collected for him, which has been 
 estimated at not much under £200,000. I have 
 not happened to meet with any case of ground- 
 rents in London being speculated on in this way. 
 But suppose a man were to build an expensive 
 factory such as are built at Manchester on a 
 ninety-nine years' lease, at the termination of 
 which lease the factory, worth several thousand 
 pounds, would fall into the pocket of the ground- 
 rent landlord, the inference is that no such factories 
 would be built, and the trade of Manchester would 
 not have existed, but Manchester would be now 
 the village or small town it was two centuries ago. 
 
The Landlords. 203 
 
 The land of England was held on certain con- 
 ditions, which may be termed the purchase-money of 
 that land. That purchase-money had been made 
 payable as a sort of perpetual annuity to the State, 
 increasing in value as the land increased in value. 
 But the Convention Parliament of 1660 passed an 
 Act by a majority of two — the votes being 151 
 for, and 149 against — the Act 12 Car. 2, c. 14 — 
 that the holders of the land of England should be 
 totally exonerated from the future payment of this 
 perpetual annuity, which constituted the purchase- 
 money of their estates; and that this annuity, or 
 purchase-money, should for the future be paid, in 
 the shape of an excise, by people who held none 
 of the land for which they were thus made to pay. 
 In the debate many members spoke vehemently 
 against the measure proposed. The most learned 
 lawyer of that time, Prynne, said it was not fit to 
 make all housekeepers hold in capite, and to free 
 the nobility; and inveighed passionately, says the 
 Diary, against the excise, which was to be substi- 
 tuted in lieu of the payments for which the lands 
 of England had been granted to be held as private 
 property. 
 
 Without embarrassing the reader with legal 
 technicalities, it may be sufficient to say that so 
 
204 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 far as .the words of their laws enable us to judge 
 of their meaning and intention, the framers of no 
 inconsiderable portion of that system of govern- 
 ment which is generally understood when we say 
 the English Constitution, certainly intended that 
 the tax which the land was to pay was to be a 
 certain proportion of the "full yearly value thereof 
 at the time of assessing thereof," not a proportion 
 of a nominal yearly value thereof. It may be 
 added in corroboration that in all the land-tax 
 acts dow-n to the .38 Geo. 3 inclusive, the commis- 
 sioners are directed to appoint "assessors" (see 
 38 Geo. 3, c. 5, s. 8) for the purpose of assessing 
 all property, real as well as personal. Now unless 
 there was to be every year a new assessment, 
 collectors of the moneys to be levied would be 
 sufficient, whereas, after directing the appointment 
 of assessors, there is always a distinct and 
 separate clause for the appointment of " collectors 
 of the moneys which shall be assessed as afore- 
 said." 
 
 William the Norman took from the Anglo- 
 Saxons their country, but bound himself and his 
 successors, as far as he could bind them, by 
 engagements, which were fulfilled for six hundred 
 years, to defray the main part of the expenses 
 
The Landlords. 205 
 
 of governing it in peace and defending it in war. 
 Upon these conditions William the Norman and 
 some sixty thousand of his followers became masters 
 of the land of a country which contained a very 
 large quantity of fertile land. To repudiate these 
 conditions and declare that in future the expenses 
 of the government in peace and war should be 
 paid by taxes on the poor, was to reduce the bulk 
 of the community to the condition of a people like 
 the Dutch, This was what William the Dutchman 
 did for England. 
 
 To substitute for the rent to the State, which 
 was the purchase-money of the land, a vast number 
 of taxes on industry and commercial enterprise 
 was to reduce a country like England to the con- 
 dition of a country like Holland. And the parallel 
 was followed so far as to introduce the funding 
 system, and the system of raising money by 
 lotteries, and to leave nothing untaxed from salt 
 to French wine. The effect was to deprive the 
 people of England of many of the natural advan- 
 tages of soil and climate, and reduce the quantity 
 of land in England (as far as the bulk of the 
 population was concerned) to the quantity of land 
 in Holland. 
 
 The manner of dealing with the Irish forfeitures 
 
206 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 seems to have cooled even Lord Macaulay's zeal for 
 his Dutch hero. Lord Macaulay says : — 
 
 "If Ms Parliament had been forced to defer, year after 
 year, the consideration of so large and complex a question 
 as that of the Irish forfeitures, it ill became him to take 
 advantage of such a laches with the eagerness of a shrewd 
 attorney. Many persons who were sincerely attached to his 
 government, and disapproved of resumptions, thought the 
 case of these forfeitures an exception to the general rule. 
 . . . Of all the grants the largest was to "Woodstock, the 
 eldest son of Portland ; the next was to Albemarle. An 
 admirer of William cannot relate without pain that he 
 divided between these two foreigners an extent of country 
 larger than Hertfordshire. . . . William's answer was 
 that he had thought himself bound to reward out of the 
 forfeited property those who had served him well, and espe- 
 cially those who had borne a principal part in the reduction 
 of Ireland. The war, he said, had left a heavy debt ; and 
 he should be glad to see that debt reduced by just and effec- 
 tual means. This answer was but a bad one ; and, in truth, 
 it was hardly possible for him to return a good one. He had 
 done what was indefensible ; and, by attempting to defend 
 himself, he made his case worse. It was not true that the 
 Irish forfeitures, or one-fifth part of them, had been granted 
 to men who had distinguished themselves in the Irish war ; 
 and it was not judicious to hint that those forfeitures could 
 not justly be applied to the discharge of the public debts. 
 The Commons murmured, and not altogether without reason. 
 ' His Majesty tells us,' they said, ' that the debts fall to us 
 and the forfeitures to him. We are to make good out of the 
 
The Landlords. 207 
 
 purses of Englisliineii what was spent upon the war ; and lie 
 is to put into the purses of Dutchmen what was got by the 
 war.' "* 
 
 I am not writing about William the Third, but it 
 was necessary to introduce him here to show how 
 easily the 'land had been obtained which some of 
 our noble landlords let on such terms as those 
 ninety-nine years' building leases, so craftily 
 devised to suck the blood of the unhappy man 
 who is so ill-advised as to build a substantial house 
 under such leases. Among the other debts we 
 owe to " Old Grlorious " is this, that his Dutch 
 advisers designed that the method of raising 
 money by a pound rate — the subsidy of earlier 
 days or the Land Tax Act of 4 William and Mary, 
 c. 1, the principle of which was strictly observed 
 in the five succeeding years— should not prove 
 effectual in order to reduce us to the necessity 
 of taxing consumption, and thereby, because taxes 
 on consumption must always be heavy upon trade, 
 prevent our being such formidable rivals to the 
 Dutch.f 
 
 * Macaulay's History of England, iv., pp. 323, 324, 327. 
 t See Cunningham's History of Taxes, p. 186, 3rd edition. 
 London, 1778. 
 
208 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 Mr. Villiers, in his speech in the House of 
 
 Commons, May 9, 1843, said: — 
 
 " Let them remember what has been the consequence of 
 urging that there are peculiar burdens on the land as a pretext 
 for the Corn Laws. Inquiry into its truth was demanded. 
 Two motions were made in this House for it. But they were 
 not carried. No ; the House shrank from them. And why ? 
 Because, after the matter had been thoroughly sifted, it was 
 found that so far from there being exclusive charges, there 
 were shameful exemptions.'' 
 
 After a few words respecting the tithes as a 
 plea for raising rent by law, Mr. Villiers went on 
 to the question of the Land Tax : — 
 
 " As for the Land Tax, it is doubtless a deduction from 
 rent, but one to which the State is entitled ; and surely, con- 
 sidering the manner in which the landlords in Parliament 
 have dealt with it since it was imposed, it never can be for 
 their interest to have it discussed or inquired into : no man 
 can learn that history without almost feeling that, as a class, 
 the landowners have proved themselves utterly unworthy 
 of public trust. Nothing ever was more shameless tban 
 the manner in which the State has been deprived of its 
 due amount of the Land Tax by a gross violation of the 
 bargain the landowners made with the Crown when it was 
 imposed. It was strictly in lieu of the feudal services by 
 which alone their lands were held, and from which 4s in the 
 pound on the rental were required — clearly an inadequate 
 commutation for the inconvenience to which such services 
 
The Landlords. 209 
 
 would have exposed them. ; but which, did it yield what it 
 ought, would now cover the whole amount of the Excise, and 
 thereby dispense with it. If the Land Tax now paid its 
 proper quota, it would yield thirteen millions a year instead 
 of little more than one million ; and by causing the 
 assessment to be fixed upon the valuation of the land 
 made 160 years since, the public have been defrauded of 
 the diiFerence."* 
 
 Mr. Villiers has, as has been seen in the above 
 extract from his speech, estimated the Land Tax 
 in 1843 at, if it paid its proper quota, thirteen 
 millions a year instead of little more than one 
 million. In the Financial Reform Almanack for 
 1876, page 39, the Land Tax is described as a 
 tax — it is not a tax at all, but the purchase-money 
 of the land payable in the shape of a perpetual 
 annuity — which at this day (1876) should be 
 producing £30,000,000 a year towards the public 
 revenue, in place of only £1,000^000 a year, as it 
 is now doing. When it is borne in mind that this 
 £30,000,000 a year represents the result of a 
 transaction of such magnitude that it changed, 
 transformed all the land of an extensive country 
 from public land into private land, the magnitude 
 of the perpetual annuity which represents the 
 
 * Villiers's Tree Trade Speeches, vol. ii., pp. 42-44. 
 
 14 
 
210 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 purchase-money will not be considered as in any 
 degree extravagant or beyond the limits of fair 
 dealing, of reason, and equity. It wlU not be 
 •considered extravagant, when the claims of those 
 who have got present possession of this landed 
 property is taken into consideration — the claim 
 that the land is theirs for the whole remainder 
 of eternity, notwithstanding the truth shining by 
 its own light, that landed property must be more 
 limited in its nature than other proprietary rights, 
 because no man made the land. 
 
Peasant Life. 211 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 PEASANT LIFE. 
 
 The peasant life may be more picturesque than the 
 artisan life ; but the artisan is less helpless against 
 oppression than the peasant. Lord Macaulay 
 relates how, in consequence of the state of the 
 currency in 1695 — 
 
 " The labourer found that the bit of metal, which, -when 
 he received it, was called a shilling, would hardly, when he 
 wanted to purchase a pot of beer or a loaf of rye bread, go 
 as far as sixpence. Where artisans of more than usual 
 intelligence were collected in great numbers, as in the dock- 
 yard at Chatham, they were able to make their complaints 
 heard and to obtain some redress. But the ignorant and 
 helpless peasant was cruelly ground between one class which 
 would give money only by tale, and another which would 
 take it only by weight."* 
 
 And the peasant's wretched condition had lasted 
 
 * History of England, iv., 119. 
 
 14 * 
 
212 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 for innumerable ages — through which they lived 
 like the beasts with which they shared the tillage 
 of the ground, and then died like those beasts, 
 leaving no trace behind them of a moral and 
 intellectual being. Day and night, summer and 
 winter succeeded each other, but the sun of each 
 successive day which brought so many blessings 
 to the prosperous and the happy, brought nothing 
 to them but fresh toil and suffering, and, it might 
 be, the reflection that they were one step nearer 
 to the grave in which they would be at rest, and 
 feel cold and hunger, pain and sorrow no more. 
 And if that inanimate dust, which once had life 
 and a human form, were now to be endowed with 
 the power of human speech, what tales of oppres- 
 sion and suffering, of agony and horror, could it 
 not unfold? The country churchyard seems to 
 awaken memories that carry the mind of the 
 observer further back into the past than the urban 
 churchyard, though the latter may show one or 
 two names more celebrated than any that may 
 be read on the tombstones of the former. The 
 village Hampden and the mute inglorious Milton, 
 if they ever lived the village life out of Gray's 
 "Elegy," lived and died as unheard of and as 
 unrecorded as if they had never been. There 
 
Peasant Life. 213 
 
 have undoubtedly been men who though bom 
 peasants have succeeded in climbing " the steep 
 where Fame's proud temple shines afar." But 
 the mass did not thereby emerge from its lot 
 of poverty and toil. For they are particularly 
 deprived of that power of combined action which 
 is within the power of the artisans of some degree 
 of cultivated intelligence, collected in considerable 
 numbers in towns. This evil has gone on increas- 
 ing tiU acre after acre of the soil of England which 
 was termed common land has been appropriated 
 with the manifest effect of making the rich richer, 
 and the poor poorer. 
 
 The inclosure of commons may be taken as an 
 instance of the conversion into private property of 
 what was not private property, under the pretence 
 that the effect wiU be to give more employment to 
 the agricultural labourer. In my inquiry into this 
 question, the evidence which I received, and my own 
 observation, were not in favour of the conclusion 
 that the inclosure of commons was advantageous 
 to the poor. On the contrary, as the number 
 of inclosure bills increased the condition of the 
 agricultural labourer became worse and worse, till 
 a man had but seven shillings a week to support 
 himself, his wife, and seven children. 
 
214 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 In reference to the conversion into private 
 property of what was not private property, it may 
 be remarked here that, according to the system of 
 law established in England at the Conquest, in 
 those waste lands, which are usually called com- 
 mons, the property of the soil is generally in the 
 lord of the manor.* But in common fields the 
 property of the soil is in the particular tenants."!" 
 
 There is evidence that though the lords of 
 manors were the predominant powers in regard to 
 the land question according to the law of England, 
 the commoners, as they were termed, were not 
 altogether powerless. Thus, to give an illustration 
 or two, the right of the commoners to the pasturage 
 may be subservient to the right of the lord of the 
 manor; for if the lord of the manor has imme- 
 morially built houses or dug clay- pits upon the 
 common without any regard to the extent of the 
 herbage, the immemorial exercise of such acts is 
 evidence that the lord reserved that right to him- 
 self, when he granted the right of pasturage to the 
 commoners.J And if a lord of a manor plant 
 trees upon a common, a commoner, though he has 
 
 * 2 Bl. Comm. 32. f Ibid. 
 
 : 5 T. R. 411. 
 
Peasant Life. 215 
 
 no right to cut them down, has a remedy by an 
 action.* 
 
 Such cases show that the class called commoners 
 in the English law books had a recognized position 
 in the English constitutional polity ; and it would 
 seem that a scheme which made use of the authority 
 of the English Parliament for converting those 
 waste lands and common fields in which the poorer 
 classes of the community, though they had not the 
 property of the soil, had such a beneficial interest 
 in the land "as to feed their beasts, to catch fish, 
 to dig turf, to cut wood, or the like,"f was a 
 scheme somewhat analogous to that of Sancho 
 Panza when governor of the island of Barataria. 
 It is said by the witnesses examined before the 
 Parliamentary Committee of 1844, on the inclosure 
 of Commons, that judicious inclosure would make 
 a large portion of common lands much more pro- 
 ductive. This may be a tolerably safe prediction; 
 but it has two aspects. Its productiveness may 
 be advantageous to some and disadvantageous to 
 others. Sancho Panza' s plan of deriving advan- 
 
 * 6 T. R. 483 ; 1 Bos. and Pul. 14. 
 t 2 Bl. Comm. 32. 
 
216 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 tage from the government of an island, looked rather 
 promising to Sancho himself, for it was a very simple 
 proceeding. Sancho simply proposed to sell the 
 inhabitants of the island for slaves, and put the 
 money in his pocket. But to. the people sold the 
 plan might not appear so good as it did to Sancho. 
 Sancho Panza's scheme of getting rich, though 
 it may wear the semblance of being only one of 
 the elaborate jokes of him who was said to have 
 " smiled Spain's chivalry away," has a melancholy 
 affinity with certain schemes which, instead of 
 being jocular and imaginary, are, on the contrary, 
 too serious and too real. Since the year 1800, 
 about two thousand inclosure acts have passed. 
 Before that time about one thousand six hundred 
 or one thousand seven hundred had passed. It 
 was stated in evidence before the Committee of the 
 House of Commons in 1844, that a large extent of 
 common and waste land had been illegally inclosed 
 under the provisions of the Act of 1836 (6 and 7 
 Wm. IV., c. 115), passed for facilitating the 
 inclosure of open and arable fields in England and 
 Wales ; and the persons who hold such lands have 
 no legal title, and can only obtain one by lapse of 
 time. The chief motive for thus dealing with 
 
Peasant Life. 217 
 
 commons appears to have been that they thus get 
 the inclosure done cheaper than by applying to 
 Parliament for a private act. 
 
 Those persons whose passion for getting rich has 
 induced them to make such use of the English law 
 and English Parliament, have deprived themselves 
 of any right to complain, if those Englishmen 
 who have not derived any benefit from the 
 inclosures of common land should take leave to 
 inquire somewhat minutely into the whole subject 
 of property in land. 
 
 Those who seek to go on increasing their riches 
 by the inclosure of commons or waste land may 
 say, if they think fit, that they are increasing the 
 productiveness of their country, and as a conse- 
 quence, its population ; but they are destroying the 
 natural beauty of their country, and more than the 
 natural beauty, the ideas associated in the mind 
 of man, with solitary meditation in fresh air and 
 amid wild flowers and clear streams. With the 
 inclosure of commons and waste land is closely 
 connected the stopping up of public footpaths and 
 ancient rights of way, and the rooting up every 
 hedge-row and hedge-row tree, and ploughing up 
 every place where a wild flower or shrub could 
 grow. I will quote some remarks from J. S. Mill 
 
218 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 in defence of what Adam Smith has called the 
 stationary state which, to the political economist of 
 the last two generations, presented a stagnant and 
 unpleasing prospect : — 
 
 " The density of population necessary to enable mankind 
 to obtain, in tbe greatest degree, all tbe advantages both of 
 co-operation and of social intercourse, bas, in all the most 
 populous countries, been attained. A population may be too 
 crowded, though all be amply supplied with food and raiment. 
 It is not good for man to be kept perforce at all times in the 
 presence of his species. A world from which solitude is 
 extirpated is a very poor ideal. Solitude, in the sense of 
 being often alone, is essential to any depth of meditation or 
 of character ; and solitude in the presence of natural beauty 
 and grandeur is the cradle of thoughts and aspirations which 
 are not only good for the individual, but which society could 
 ill do without. Nor is there much satisfaction in contem- 
 plating the world with nothing left to the spontaneous 
 activity of nature ; with every rood of land brought into 
 cultivation, which is capable of growing food, for human 
 beings ; every flowery waste or natural pasture ploughed up, 
 all quadi'upeds or birds which are not domesticated for man's 
 use exterminated as his rivals for food, every hedge-row or 
 superfluous tree rooted out, and scarcely a place left where 
 a wild shrub or flower could grow without being eradicated 
 as a weed in the name of improved agriculture. If the earth 
 must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes 
 to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and popula- 
 tion would extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling 
 it to support a larger, but not a better or a happier population. 
 
Peasant Life. 219 
 
 I sincerely hope, for the sake posterity, that they will be 
 content to be stationary long before necessity compels them 
 to it."* 
 
 Mill goes on to say : — 
 
 " It is scarcely necessary to remark that a stationary con- 
 dition of capital and population implies no stationary state of 
 human improvement. There would be as much scope as 
 ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social 
 progress ; as much room for improving the Art of Living, 
 and much more likelihood of its being improved, when minds 
 
 ceased to be engrossed by the art of getting on 
 
 Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions 
 yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being. 
 They have enabled a greater population to live the same life 
 of drudgery and imprisonment, and an increased number of 
 manufacturers and others to make fortunes."t 
 
 In another page of the same work the writer 
 
 says : — 
 
 " The exclusive right to the land for purposes of cultivation 
 does not imply an exclusive right to it for purposes of access ; 
 and no such right ought to be recognized except to the extent 
 necessary to protect the produce against damage, and the 
 owner's privacy against invasion. The pretension of two 
 dukes to shut up a part of the Highlands, and exclude the 
 
 * Principles of Political Economy, by John Stuart Mill, 
 vol. ii., p. 331, sixth edition. London : Longmans and Co., 
 1865. 
 
 t Ibid. 
 
220 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 rest of mankind from many square miles of mountain scenery 
 to prevent disturbance to wild animals is an abuse ; it exceeds 
 tbe legitimate bounds of tbe rigbt of landed property. Wben 
 land is not intended to be cultivated, no good reason can in 
 general be given for its being private property at all ; and if 
 any one is permitted to call it bis, be ougbt to know tbat be 
 bolds it by sufferance of tbe comniunity, and on an implied 
 condition tbat bis ownersbip, since it cannot possibly do tbem 
 any good, at least sball not deprive tbem of any, wbicb they 
 could bave derived from tbe land if it bad been unappro- 
 priated. Even in tbe case of cultivated land, a man whom, 
 though only one among millions, tbe law permits to bold 
 thousands of acres as his single share, is not entitled to think 
 tbat all this is given to him to use and abuse, and deal with 
 as if it concerned nobody but himself."* 
 
 In the passage last quoted from J. S. Mill's 
 Political Economy the words "necessary to protect 
 the owner's privacy against invasion " are parti- 
 cularly deserving of attention, and before I had 
 recurred to the passage for the present purpose, 
 I had noted in the margin of the newspaper ( The 
 Daily News for April 18, 1844) containing a letter 
 headed " Trout fishing in Scotland," and signed 
 " J. A. Erskine Stuart," an objection that occurred 
 to me at the time to what is said in the letter 
 about what the writer calls "a fisher's path." 
 
 * Principles of Political Economy, vol. i., pp. 290, 291. 
 
Peasant Life. 221 
 
 The words used in the letter are " there is what is 
 called a fisher's path from the source to the mouth 
 of the river, and this gives a manifest right of way 
 from time immemorial to the angler." The note 
 I made at the time is this : " An objection to a 
 fisher's path is that when all the population of a 
 populous town have access to this ' fisher's path,' 
 when the path approaches veiy near to the land- 
 owner's mansion or dwelling-house, the owner or 
 landholder has surely a right to demand that the 
 law shall protect his privacy against invasion. I 
 know several cases where a trout or sahnon stream 
 runs through a private park in which is the owner's 
 mansion-house. K the ' fisher's path ' doctrine be 
 law there is an end to all privacy in the life of any 
 one who has a trout stream running through his 
 park. And a blessing is thus, by this ' fisher's 
 path ' theory, turned into a curse. 
 
 At the same time it must be observed that 
 within the last half century the landholders have 
 become much more strict than they were before in 
 prohibiting angling even for trout, to say nothing 
 of salmon; and their proceedings in that matter, 
 added to their game preservation being destructive 
 of the small crops of the peasant tenants, of which 
 an account written from personal observation will 
 
222 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 be given in the third section of this chapter, cannot 
 be viewed as having a tendency to strengthen their 
 position, and to establish them as Strafford bragged 
 he would establish Charles the First and his 
 posterity in wealth, strength, and glory, far above 
 any of their progenitors. 
 
 The question of trout-fishing is complicated by 
 the vast increase of population which renders " fi-ee 
 trout-fishing " a very different thing from what it 
 was when the population was comparatively small. 
 I know nothing to which the word Conservative 
 may be more judiciously applied than to the pre- 
 servation of the fair pursuit of trout-fishing; that 
 is to the angling for trout with the artificial fly, 
 and not to the use of certain kinds of bait which 
 may tend to the production of a large bag, but to 
 the destruction of all fair fishing, and only to be 
 practised by those who fish, not for health and 
 sport, but for the pot, and bring discredit on 
 angling as turning it to a mere trade in fish. 
 
Ati English Village in 1844-5. 223 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SECTION II. 
 AN ENGLISH VILLAGE IN 1844-5. 
 
 I WILL endeavour to give from my rough notes 
 some idea of the condition of the peasantry of the 
 district I had undertaken to visit for the purpose 
 especially of ascertaining how much of the average 
 earnings of a peasant's family go in purchasing 
 clothing and articles paying excise or duty to 
 government, as stated in the words of Mr. Cobden's 
 letter to me, dated Manchester, November 5, 1844, 
 and quoted in the Introduction. 
 
 One day in the month of December, 1844, I 
 walked along the road that ascends a somewhat 
 steep hill separating two villages from one another 
 in one of the south-western counties of England. 
 The view from the summit of this hUl (and there 
 are several such views in that part of the country, 
 which is a good deal wooded, and beautifully 
 
224 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 diversified with hill, dale, and water) is a finer 
 one than English scenery, which is apt, though 
 soft and rich, to be somewhat tame, usually fiir- 
 nishes. When this view first opened upon me, the 
 effect of the various colours presented by wood- 
 land, pasture, and ploughed land, joined to the 
 very slight haze, or frost fog, in the atmosphere, 
 natural to a day in December,- was as if I had 
 come suddenly upon a bay with the sea immediately 
 beneath me. As I began to descend, however, 
 the illusion was gradually dispelled, and I beheld 
 a scene which at a more favourable time of the 
 year I felt must be one of great natural beauty, 
 and must have presented a fine specimen of 
 an English village, at least as far as regards the 
 picturesque, for the village in question was so 
 scattered that it might be almost said to be co- 
 extensive with the parish in which it was situated 
 — a circumstance which may add much to the pic- 
 turesqueness, without, as appeared in this instance, 
 adding anything to the prosperity of a village. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott in Waverley, in his description 
 of the hamlet of TuUy- Veolan, says : " The houses 
 seemed miserable in the extreme, especially to an 
 eye accustomed to the smihng neatness of English 
 cottages." Alas! either "the smiling neatness of 
 
An English Village in 1844-5. 225 
 
 English cottages " has, at least in some districts 
 of England, passed away, or Sir Walter Scott's 
 knowledge of English cottages was very partial 
 and imperfect. 
 
 Arthur Young, travelling in France before the 
 Eevolution, and walking up hill, bridle in hand, 
 overtook a poor woman, looking sixty years of 
 age though she was not twenty-eight. She said 
 that she and her husband had seven children, a 
 farm with one cow and one little horse. Their 
 cow helped them to support their children, but 
 the rent and taxes they had to pay for their little 
 farm crushed them down. She said she had heard 
 that somewhere, in some manner, something was 
 to be done for the poor. 
 
 I met with cases in that inquiry showing how 
 what has been turns up again in this world whirling 
 round its old axis. To call this " strange !" would 
 be a foolish saying, we should rather say " strange !" 
 if it were not so. A new lacker of more or less 
 brightness in its polish is every now and then 
 laid on the surface of the old machine. But the 
 machinery within goes grinding on in its old way. 
 In a melancholy majority of cases the hearts of 
 men are hard and their brains soft, whereas the 
 chances would be considerably better with softer 
 
 15 
 
226 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 hearts and harder brains. With all that philoso- 
 phers write, and all that philanthropists do (and I 
 really believe in the existence of true philanthropists 
 even in spite of the existence of false philanthro- 
 pists), the old saying "homo homini lupus," "man 
 is a wolf to man," stUl holds true : and the old 
 verse of the old song has not lost its melancholy 
 meaning — 
 
 " Why, let the stricken deer go weep, 
 Tlie hart ungalled play : 
 For some must watch, while some must sleep ; 
 Thus runs the world away." 
 
 Returning from one of my "inquiries" in the 
 neighbourhood of a small town in a south-western 
 county, I walked part of the way back with an 
 old man in a strange long blue cloth dress coat, 
 with enormous brass buttons, which had once been 
 yellow, and top boots, the tops of which had once 
 been yellow too. It was his Sunday dress, perhaps 
 half a century, at least a quarter of a century, old. 
 A tailor in a town in those parts told me that he 
 had just seen a man come into that town with a 
 coat on his back which he (the tailor) had made 
 for him twenty-four years before. I could not at 
 first guess what the strangely accoutred old man 
 could be. He turned out to be a shoemaker. He 
 
An English Village in 1844-5, 227 
 
 said that for ready money he could make a pair of 
 labourer's shoes for nine shillings and sixpence, 
 and get about two shillings and sixpence by the 
 job. And even if in full work he could hardly 
 make more than three pairs of such shoes in a 
 week, which would bring him, if paid, but seven 
 shillings and sixpence for his week's work. But 
 he lost money, he said, by the agricultural labourers 
 not paying him. They promised to pay at the 
 rate of one shilling a week, but could not. He 
 was often very ill off himself. He said " he was 
 sure the Queen did not know how lR off the poor 
 people were, or she would do something for them." 
 Some had only one shilling a day or six shillings 
 a week, some only five shillings a week. And the 
 bread-tax was then upon them in all its oppressive 
 force. 
 
 I will note here another recollection of that 
 inquiry which had other difficulties besides the 
 hostility of the farmers mentioned, I think, in the 
 preceding section. I was walking along the road 
 between Corfe Castle and Wareham, which last is 
 separated from that part of Dorsetshire called the 
 Isle of Purbeck by a small stream running into 
 Poole Harbour, where, at a part of the road which 
 lay between two high banks, I suddenly saw two 
 
 15 * 
 
228 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 powerful men in the dress of sailors advancing 
 towards me. I had in my pocket about fifty pounds 
 which I had, just before I left London, drawn out 
 of my bankers for my travelling expenses, and I 
 had not so large an account at my bankers as to 
 render the loss of this sum of money a matter of 
 indifference to me. However, I resolved to make 
 the best of it, and when the two sailors came close 
 to me and said that they were travelling on foot 
 from Liverpool to Poole, to seek for employment, 
 I gave them a shilling, with which fortunately they 
 appeared satisfied, thanked me, and continued tlieir 
 journey. 
 
 To return to the particular village before men- 
 tioned. Walking down hill towards this village 
 some fifty or sixty years later than the day when 
 Arthur Young walked up that hill in France, I 
 encountered some sights and some scenes, which 
 those witnessed by Arthur Young in France 
 in that bygone time could hardly exceed in the 
 materials they afforded for " taking the gauge and 
 dimensions of misery, depression, and contempt." 
 
 What is this? A cottage built of wood and 
 without a chimney, the smoke ascending through 
 what appears a large hole in the roof. The chimney 
 fell down, I learned on inquiry, some time since. 
 
An English Village in 1844-5. 229 
 
 and had not been rebuilt. The thatch of the 
 roof had been extended over the space where the 
 chimney was ; and the smoke, occasionally accom- 
 panied by sparks of fire, found its way through as 
 it could. So that, besides the greater danger of 
 fire, the condition of the interior of the cottage 
 was fully worse than in those cases in which the 
 chimney was originally only a circular aperture in 
 the roof. For here the efforts of the smoke to 
 escape to upper air are rather more often unavail- 
 ing, than where the original design of the cottage 
 architect did not contemplate any chimney at all. 
 I Avas informed that a deaf woman was in the 
 house when the chimney fell in, and had only left 
 the chimney corner a moment or two before the 
 chimney tumbled down. 
 
 Soon after I came to another tenement in this 
 village, which appeared to be undergoing some 
 repairs. It was a cottage of two rooms, without 
 a garden — rent thirty shillings a year. The tenant 
 of it was a labourer, with seven shillings a week, 
 and a wife and six children at home. The woman 
 said she had Uved there thirty years, and could 
 never get any repairs done, except a tile now and 
 then. Most of the cottages in the parish were 
 thatched, but this one was tiled. The farmer to 
 
230 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 whom she paid the rent always said he spoke to 
 the college* which was the owner, but could not 
 get them to do anything. 
 
 No repairs for thirty years! Corporations are 
 said to have no souls. Here is an example — a 
 proof indeed — of the truth of the saying. But 
 though there are certain powers and rights which 
 corporations have by law, I cannot find that they 
 are entitled by law to have no souls — and no 
 bowels of compassion. Stomachs they certainly 
 have in fact, whether they have them in law or 
 not. I therefore apprehend that this corporation 
 cannot plead that they are entitled by law to feel 
 no compassion for the sufferings which their tenants 
 endure by reason of the entrances of the wind 
 and the rain, the frost and the snow, through the 
 "rents of ruin" which time has made in their 
 hovels. 
 
 Whether their landlords were or were not 
 entitled by law to plead that they had no souls, it 
 seemed to go hard anyway with these poor people. 
 For it did not appear that the advantages enjoyed 
 by the other proprietor, the noble or most noble 
 
 * A college in one of the Universities which was the owner 
 of this part of the parish with which this village was nearly 
 co-extensive. 
 
An English Village in 1844-5. 231 
 
 marquis, in the matter of soul, was attended by 
 perceptible advantages to the poor cottagers. 
 "He's a marquis indeed!" was the observation 
 I heard on the spot. " He takes every thing out 
 of it, and brings nothing into it. The Lord 
 dehver us from such a marquis!" 
 
 I cannot say how the case might be in respect to 
 any parish where this marquis might be resident. 
 It is possible that he might be there as popular as 
 he was unpopular here. The case is anyhow, at 
 least, somewhat different where the proprietor is 
 resident. It needs no very advanced stage in 
 civilization for the preference of a flower-garden to 
 a dunghill in front of one's house. It requires no 
 very great amount of humanity to remove squalor, 
 filth and extreme misery from under one's nose; 
 to desire to see the cottages clustered round one's 
 park gates, not merely neat and picturesque, but 
 decently clean, commodious, and comfortable. A 
 comparison of the cottages in certain localities 
 near the owners' residences with those in certain 
 other localities at a distance from such residences 
 will occur to every one who has seen anything 
 of the present state of England — at least, of its 
 state some years ago. Sir John Falstaff declared 
 that, when he was elevated to the peerage, he 
 
232 Notes an the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 should forswear sack, and live cleanly, as a noble- 
 man should do. It is natural that a nobleman 
 should not desire to have a slovenly unhandsome 
 cottage come betwixt the wind and his nobility. 
 
 The price of bread is always considerably higher 
 in these places than in the neighbouring towns ; a 
 fact which is partly accounted for by the number 
 of bad debts met with by those who sell bread 
 and flour. One man said he could not get paid, 
 and gave up the trade. He said he lost about fifty 
 pounds before he shut up his shop. Anotjier man 
 said the people had got between two and three 
 hundred pounds in his debt. In truth, the jpublic in 
 those parts of the kingdom could not and did not 
 live on their wages : and the above is only one of 
 the ways in which those wages were eked out so 
 as to enable them to keep body and soul together 
 in the most miserable manner. As I wept along, 
 I observed another shop shut. The man who 
 kept it, I was informed, had been ruined by bad 
 debts, and went off in the night with all tjie goods 
 he had left. i 
 
 Nearly opposite this shut-up shop, gett ng over 
 a stile, I found a footpath leading across ^ corner 
 of what was once a park, through which h^d run a 
 fine clear, rapid stream, well supplied with fiiie trout 
 
An English Village in 1844-5. 233 
 
 — such as are met with in the Kennet, and such 
 streams as you wlII find some pleasant as well as 
 instructive talk about in Mr. Kingsl ey's dehghtful 
 paper called "Chalk Stream Studies." The family, 
 whose possession of this estate, however, was by 
 no means ancient, had a house here once; which 
 they occasionally visited. At such times no doubt 
 the village bore a very different aspect fi?om that 
 which it wears now : — 
 
 " A merry place, 'tis said, in days of yore. 
 
 But sometliing ails it now — tlie place is curst." 
 
 The stream still runs on, but no longer through a 
 park. For the house is gone, not a trace of it 
 remaining ; the park ploughed up, though round 
 the edge of it might still be seen the traces of the 
 drive, in the circling avenue marked out by the 
 trees still standing. The far older and stronger 
 castle of the older and mightier lords of the place, 
 has left some relics of its huge and frowning walls, 
 which, if they seem to teU some broken tale of 
 feudal tyranny in days long past, can hardly be 
 suggestive of the picture of a more miserable 
 population than that which now clusters round 
 them, while they are suggestive of that high- 
 spirited and warlike race who had set their seals 
 to the Great Charter, and in securing their own 
 
234 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 liberties against the encroacliments of their kings, 
 laid the foundation of the liberties of England, and 
 thereby of the liberties of all mankind. 
 
 From the stile above mentioned there was a view 
 of a house of considerable size, prettily situated, 
 which an old woman informed me was the house of 
 the clergyman, adding, " We don't have much good 
 from he." The living is worth upwards of one thou- 
 sand pounds a year ; but the incumbent at that time 
 did not appear to enjoy a large amount of popularity 
 among his parishioners, who, on the other hand, 
 extolled the virtues of a neighbouring squire, the 
 labourers on whose property were much better off 
 than those in this parish, most of them living rent 
 free and having fuel found them by their landlord. 
 
 Here is a cottage a mere ruin. It is built of 
 mud, supported by upright and cross pieces of 
 timber, originally forming squares, but now dis- 
 torted by time and neglect into irregular figures 
 for which geometry has no name. Is it inhabited? 
 Yes ; and the woman in this hovel says that in the 
 cold weather they pay two shillings a week out of 
 their seven shillings a week for firing, and they have 
 eight children. They have no garden, and she 
 says their rent is one pound a year. 
 
 But a man now pointed out a cottage worse than 
 
An English Village in 1844-5. 235 
 
 any of these that have been described, saying he 
 could drive a horse and cart through it. And in 
 truth he scarcely exaggerated when he said so. 
 There were holes in the windows large enough to 
 put both hands through ; and holes in some parts 
 of the walls large enough to put the whole body 
 through. The roof was also full of holes. The 
 occupant of it said the rain ran in in a hundred 
 places ; that they could not lie in their beds dry. 
 A good many cases had been met with of families 
 (generally those, too, in the coldest and worst 
 dwellings) who had no blankets, even in that 
 severe winter. And of those who had blankets, 
 the best off had not more than two to a bed — 
 frequently but one — while most people found three 
 too few, and that too in houses made to keep out 
 the cold, with doors, windows, and chimneys of 
 very different construction from that of the majority 
 of agricultural labourers' cottages. The family in 
 this cottage of which I now speak had no blankets. 
 The children (there were seven of them), some in 
 rags and almost naked, were cowering round the 
 embers of a fire on the hearth within the large 
 chimney — the only sheltered spot in the cottage. 
 One poor little thing, a boy about two years old, 
 was playing among the embers, unconscious alike 
 
236 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 of the dark fate of his race and his own. His 
 little brother had been burnt to death only a short 
 time before, while engaged as he now was. 
 
 These children had recently lost their mother — 
 one consequence of which was the death by burning 
 of the little boy. They were now under the care 
 of their eldest sister, a girl about seventeen. 
 Eather less than three weeks after this time on 
 visiting this village again, I was informed that 
 this girl was dead and buried. She had gone to 
 a gentleman's house at a little distance to beg, 
 and, standing about two hours in the cold and the 
 wet, she caught a cold, which,.from the state of the 
 cottage, insufficient covering (there were, as I have ■ 
 said, no blankets), and the want of necessaries, 
 turned into a fever and carried her off in about ten 
 days. She died raving mad. Her life had been 
 short and miserable. Better to be in the grave 
 than to go on living thus. 
 
 In cases of starvation, this is the usual termina- 
 tion of the melancholy process. " Towards the 
 end," says Liebig ("Animal Chemistry," p. 26), 
 "the particles of the brain begin to undergo the 
 process of oxidation, and delirium, mania, and 
 death close the scene." 
 
 I will not weary the reader with more of the 
 
An English Village in 1844-5. 237 
 
 details of that day's work. Those already given 
 may perhaps be considered more than enough. 
 Whatever may be the condition of that village 
 now, what has been said conveys, as far as it 
 goes, a strictly accurate description of what it was 
 at that time. 
 
 Ten years after my visit to the English village 
 I have attempted to describe, it happened to me to 
 pass a few weeks in a Scottish village. I made a 
 few notes on the matters which in the Scottish 
 village chiefly attracted my attention. It will be 
 seen from what is put down in the following 
 section of this chapter that the condition of the 
 inhabitants of the Scottish village was better than 
 that of the inhabitants of the English village, 
 in so far as their cottages were not in ruins. But 
 in other matters, such as their being obliged to eat 
 bread made of damaged flour and to submit to 
 their little crops being destroyed by the landlord's 
 game — against which grievance they were totally 
 without redress or remedy — their only remedy 
 being to leave the land where they and their 
 forefathers had dwelt for centuries — it may appear 
 a little doubtful whether the people in the English 
 village or those in the Scottish village were in 
 the most unenviable condition. The people in the 
 
238 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 Scottisli village were, as to shelter from the 
 weather, better off than the people in the English 
 village, but they were under a landlord who, 
 though sometimes called a religious or pious noble- 
 man, appears from the facts to have been an 
 oppressive and hard-hearted tyrant. 
 
A Scottish Village zn 1855. 239 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SECTION III. 
 A SCOTTISH VILLAGE IN 1855. 
 
 The Scottish village referred to, on which I have 
 made a few notes, belonged, with aU. the surround- 
 ing country, to one of those Leviathan landholders, 
 among some half-dozen of whom the greater part 
 of Scotland is parcelled out, and who, unlike their 
 English brother peers who profited by the plunder 
 of the English Church lands at the Reformation in 
 England, and rose at once from a humble station 
 to be lords and knights, profess to trace their 
 descent from kings and heroes of very remote times. 
 I will not at present trouble the reader about those 
 pedigrees, farther than to state that this village had 
 once belonged to an Abbey, the ruins of which still 
 remained in the condition in which they had been 
 left at the Reformation in Scotland, and had come 
 into the possession of the family of the present 
 
240 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 proprietor some years after. Into the root of their 
 title I do not inquire. It might be as good or even 
 better than many other titles to Church property. 
 Lord Byron was very proud of the possession of 
 Newstead Abbey, and seems to have got into his 
 head with much poring over his pedigree, some 
 touch of the confusion which he ascribes to the 
 Polish Count Palatine in Mazeppa., and to have 
 satisfied himself that the Byrons of the sixteenth 
 century were identical with the Buruns of the 
 thirteenth century, of which identity there is no 
 evidence. 
 
 This Scottish village afforded much matter, both 
 from observation and reflection to any observing 
 and reflecting Englishman. The first thing that 
 naturally struck an Englishman was the contrast 
 between it and the English villages — particularly 
 the villages of the southern and south-western 
 counties of England. The most striking contrast 
 that first presented itself was the monotonous 
 regularity of this Scottish village, as compared 
 with the picturesque irregularity of many English 
 villages. I will explain what I mean by mono- 
 tonous regularity by stating that this village, though 
 situated in a most picturesque country, was merely 
 a collection of cottages, built of a sort of red sand- 
 
A Scottish Village m 1855. 241 
 
 stone — they had a few years before been hovels of 
 clay and turf — placed close together, end to end, in 
 rows forming the village street, resembling the rows 
 of negro cabins on a planter's estate, where nothing 
 is left to the individual will of the tenant, but he 
 must squat in the one case as the slave owner, in 
 the other as the laird bids him. Whereas every- 
 thing that gives beauty to an English ^'illage 
 springs from the circumstance of the individual 
 will having been as free to select a spot for a 
 dwelling as the oak on the village green to shoot 
 out its boughs as nature prompted it. 
 
 I have in the preceding section quoted a few 
 words from Sir Walter Scott's description of the 
 village of TuUy-Veolan. I will now quote a few 
 words more. Sir Walter Scott, in describing the 
 village of TuUy-Yeolan, says : " The village was 
 more than half a mile long, the cottages being 
 divided from each other by gardens, or yards, as 
 the inhabitants called them, of different sizes." I 
 can truly say, however, that such was not the case 
 in this village of which I write — for the cottages 
 were placed close together, without gardens or 
 greensward between them and the road or village 
 street, though many of them, perhaps all, may have 
 
 16 
 
242 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 had a bit of ground at the back by way of garden 
 or kailyard. 
 
 Another part of Scott's description of the village 
 of TuUy-Veolan, mentions the great number of 
 useless dogs, and the story told of them by a 
 French tourist who, wishing to find a reason for 
 the number of dogs he saw, recorded as one of the 
 national characteristics of Scotland, that the State 
 maintained in each village a relay of curs, called 
 collies^ whose duty it was to chase the chevaux de 
 paste (too starved and exhausted to move without 
 such a stimulus) from onehamlet to another, till they 
 drove them to the end of the stage. Travellers in 
 Scotland now might not find the number of curs so 
 great as described by the veracious French tourist; 
 but Colonel Thompson related a curious story of 
 the Scotch collies which he heard on his Free Trade 
 expedition in Scotland. The country people used 
 to be followed to church by their collie dogs, which 
 were all put into an appointed place in the church 
 by themselves ; and the dogs knew by the change 
 in the preacher's tone when he was winding up, 
 and with one consent cried Hoo ! in joy at their 
 approaching liberation. It came into one preacher's 
 head to try the experiment of imitating the tones 
 
A Scottish Village in 1855. 243 
 
 of winding up, and then going on again. Which 
 he did ; and the dogs made their Hoo ! in the wrong 
 place. 
 
 To return to this Scottish village. I obtained 
 tolerably good lodgings at a house of two stories 
 belonging to one of the principal shopkeepers in 
 the village, whose wife, a good cook, and remark- 
 ably intelligent woman, attended to the lodgings. 
 
 One of the first things that attracted my atten- 
 tion was the badness of the bread procured from 
 the village baker — the bread being sour from an 
 unpleasant combination of bad flour and bad yeast. 
 I therefore ate chiefly bread made by my landlady 
 in the shape of flat cakes of moderate thickness. 
 These cakes were, I think, called scones, the name 
 given also in Scotland to barley cakes — but never 
 to oat cakes, which are called bannocks. The 
 reason given for the badness of the baker's bread 
 was this : A combination or company of persons in 
 the village enriched themselves by selling to the 
 villagers damaged flour; against which grievance 
 and villany there was no redress, because, though 
 the " great man " most probably did not know of 
 this villanous proceeding, the poor people dared 
 not complain for fear of these scoundrels' influence 
 with him being used to ruin them, by getting 
 
 16 * 
 
244 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 them turned out of their small tenements or 
 holdings. 
 
 But this was but one of many evUs incident 
 to the condition of these Scotch villagers. The 
 English squire is strict enough about the preserva- 
 tion of his game, and the English farmer often feels 
 to his cost the consequences of such preservation. 
 But this is nothing to what the Scottish inhabitants 
 of this village — which is only an average example 
 of a Scottish village — ab uno disce omnes — felt and 
 suffered. They were as much attached by feeling 
 to the soil, where their fathers had lived for many 
 generations, as the villeins regardant were bound 
 to the soil by the feudal law. It is, indeed, as I have 
 heard some of them sorrowfully say, "a grievous 
 oppression," when the great landholder, who is the 
 lord of the soil for miles round, tells them, if they 
 complain of the all but total destruction in many 
 cases, in some of the total destruction of their little 
 crops by his game — that, if they do not like it, they 
 may go elsewhere ; and when this "great man's" 
 numerous gamekeepers, who with their guns on full 
 cock, strut on the public highways with the airs of 
 Prussian policemen, shoot the poor man's favourite 
 little dog, sitting inoffensively at its master's door. 
 
 " Strange !" said an Englishman one day as he 
 
A Scottish Village m 1855. 245 
 
 eyed one of tlie Prussian policeman-like gamekeepers 
 with a grim look — " Strange ! that the descendants 
 of the Scottish peasants who fought so hard and so 
 successfully for liberty and independence at Ban- 
 nockburn, should have gotten so little of what their 
 forefathers bled for. I dislike this country, except 
 for some of its scenery, and its pure air and clear 
 streams. But the condition of these villagers 
 reminds me painfully of the treatment of the people 
 of India by their native oppressors — treatment 
 which, as a soldier and administrator, I have always 
 done my best to improve. What business have 
 these descendants of cow-stealers and robbers of 
 Church property with such enormous domains? We 
 might say to them — ' Bruce we know, and Douglas 
 we know, but who are you? I should have taken 
 off my hat to Bruce, because he was Bruce ; and I 
 take it off to Wellington, because he is Wellington.' 
 But these cow-stealers and Church-robbers ! Ugh !" 
 One day the Englishman referred to was walking 
 along the road leading to the village, with his 
 fishing-rod in his hand, when an open carriage 
 overtook and passed him. Two men were seated 
 in it, one of whom being seated with his back to 
 the horses, the man on foot had from that circum- 
 stance a better view of his face. It was a face that 
 
246 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 appeared to indicate that the owner of it considered 
 himself a person of very great importance. The 
 expression of this man's face said as plainly as if 
 the words had been written there in characters 
 larger and far less ambiguous than those of an Act 
 of Parliament, that he considered himself as being 
 not only absolute master of all the land for miles 
 on miles round about, but also absolute master of 
 all the human beings who had the misfortune to 
 live on that land. There was something in the 
 haughty, insolent, despotic look of this man which 
 roused the Englishman's combativeness. And as 
 the latter returned his haughty look, which seemed 
 to demand what right a "gutterblood " had to be 
 walking on his domain with a fishing-rod in his 
 hand, there was something in the expression of his 
 features that seemed to be new to the rural mag- 
 nate, accustomed as he was to domineer among 
 dependents and the smaller lairds who looked upon 
 him as a small god — a very small one indeed — and 
 to rouse in him an emotion of rage, mixed with 
 some other emotions he did not much care to 
 analyze — inasmuch as an emotion very much akin 
 to fear lay coiled up among them. 
 
 The carriage rolled on, and, by a turn of the 
 road, was soon out of sight. And the pedestrian 
 
A Scottish Village in 1855. 247 
 
 walked on too, wondering wlio those men might be 
 in the carriage that had just passed hira. Presently 
 he met the clergyman of the parish, the minister as 
 he was there called, and, as he had a slight 
 acquaintance with him, he stopped and asked him 
 whose carriage it was that had passed him, and 
 which the minister coming in the opposite direction 
 had met. 
 
 " That's the Lord 's carriage." 
 
 " Who's the Lord ?" 
 
 " The eldest son of that right honourable, as well 
 as right worthy, and pious nobleman, the Earl 
 
 of ." 
 
 " He is the owner of the land about here, is he 
 not?" 
 
 " Ay, he is so." 
 
 " Did not his family get possession of it at the 
 Reformation, when they got the lands of that 
 Abbey?" 
 
 " Ay, they did so." 
 
 " I have read some story about roasting a man 
 till he signed some deeds." 
 
 " His lordship and his noble ancestors were aye 
 a very pious family; and had just a perfect abhor- 
 rence of that man of sin, the Pope of Rome, and 
 all his works. May be then it's not unlike that 
 
248 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 they might show their zeal for the true religion 
 by taking vigorous measures to get the lands out 
 of such hands."' 
 
 " That," said the Englishman, " is rather a new 
 view of the matter. But as to the change of hands 
 of the Abbey lands. I have my doubts whether 
 a change might not have been made of rather a 
 different kind. But might I ask which of the two 
 seated in the carriage was Lord ?" 
 
 " His Lordship sat with his back to the horses." 
 
 " And the other who sat with his face to the 
 horses ?" 
 
 " Oh, that was the Earl of , a rich English 
 
 nobleman, the eldest son and heir of the great 
 Marquis ." 
 
 The Scotch have generally a vast respect for 
 English noblemen, whom they assume to be all 
 rich, as they have a notion that England is a rich 
 country. And the English return the compliment 
 by the prodigious respect they have for those 
 Scottish magnates who are reported to be the 
 owners of a great extent of country, and in some 
 cases to have a very large rental. 
 
 " You seem to think, Sir," said the Englishman, 
 " that the ancestor of this worthy and pious noble- 
 man, the Ear] of , did well in getting these 
 
A Scottish Village in 1855. 249 
 
 lands by any means out of tiie power of the man 
 of sin, the Pope. I am no admirer of the Pope 
 and his works any more than yourself; but if you 
 will permit me, I should like to ask you a question 
 or two. I am a stranger here, and I naturally feel 
 some curiosity about things that are strange to 
 me." 
 
 " I shall be very ready to answer any question 
 in my power to answer. Sir," replied the minister. 
 
 "Well, then," continued the Enghshman, "if 
 you will consider merely the temporal condition 
 of the inhabitants of this village, for as to their 
 spiritual condition there cannot be a doubt of its 
 superiority under such a pastor as yourself, do you 
 think it was better or worse when the Abbot 
 of that Abbey was their landlord than it is now 
 
 when the worthy and pious Earl of is their 
 
 landlord?" 
 
 This question seemed to puzzle the worthy 
 minister a little, as opening up certain points of 
 view which had never before been presented to his 
 mind. After a short pause, he replied — 
 
 "Better or worse? How can it be a question, 
 Sir, when in those days the poor people were little 
 if any better than benighted heathens, without 
 either preaching or teaching that had the smallest 
 
250 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 savour of the true Gospel, or the pure unadul- 
 terated Word of God in it?" 
 
 " I excepted their spiritual condition expressly 
 from my question," said the Englishman. " No 
 doubt as to their spiritual condition they were 
 kept in great darkness and ignorance. But I have 
 always understood that the Roman Catholic clergy 
 were easy landlords; and I have read in your 
 Scottish histories that the nobles and gentry who 
 got possession of the Church lands were the reverse 
 of easy landlords. And now I see here a landlord 
 feeding his game upon the little crops of his poor 
 tenants, and I am informed that when they humbly 
 petition for redress their petitions are treated 
 with the disregard that a beast of prey might 
 be expected to show for the petition of the 
 animal he preyed on. Is this just? Is this 
 merciful? Is this the conduct becoming a pious 
 nobleman?" 
 
 " Sir," replied the minister, " in obedience to 
 the command — judge not that ye be not judged — 
 I would be far from presuming to judge a great 
 and pious nobleman as respects this matter of 
 game — though even I myself in respect of my 
 small bit of glebe land have been a sufferer in no 
 small degree, and moreover I did even once venture 
 
A Scottish Village m 1855. 251 
 
 to present a humble memorial to his lordship on 
 the subject, and thereby, I fear, did incur his 
 lordship's displeasure. For great men. Sir, do 
 not easily brook any opposition to their will." 
 
 " So much the worse for the great men them- 
 selves in the long run," said the Englishman. " It 
 is one of the greatest advantages of a free country, 
 with a free Parliament, and a free press, to protect 
 great men, as you call them, against themselves. 
 Some of the greatest men that ever lived. Napoleon 
 Bonaparte, for instance, have gone to destruction 
 because they were without such protection. As 
 for these small tyrants, such as your landlord here, 
 you see what monkey tricks they play when left 
 to themselves. And, indeed, I believe they lose 
 the little intelligence they may have bad from 
 nature, and descend in the scale of being so as 
 to form the connecting link between man and the 
 baboon." 
 
 The Englishman would not have gone so far 
 in the expression of his opinions, for he was 
 always careful not to say unnecessarily what 
 might hurt the feelings of any person unless such 
 person, by having been the aggressor, rendered an 
 attack on him a mere act of self-defence ; but he 
 saw that the worthy minister, though he might 
 
252 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 consider it his duty to speak of the great land- 
 holder with a certain guarded tone of respect, was 
 greatly displeased at the destruction of his own 
 and his parishioners' crops by the landlord's game, 
 and by the unfeeling manner in which redress was 
 refused. 
 
 "Now, Sir," continued the Englishman, taking 
 a small volume out of his pocket, " with your 
 permission I will read to you a short passage out 
 of a History of Scotland I have here in my 
 hands, a book written by a man from whom, though 
 in common with the rest of the world I admire 
 his genius, I ^differ totally on many points, and in 
 none more than in his admiration of your Stuart 
 kings. The writer I am about to quote is Sir 
 Walter Scott ; and the admission of gross injustice 
 and rapacity on the part of your nobility is the 
 more important as made by a writer whose bias 
 was quite as aristocratical and as much against 
 the Scottish democratical Church as that of 
 Thucydides against the Athenian democracy; and 
 this passage, therefore, bears some analagy to a 
 passage in the eight book of the History of Thucy- 
 dides." 
 
 " Sir Walter Scott was no friend to the Kirk of 
 Scotland, and he has done his best to ridicule the 
 
A Scottish Village in 1855. 253 
 
 poor persecuted covenanters, and to do honour to 
 their base and cruel persecutors." 
 
 " I don't say a word in defence of his worship 
 of such heroes as Claverhouse — a man whom I 
 don't even much admire as a soldier — and who, in 
 every other respect, can only be an object of 
 detestation for his tyranny and cruelty — cowardly 
 cruelty too, in order to establish the despotism of 
 such despicable tyrants as Charles the Second and 
 his brother James. These were one set of your 
 native oppressors. But what say you to this 
 description, which I have reason to know is borne 
 out by the best historical evidence, of the other 
 set of your native oppressors, consisting of such 
 right worthy and pious noblemen ' as this Earl 
 
 of ?" 
 
 He then read the following passage : — 
 " It remained to dispose of the wealth lately 
 enjoyed by the Catholic clergy, who were supposed 
 to be possessed of half of the revenue of Scotland, 
 so far as it arose from land. Knox and the other 
 Eeformed clergy had formed a plan for the decent 
 maintenance of a National Church out of these 
 extensive funds, and proposed, that what might be 
 deemed more than sufficient for this purpose should 
 be expended upon hospitals, schools, universities, 
 
254 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 and places of education. But the Lords, who had 
 seized the revenues of the Church, were determined 
 not to part with the spoil they had obtained ; and 
 those whom the preachers had found most active 
 in destroying Popery, were wonderfully cold when 
 it was proposed to them to surrender the lands they 
 had seized upon for their own use. The plan of 
 John Knox was, they said, a ' devout imagina- 
 tion,' a visionary scheme, which showed the good- 
 ness of the preacher's intentions, but which it was 
 impossible to carry into practice. In short, they 
 retained by force the greater part of the Church 
 revenues for their own advantage." 
 
 " Ay," said the minister, " John Knox's scheme 
 was a good and honest one, though the Lords 
 who had gotten the Church lands might call it 
 visionary." 
 
 " I quite agree with you. The conduct of John 
 Knox in this was that of a wise statesman as well 
 as of an honest man; the conduct of those Lords 
 was the conduct of a band of robbers. A pack of 
 greater ruffians, I believe, never appeared upon 
 earth, in any age or country. The persons who 
 got hold of the Church lands in England were 
 mean men of the grade of lackeys and cooks. But 
 the Scotch plunderers were to a man pre-eminent. 
 
A Scottish Village ^Vj 1855. 255 
 
 even in that age of bad men, for ferocity, treachery, 
 and cruelty. The 'chief of them, James Douglas, 
 Earl of Morton, a man of a ferocious, treacherous, 
 and cruel disposition, brought a stain on the name 
 of Douglas of a pecuhar kind ; a stain too that 
 shows that the morality of the nobles of that age 
 had fallen below the level of the morality of two or 
 three centuries back. This Morton surrendered 
 to the Queen of England the unfortunate Earl of 
 Northumberland, who, having been unsuccessful in 
 his rebellion in England, had fled for refuge into 
 Scotland, which had always before been a safe and 
 hospitable place of refuge for those whom misfor- 
 tune or political faction had driven into exile. 
 What aggravated the blackness of the transaction, 
 was that when Morton himself had been forced to 
 fly to England, on account of his share in Rizzio's 
 murder, he had been courteously received and 
 protected by the unlaappy nobleman whom he now 
 delivered up to the vengeance of the Tudor Queen. 
 'It was,' says Sir Walter Scott, 'an additional 
 and aggravating circumstance, that it was a 
 Douglas who betrayed a Percy ; and when the 
 annals of their ancestors were considered, it was 
 found that while they presented many acts of open 
 hostihty, many instances of close and firm alhance, 
 they never till now had afibrded an example of any 
 
256 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 act of treachery exercised by the one family against 
 the other. To complete the infamy of the transac- 
 tion, a sum of money was paid to the Regent Morton 
 on this occasion, which he divided with Douglas of 
 Lochleven.' There are other cases of cruelty, and 
 treachery, mixed up with cant and hypocrisy, 
 recorded by Sir Walter Scott, upon the authority 
 of contemporary evidence of the most authentic 
 kind, which prove that the heroes of your Reforma- 
 tion in Scotland may rank with the worst men of 
 the worst times ; that they may vie with Ezzehno in 
 ferocity, with Borgia in treachery and cruelty, and 
 with Louis the Eleventh in rapacity, in hypocrisy, 
 and in baseness." 
 
 "But you do not include in this description 
 John Knox and the other preachers ?" 
 
 " No — I mean the laymen — and of those, not 
 the people generally, but the laymen who called 
 themselves of noble, or, at least, of ancient famihes. 
 And, my dear Sir, when we remember that that 
 miscreant, Louis the Eleventh, was the first who 
 assumed the title of ' Most Christian King;' we 
 ought to reflect that a man may obtain the appel- 
 lation of a ' worthy and pious nobleman,' without 
 possessing any very just title to it. I think that 
 Virgil's hero, ' pious JSneas,' is as pretty a 
 scoundrel as you often meet with." 
 
Free Trade and the Channel Tunnel. 257 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 FREE TRADE AND THE CHANNEL TUNNEL. 
 
 Of the four Free Trade advocates mentioned in 
 the preceding pages, two, General Thompson and 
 Mr. Yilliers, were, as far as I know, opposed to the 
 Channel Tunnel ; two, Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright, 
 would seem from the following statement to have 
 been in favour of it. 
 
 On the 17th of August, 1883, a general meeting 
 of the Submarine Continental Railway Company- 
 was held at the Cannon Street Hotel, to receive a 
 report from the directors, and for special business. 
 Sir E. W. Watkin, the Chairman of the Company, 
 presided. The Chairman said: — 
 
 " The Select Cominittee of both Houses of Parliament to 
 whom Her Majesty's GoTernment referred the question of 
 the Channel Tunnel, have by a majority expressed their 
 opinion against proceeding for the present with legislation." 
 
 17 
 
258 Notes on the Anti-Corn Laio Struggle. 
 
 The Chairman in the course of his remarks 
 said : — 
 
 " If any supposed for a moment that they meant to slacken 
 their efEorts to attain their object they -were very much 
 mistaken. A cause which had the advocacy of the late 
 Prince Consort, of Mr. Cobden, of the Marquis of Lansdowne, 
 of Lord Aberdare, and of John Bright, was a cause which no 
 man need be ashamed to be associated with." 
 
 The Chairman also said : — 
 
 " There was no doubt that they had succeeded in creating 
 in this country a distinct party of men in favour of the con- 
 struction of the tunnel, and in addition they had associated 
 the question indissolubly with the name of peace." 
 
 It unfortunately sometimes happens that the 
 persons who make most stir with the professed in- 
 tention of promoting peace, do not adopt the most 
 obvious course to the attainment of that object. 
 
 According to this statement of Sir E. W. Watkin, 
 the Channel Tunnel had the advocacy of the late 
 Prince Consort and of Mr. Cobden. If we are to 
 adopt any great undertaking not upon our own 
 knowledge and judgment, but upon the authority 
 of others, those on whose authority we are to act ' 
 should be men whose judgment in great affairs had 
 been often tried and never found wanting ; in civil as 
 well as military affairs it should resemble that of the 
 great English general, of whom it has been said that 
 
Free Trade and the Channel Tunnel. 259 
 
 there was but "one human being who was able to 
 mislead that far-sighted and sure-footed judgment." 
 
 Now, with all respect for the Prince Consort and 
 for Mr. Cobden, I do not feel myself under any 
 obligation to accept the opinion of the Prince 
 Consort or the opinion of Mr. Cobden, that Sir 
 E. W. Watkin shall efface the insular character of 
 Great Britain and place it in precisely the same 
 relation to France that Germany is. Such a pro- 
 posal indicates an amount of arrogance and presum- 
 tion that reminds us of the extravagant assumptions 
 of an Oriental tyrant or a Eoman emperor. Specu- 
 lating traders think of nothing but filling their 
 pockets. But there are other things to be thought 
 of besides raising the dividends of railway com- 
 panies, when the price of the rise may be a nation's 
 ruin. A glance at the map wiU show that if the 
 English Channel be filled up, London will be within 
 an easier distance of Paris than Berlin, and when 
 the cry of " to London " shall arise, as in 1870 the 
 cry " to Berlin " arose, England may not have 
 the good fortune to have such a general as Moltke, 
 and such an army as Moltke had organized. 
 
 Whether or not it was the desire and the design 
 of the Prince Consort to plunge England into the 
 Crimean War, I do not presume to say. A writer, 
 
 17 * 
 
260 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 wHose letters on the subject of the interference of 
 the Crown with the Cabinet, originally published in 
 a newspaper had, when published in a collected form, 
 in 1878 reached the twentieth thousand, says : — 
 
 " Those who remember the Crimean War, may also perhaps 
 remember that the immediate cause of it, so far as we are 
 concerned, was the interpretation attached by Russia to the 
 Vienna Note, after it had been accepted by all parties except 
 Turkey. A despatch from Count Nesselrode made it clear 
 that Russia understood the Note in the sense which the 
 Turkish Government alleged it was capable of bearing — a 
 sense different from that in which it had been accepted by 
 the other Powers. This difficulty might have been overcome 
 by further negotiation, but the cry went forth that Russia 
 had tried to deceive us, and the indignation roused by 
 Russia's supposed treachery made war inevitable. We learn 
 now that this was the court view. As soon as Count Nessel- 
 rode's despatch was made known we are told that ' not an 
 hour was lost by the Queen and Prince,' in making Lord 
 Aberdeen aware of their views as to the course now to be 
 adopted. It is no surprise to be told that their views 
 prevailed, and that the arguments which dropped from the 
 Royal pen were ' adopted and carried out in detail by Lord 
 Clarendon in a despatch to Sir George Hamilton Seymour, at 
 St. Petersburg, on the 30th of September.' In a letter to 
 Baron Stockmar, two days after this communication of the 
 Queen's views to the Cabinet, the Prince referring to Russia, 
 speaks of 'the cloven foot,' of the 'cat let out of the bag,' 
 of the Vienna Note as ' a trap ' set for us, with the con- 
 nivance of Austria, and of the folly of acting as if our anta- 
 
Free Trade and the Channel Tunnel. 261 
 
 gonists were 'honourable men.' This was the cue given at 
 once to the Cabinet, to the nation, and to as many as Baron 
 Stockmar chose to acquaint with the ' views ' of the British 
 Court. The change in the temper of the nation was as sudden 
 as a transformation scene, and we were irrevocably committed 
 to war. . , . The scheme for enlisting foreigners, which got 
 us into such a scrape with the United States, was of the 
 Prince's suggesting. The Cabinet eyed it with suspicion at 
 first, but ended by adopting it, as is duly noted to the Prince's 
 glorification."* 
 
 All this is now before the British nation, and 
 
 the nation can judge how far the Prince Consort's 
 
 advocacy of the Channel Tunnel is a guarantee 
 
 that the Channel Tunnel is likely to be a powerful 
 
 element of good, and not a powerful element of 
 
 evil to the island of Great Britain. A man can 
 
 have but one country. An Englishman looks 
 
 upon England from an Englishman's point of 
 
 view. A G-erman looks upon England from a 
 
 German's point of view ; and as the Channel Tunnel 
 
 would seem to do little more than place England 
 
 and France on the same footing as Germany and 
 
 France are, the German sees no objection to the 
 
 Channel Tunnel. But I do not think that the 
 
 Englishmen of the last quarter of the nineteenth 
 
 century will submit to be governed by Germans. 
 
 * " Tbe Crown and the Cabinet," pp. 37, 38. 
 
262 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 It is natural that an Englishman should desire the 
 prosperity of England. It is natural that a German 
 should, desire the prosperity of Germany. A 
 German may desire to make war on Russia, fancy- 
 ing he sees some advantage to Germany in such 
 a proceeding, while an Englishman seeing no advan- 
 tage to England in a war with Russia, may not 
 desire to make such a war. 
 
 Indeed, if Sir W. E. Watkin were to succeed in 
 his scheme of a Channel Tunnel, matters would be 
 very considerably altered for the better as regards 
 the relations of Germany towards France, inasmuch 
 as France would then have another next neighbour, 
 to quarrel with, which next neighbour might oflFer 
 subjects of competition as well worth fighting 
 for as Strasburg and Metz. Instead of having a 
 pacific tendency this Channel Tunnel would carry 
 us back to the time when we were burthened with 
 the cost of fortifications and a garrison for Calais. 
 Assuming that we should not resume our old desire 
 to possess Calais, we should be by no means safe 
 in assuming that the French would not desire to 
 possess Dover, as some of their political writers 
 express a desire to possess or to regain Strasburg 
 and Metz. I know nothing farther respecting the 
 Prince Consort's and Mr. Cobden's advocacy of the 
 
Free Trade and the Channel Tunnel. 263 
 
 Channel Tunnel, than the statement of Sir W. E. 
 "Watkin quoted in a former page. I know nothing 
 of the reasons for such a Tunnel which the Prince 
 Consort and Mr. Cobden may have given. From the 
 admitted general benevolence of both, it may be 
 inferred that they considered the Tunnel as likely 
 to have a tendency to produce peace and not to 
 produce war. But it is given to few, very few, if 
 any, of the sons of men, to foresee the proximate far 
 less the distant and remote consequences of human 
 acts. The character of Mr. Cobden was energetic 
 and sanguine. These two qualities were most 
 important in the work he had to do in the Anti-Corn 
 Law battle. I have seen Mr. Cobden, and that too 
 when he was within less than two years of victory, 
 almost inclined to think the struggle hopeless. 
 
 But the sanguine character of mind which Mr. 
 Cobden possessed is not altogether a safe guide in 
 such speculations as the Channel Tunnel, nor is it 
 in the large questions of peace and war, of foreign 
 policy, of the principle of non-intervention in which 
 Mr. Cobden engaged after the settlement of the 
 Corn Law question. The editor of his speeches says 
 in the preface, that Mr. Cobden said that war is 
 never desired by a people, but by politicians and 
 military men, whose ambition and cupidity are fired 
 
264 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 by the prospect of advancement or profit. To show 
 how difficult it is to get at truth, I will quote a letter 
 of Mr. Cobden to me, dated "Midhurst, 25th 
 November 1858." Mr. Cobden says: — 
 
 " Since we last met, the war with Russia occurred, and 
 I confess it tended rather to modiiy my opinion as to the 
 aristocratic origin of all our wars. I watched very closely the 
 forces at work in carrying us into that war, and I did not 
 find that the aristocratic element predominated. The House of 
 Commons was far less warlike than the people. Talking to 
 Lord Aberdeen one day about the origin of the war, he said 
 it was the press that prevented him from keeping the peace. 
 Has it not always been so ? I suspect that the newspapers 
 are far more powerful now than ever, and that they are 
 gaining upon the power of the orators of whom you hold 
 so unfavourable an opinion. As a general rule, I think, great 
 orators have done quite as much harm as good. They have 
 this to be said for them, that they are a sort of guarantee in 
 parliamentary government that we are not governed by down- 
 right fools. It by no means insures our being Under the 
 rule of honest men or wise statesmen." 
 
 Mr. Cobden died on the 2nd of April, 1865, more 
 than ten years before the publication of Sir Theodore 
 Martin's third volume of the Life of the Prince 
 Consort. Consequently Mr. Cobden had not, in 
 forming his opinion respecting the origin of the 
 Crimean War, the assistance which he would have 
 derived from that third volume. When Lord 
 
Free Trade and the Channel Tunnel. 265 
 
 Aberdeen said to Mr. Cobden that it was the press 
 that prevented him from keeping the peace, he 
 is not to be supposed to have communicated to 
 Mr. Cobden all that he knew respecting the origin 
 of the war. The difficulty arising from Count 
 Nesselrode's despatch as to the sense attached by 
 Russia to the Vienna Note, after it had been 
 accepted by all parties except Turkey — a sense 
 different from that in which it had been accepted 
 by the other Powers, " might," says the writer* 
 before quoted, " have been overcome by further 
 negotiation, but the cry went forth that Russia had 
 tried to deceive us, and the indignation roused by 
 Russia's supposed treachery made war inevitable." 
 I need not repeat the words before quoted, but 
 what is the conclusion that follows from all this? 
 By " the cry went forth " is meant what Lord Aber- 
 deen said to Mr. Cobden that it was the press that 
 prevented Lord Aberdeen from keeping the peace. 
 Who set on the press? It would be strange if it 
 should appear that two of the advocates of Sir W. 
 E. Watkins's Channel Tunnel were one intentionally 
 the other unintentionally among the chief promoters 
 of the Crimean War. 
 
 The Crown and the Cabinet," p. 37. 
 
266 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 It will be necessary to make a careful examination 
 of a work published by Mr. Cobden in April, 1853, 
 which I have no doubt was read by the Czar 
 Nicholas and had great influence in determining 
 him on war by leading him to imagine that England 
 had really fallen into the condition described in 
 the words of a French Vice- Admiral Avhich I will 
 quote — a condition such that the French or any 
 other foreigner had only to effect a landing in order 
 to drive the English before them like a flock of 
 sheep and plunder and insult them to any extent 
 that might please the new conquerors. 
 
 Mr. Cobden would not, it may be assumed, take 
 a German's view of a Channel Tunnel, but he 
 was not altogether unlikely to take a view more 
 favourable to France than an average Englishman 
 would do. 
 
 In March, 1853, Mr. Cobden published " 1793 
 and 1853, in three letters," in the preface to the 
 Library Edition of which he says : — 
 
 " I have been charged with an anachronism in having^ 
 designated the hostilities which terminated in 1815 as the war 
 of 1793. ... It i8 true that there were brief suspensions of 
 hostilities at the truce of Amiens, and during Bonaparte's short 
 sojourn at Elba ; but even if it were clear that Napoleon's 
 ambition put an end to the peace, it would prove nothing but 
 that he had by the ordinary workings of the moral law been 
 
Free Trade and the Channel Tunnel. 267 
 
 in the meantime raised into a retributive agent for the 
 chastisement of those who were the authors of the original 
 
 In this passage Mr. Cobden has, no doubt 
 unintentionally, misrepresented facts. This arose 
 from Mr. Cobden' s having read in Hansard the 
 debates in both Houses of Parliament on the war 
 with France from 1791 to 1796, but apparently 
 not having carried his investigation beyond 1796. 
 He thus concludes that England was the aggressor 
 throughout the war till 1815, having been the 
 aggressor in 1793. Whereas, in 1796, Napoleon 
 Bonaparte having obtained the command of the 
 army of Italy assumed a policy of a universally 
 aggressive character, which Mr. Cobden has ap- 
 parently overlooked and given Bonaparte credit 
 for virtues which he did not possess. 
 
 Mr. Cobden says (p. 11) : — 
 
 " If yon would really understand the motives with which 
 we embarked upon the last French war, you must turn to 
 Hansard, and read the debates in both Houses of Parliament 
 upon the subject from 1791 to 1796. But there must be a 
 very precise and accurate attention to dates, in order to 
 understand the subject in hand. Our business lies with the 
 interval from 1789, when the Constituent Assembly of 
 France met, till 1793, when war commenced between England 
 and Fiance." 
 
268 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 Now, if Mr. Cobden had continued his careful 
 study of Hansard beyond 1796, he could not have 
 failed to perceive that in and after 1796 the 
 situation changed prodigiously. I think he could 
 not have failed to be forcibly impressed by passages 
 in the debates of both Houses of Parliament in 
 1800, particularly with the passage in Pitt's speech 
 in the House of Commons, on the 3rd February, 
 1800. 
 
 " If we look," Pitt says, " at tte catalogue of the breaches 
 of treaty, of the acts of perfidy, which are precisely commen- 
 snrate with the number of treaties made by the republic (for 
 I have sought in vain for any one which it has made and 
 which it has not broken) ; if we trace the history of them all, 
 or if we select those which have been accompanied by the 
 most atrocious cruelty, the name of Bonaparte will be found 
 allied to more of them than that of any other in the history 
 of the crimes and miseries of the last ten years." 
 
 Mr. Cobden's statement that England was the 
 aggressor throughout the whole war, instead of only 
 for the first three years, is contradicted point- 
 blank by a French writer of authority. " The war," 
 this writer says, " which England was waging 
 against us, so iniquitous at the beginning, had 
 become, thanks to our aggressive policy, a guarantee 
 and a protection to small states."* 
 
 * Lamfrey, vol. ii., p. 81. 
 
Free Trade and the Channel Tunnel. 269 
 
 It is clear, then, that the France of 1796 was not 
 the France of 1792. The change might have come 
 even if the man had not come, but since 1792 
 a man had appeared in the revolutionary armies of 
 France, whose talents for war would alone have 
 made him powerful. But he possessed also an art 
 in deceiving those with whom he negotiated, which 
 bore a certain resemblance to that of Csesar Borgia, 
 who is said to have had a jovialitj'^ and apparent 
 simplicity of manner which, notwithstanding his 
 often proved perfidy, amused men and put them 
 off their guard, throwing them perpetually into 
 his trap. His talents for war and his talents for 
 deceiving mankind had raised this man to a great 
 height of power ; of power so great that the British 
 Parliament was perhaps the only place in Europe 
 where men dared to speak out their real opinions 
 respecting him and his deeds. 
 
 It may be difficult to steer the middle course 
 between those whom Mr. Cobden designates panic- 
 mongers* and those whom others might designate 
 confidence-mongers. We have all heard of the 
 confidence-trick, and most of us have met with 
 the man who while winking at his own cleverness 
 
 • 1793 and 1853," p. 58. 
 
270 Notes mi the Anti- Corn Laio Struggle. 
 
 has run his head against a lamp-post. The letter 
 of the Duke of Wellington to Sir John Burgoyne 
 appeared in 1847, when Louis Philippe was on 
 the throne, and has been, says Mr. Cobden, " the 
 text-book for panic-mongers ever since."* It is 
 rather singular that the brotherly love-mongers, 
 and not the panic-mongers, are now the advocates 
 of increased armaments — for there cannot be a 
 doubt that a Channel Tunnel will infallibly lead 
 to enormously increased armaments. 
 
 It is not unreasonable to require from any man 
 who has given an opinion in favour of a Channel 
 Tunnel, some satisfactory evidence that the man 
 has manifested a sure-footed prescience in other 
 matters of such importance that they concern the 
 life or death of a nation. Mr. Cobden appears to 
 take for granted that the least sympton of distrust 
 is unworthy of a civilized nation, such as England 
 esteems herself to be ; and that to borrow the 
 language of a letter of Sir William Molesworth 
 which Mr. Cobden reprints (p. 80), "the French 
 are as civilized as ourselves — in some respects 
 intellectually our superiors." Well, what of that? 
 I suppose Napoleon Bonaparte was intellectually 
 
 * " 1793 and 1853," p. 58. 
 
Free Trade and the Channel Tunnel. 271 
 
 the superior of most men. But did that prevent 
 him from being a public robber, whose acts of 
 perfidy were commensurate with the number of 
 treaties made by him ? And, further, Sir William 
 Molesworth says that the French "possess a 
 constitutional government; that the love of peace, 
 and the determination to preserve peace, have given 
 to the King of the French, a constant majority in 
 the Chambers." I was always under the impres- 
 sion that it was something of a different kind, rather 
 concerned with patronage than peace, that gave 
 Louis Philippe his majority in the Chambers ; and 
 as for the love of peace which Mr. Cobden and 
 Sir William Molesworth set forth as so violent 
 a passion among Frenchmen, I will quote pre- 
 sently from the French Enquite Parlementaire 
 of November, 1849, the opinion of a French Vice- 
 Admiral, who appears to an ordinary observer to 
 have rather more of the love of war than of the 
 love of peace, of which Sir WiUiam Molesworth 
 attributes to him a love so ardent. 
 
 Mr. Cobden appears to consider the letter of the 
 Duke of Wellington to Sir John Burgoyne on the 
 National Defences of Great Britain, as the pro- 
 duction of a man whose nervous system had been 
 
272 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 weakened by age. Mr. Cobden says (" 1793 and 
 1853," p. 59) :— 
 
 " Sometimes tlie strongest part of our nature, whicli may 
 have been subjected to the greatest strain, declines the first. 
 In the Duke's case, his nervous system, his " iron " character- 
 istic gave way. He who at forty was incapable of fear, at 
 eighty was subject to almost infantine alarms." 
 
 Mr. Cobden, though he does not absolutely 
 profess the non-resistance principle, appears to place 
 great reliance on the increase of commercial industry 
 in France. He also quotes (pp. 79, 80) a letter 
 addressed by Sir William Molesworth, January 17, 
 1848, to the editor of The Spectator London 
 newspaper, in which the writer says : — 
 
 " You say that the next attack on England wiU probably 
 be without notice. Grood God ! can it be possible that you, 
 whom I ranked so high among the public instructors of 
 this nation — that you consider the French to be ruffians, 
 Pindarees, free-booters — that you believe it necessary to keep 
 constant watch and ward against them ? Are you not aware 
 that the French are as civilized as ourselves. Have you 
 forgotten that they have passed through a great social 
 revolution, which has equalized property, abolished privileges, 
 and converted the mass of the people into thrifty and 
 industrious men, to whom war is hateful, and the conscription 
 detestable ? " 
 
 This letter of Sir William Molesworth, which 
 expresses indignation at the idea of its being 
 
Free Trade and the Channel Tunnel. 273 
 
 necessary to keep watch and ward against the 
 French bears date, January 17, 1848. By the end 
 of 1849, the French Government would seem to be 
 acting in a manner not quite calculated to justify 
 the effusion of brotherly love exhibited towards 
 them by Mr. Cobden and Sir William Molesworth. 
 At least this inference appears to result from 
 the following " evidence of Vice-Admiral Dupetit- 
 Thouars," given in the French Enquete Parle- 
 mentaire nominated in November, 1849 : — 
 
 " Wtile speaking of war, I have something to say, which I 
 think important and well-founded, and which I am the more 
 convinced of, because the English themselves, good judges of 
 the dangers they are exposed to, admit it. The brochure of 
 Prince de Joinville produced a great effect in the maritime 
 world, especially in England, and was the cause of very 
 energetic measures being taken for the defence of her coasts. 
 In my opinion, though England may have erected fortifi- 
 cations, a disembarkation is always possible there, and for it 
 we should not require line-of-battle ships. We should only 
 require seventy corvettes, and some avisos of auxiliary steam- 
 power. With these means, without the English having 
 power to resist, we could throw seventy thousand men on the 
 coast of England. All invasions of England have been 
 crowned with success. She is not prepared for a land war 
 as we could make it. The English have not the warrior 
 spirit ; and if we have war with them, we should have but 
 one thing to do, that is, a landing." 
 
 18 
 
274 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 It might be expected that a Frenchman's opinion 
 of Englishmen would differ somewhat from 
 Englishmen's opinion of themselves ; but with so 
 many opportunities of knowing the fighting 
 qualities of Englishmen, one would hardly have 
 looked in a paper printed under the authority of 
 the representatives of the French nation for such 
 an opinion as that which has been just quoted. It 
 is in the evidence of the French Enquete Parle- 
 mentaire, nominated in November, 1849, and it is ac- 
 companied by the evidence of eighty-nine witnesses, 
 flag and other officers, appended to the French 
 report. AU this shows that the French Grovernment 
 of that day contemplated a sudden attack upon 
 England — an attack to which the Channel Tunnel 
 would, it may be supposed, have afforded extra- 
 ordinary facilities. And this took place very soon 
 after the fine frenzy of Sir William Molesworth's 
 indignation at the possibilityof any pubHc instructor, 
 like The Spectator, " considering the French to be 
 ruffians, Pindarees, freebooters." " Good God ! " 
 exclaims Sir WiUiam, like the fi'iend of humanity 
 in Canning's Knife Grinder, in a transport of 
 Repubhcan enthusiasm and universal philanthropy, 
 " can it be possible ? " And one is inclined so far 
 to follow Sir Wilham's example, as to apply his 
 
Free Trade and the Channel Tunnel. 275 
 
 exclamation not to The Spectator, but to the French 
 Government of 1849, for publishing such opinions, 
 for Vice-Admiral Dupetit-Thouars' utterance is 
 opinion, not evidence. Sir William Molesworth did 
 good service in the matter of the British Colonies, 
 and Mr. Cobden did good service in the matter of 
 the British Corn Laws ; but the confidence which 
 they express in the maintenance of peace, is the 
 confidence rather of a dreamer than a statesman. 
 
 Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, who appeared 
 upon the scene two or three years after the 
 Duke of Wellington's letter to Sir John Burgoyne, 
 commenced his career by strangling a nation in the 
 night-time. 
 
 Mr. Kinglake says :* — 
 
 " From 1836 until 1848, Prince Louis had never ceased to 
 be obscure, except by bringing upon himself the laughter of 
 the world ; and his election to the chair of the Presidency 
 had only served to bring upon him a more constant outpouring 
 of the scorn and sarcasm which Paris knows how to bestow. 
 Even the suddenness and perfect success of the blow struck in 
 the night between the 1st and the 2nd of December, 1851, 
 had failed to make Paris think of him with gravity. But it 
 was otherwise after three o'clock on the 4th of December ; 
 and it happened that his most strenuous adversaries were 
 those who best served his cause ; for the more they strove to 
 
 * KJinglake's Invasion of the Crimea, 5th edit., vol. i., 
 
 pp. 286-289. 
 
 18 * 
 
276 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 show that he and he alone had planned and ordered the 
 massacre, the more completely they relieved him from the dis- 
 qualification which had hitherto made it impossible for him 
 to becoijie the supreme ruler of France. Before the night 
 closed in on the 4th of December, he was sheltered safe from 
 ridicule by the ghastly heaps on the Boulevards." 
 
 According to this view Paris had to pay some- 
 what dear for the indulgence of its powers of 
 ridicule, I will quote here the narrative of an eye- 
 witness, which Mr. Kinglake had not seen — at least 
 it was only pubhshed recently. 
 
 On the morning of the 4th of December, 1851, 
 the streets of Paris were deserted, and bills were 
 posted recommending the inhabitants to remain in 
 their houses, and stating that every one who resisted 
 Louis Napoleon Bonaparte would be "shot." 
 Something strange and terrible seemed about to 
 happen — the more unexpected as the city where 
 the bills were posted was the most luxurious city, 
 the French would say, the most civilized city in 
 Europe, in the world. On the morning of that 4th 
 of December, 1851, large bodies of French troops, 
 of men in military garb, garb resembling that worn 
 by men professedly raised, embodied and disciplined 
 to defend their country against foreign armed 
 enemies, suddenly appeared on the Boulevards of 
 Paris, and fired upon unarmed men, and upon 
 
Free Trade and the Channel Tunnel. '2.11 
 
 women and children — fired at those who were in 
 the streets, and at those who were at the windows 
 of houses. As there is nothing in London corre- 
 sponding to this Paris Boulevards, I can only 
 attempt to give those who have not seen the Paris 
 Boulevards some idea of the proceeding of one 
 regiment which I am about to place before them 
 by saying that it was somewhat as if a regiment of 
 Life Guards or Horse Guards were suddenly led 
 into Trafalgar Square, and the Colonel at the head 
 of the regiment was heard to say " we are going 
 to sweep away everything." If what happened in 
 the Paris Boulevards had been done in Trafalgar 
 Square, and in the streets leading from Trafalgar 
 Square to Westminster Abbey, the man who did it 
 would probably — long before the expiration of the 
 twenty years during which the author of the coup 
 d'etat of December, 1851, reigned in France — have 
 had to walk out of the same window at Whitehall, 
 from which a man walked somewhat more than 
 two hundred years before to the scaflPold for having 
 murdered large numbers of Englishmen, as this 
 Corsican, or of whatever race or nation of mankind 
 he came, murdered large numbers of French men, 
 women, and children. 
 
 The present Paris correspondent of The Daily 
 
278 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 News thus writes in The Daily News of Tuesday, 
 December 16, 1879:— 
 
 "As an eye-witness of tlie massacre of tlie Boulevards on 
 December 4t]i, I cannot allow Marshal Canrobert's version of 
 that historical day to pass uncontradicted. I don't quote the 
 histories of Victor Hugo, Kinglake, and others, but merely 
 recount what I did see. At that time I was not the corre- 
 spondent of The Daily News, but was an intimate friend of the 
 gentleman who then filled the post. At his request, it being 
 feared that postal communication would be stopped, I started 
 for London on December 2nd, writing with a pencil in the 
 train. I returned to Paris on the morning of the 4th, when 
 I found the streets deserted, and bills posted recommending 
 the inhabitants to remain in their houses and stating — lugu- 
 brious threat, but too soon to be realized — that every one who 
 resisted the behests of Louis Napoleon would be " shot." I 
 walked from the Northern Railway Station to the Rue de la 
 Paix, seeing scarcely anybody in the streets. To refresh 
 myself for want of sleep I went into an establishment, no 
 longer existing, at the corner of the Rue de la Paix and the 
 Boulevards, called Les Bains de Venus, to take a warm bath. 
 On coming out I found a terrorized crowd in the gangway, 
 and was told that it was unsafe to go into the streets. I said 
 I must go, and pushed my way through. On emerging I 
 found myself just at the head of a regiment of cavalry whose 
 rear, extending along the Rue de la Paix, reached beyond the 
 column of the Place Vendome. I heard a youthful chubby- 
 faced Lieutenant- Colonel say, and I shall never forget the 
 words, ' Nous allons tout balayer.' [We are going to sweep 
 away everything.] And, he added, looking significantly at 
 
Free Trade and the Channel Tunnel. 279 
 
 me, ' Si on vent traverser, piques.' [If any one crosses the 
 street, spear him. J Little suspecting what horrors were about 
 to ensue, I was not greatly frightened by this menace, upon 
 which the nearest sergeant, with a halberd, did not act, and 
 without quickening my pace, I walked to my then lodging, 
 a few doors off, No. 29, Boulevard des Capucins. From my 
 windows I saw the regiment to which I had heard the order 
 given to tout halayer charge down the Boulevards des Italiens 
 as far as Tortoni's, where there was nothing to halayer at all. 
 Then they halted, and each soldier drawing his carbine, his 
 horse going at a walk, fired deliberately into every house right 
 and left, killing servants and children at the windows. I did 
 not see the river of blood on the slope of the Boulevard 
 Montmartre, attested by irrefragable evidence, and I was not 
 present when a gun under Canrobert's command made a 
 gigantic round hole in the Maison Sallandranze. But I did 
 see the next day, when terror had done its work, every house 
 for the space of a mile on the Boulevards from Tortoni's to 
 the Porte St. Martin, spotted like a plum padding, from 
 ground-floor to sixth story, with bullet marks. 
 
 " This was done in pursuance of the diabolical orders from 
 the Elysee, to strike terror into the rich bourgeois quarters, 
 where there was no resistance, in order that the rumour of 
 their submission might discourage the St. Antoine faubourg 
 and other arrondissements where there were barricades. 
 Marshal Canrobert calculates on short memories when he 
 pretends that the massacre of the Boulevards, in which he 
 was a principal actor, was only the haphazard work of a few 
 drunken or excited soldiers." 
 
 Mr. Cobden thus describes the first impressions 
 
280 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 produced in England, by what took place in France 
 at the beginning of December, 1851 : — 
 
 " Are there no symptoms that we have spirits amongst us 
 who want not the will, if the power and occasion be afforded, 
 to play the part of Burke in our day ? He excited the 
 indignation of his countrymen against a republic whici had 
 decapitated a king ; now our sympathies are roused in lehalf 
 of a republic which has been strangled by an emperor."] 
 
 Mr. Cobden's argument which follows, naniely, 
 " that the French nation are the legitimate tribunal 
 for disposing of the grievance," and what he Says 
 a page or two after that "the French people, for 
 reasons best known to themselves, acquiesced in 
 his rule," amount to this, that they could never 
 have got rid of the tyrant who had got upon their 
 shoulders, like the old man of the sea upon the 
 shoulders of Sinbad, unless they had receivedi 
 assistance from without from the genius of Moltke, 
 for whom the night -strangler who inherited neither 
 the genius nor the valour of the great man whose 
 name he bore, was no match. I agree with Mr. 
 Cobden that no good is done by levelling at Louis 
 Napoleon the same invectives which were hurled 
 at the Constituent Assembly sixty years before. 
 Invective is nothing without originality. If a man 
 were to attempt to hurl at his enemy some of the 
 
Free Trade and the Channel Tunnel. 281 
 
 most expressive epithets, arranged in similarly 
 constructed periods, that Demosthenes hurled at 
 ^schines, they would fall flat. A written letter, 
 or a spoken speech, could not have the force, and 
 effect of the words of Burke in the House of 
 Commons, when called up by Fox's strong expres- 
 sion of admiration of the French Revolution, he 
 said: — 
 
 " He hated tlie old despotism of France and still more he 
 hated the new : it was a plundering, ferocious, bloody, tyran- 
 nical democracy, without a single virtue to redeem its crimes ; 
 and so far from being, as his honourable friend had inadver- 
 tently said, worthy of imitation, he would spend his last breath 
 and the last drop of his blood — he would quit his best friends 
 and join his worst enemies — to oppose the least tittle of such 
 a spirit or such an example in England." 
 
 As soon as the monarchy of Louis Phihppe was 
 succeeded by the short-lived republic, we have seen 
 that, instead of an effusion of brotherly love together 
 with liberty, equality, and universal philanthropy, 
 one of the first schemes of the philanthropic republic 
 was an i^vasion of England. Of course a railway 
 projector who sees, or fancies he sees, enormous 
 profits in a Channel Tunnel, shuts his eyes to all 
 other consequences of his Tunnel. He can invest 
 his profits in foreign securities, and leaving England 
 to her fate, retire to Switzerland or America, rich 
 
282 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 and contented and — something else — affording to 
 the world an example of "the cold calculating 
 baseness of commercial avarice." 
 
 In the work before referred to, "1793 and 1853," 
 pubhshed in 1853, Mr. Cobden says (p. 85) : — 
 
 "Nobody, I believe, denies that Louis Napoleon received 
 the votes of a majority of the French people. In the election 
 which took place for the presidency, when he was supported 
 by three-fourths of the electors, his opponent General 
 Cavaignac had possession of the ballot-boxes, and there could 
 be no fraud to account for the majority. With what view 
 did the French people elect him Emperor ? To maintain, in 
 the first place, as he is pledged to do, the principles of 1789 ; 
 and, in the next, to preserve order, keep the peace, and enable 
 them to prosper. Nobody denies that these are the objects 
 desired by France. Tet we are told that he will, regardless 
 of public opinion, plunge the country into war." 
 
 In the preceding page, too, of the same work, 
 Mr. Cobden uses these words of Louis Napoleon, 
 " Public opinion., hy which alone he reigns.''^ In excuse 
 for these remarks, it may perhaps be said that at 
 that time it was not possible to obtain even a 
 glimpse of the true history of the coup detat of 
 December, 1851. 
 
 Mr. Cobden's prophetic vision has been appealed to 
 sometimes of late. In this case it does not seem to 
 have been very trustworthy. Did or did not Louis 
 
Free Trade and the Channel Tunnel 283 
 
 Napoleon "plunge the country into war"? What 
 else could he do ? He was compelled for the very 
 life of him to do something to other people to help 
 to make Frenchmen forget what he had done to 
 them. He had stamped out the life of the French 
 nation and left it but a mere corpse — galvanized, 
 mdeed, into occasional starts of vitality by the 
 springs of that vast system of machinery by which 
 a clerk can dictate to a nation. But Mr. Cobden's 
 statement must be examined in detail. 
 
 In the first place it may be admitted that the 
 election to the presidency had been conducted with 
 perfect fairness. Mr. Cobden, however, seems to 
 proceed to the further conclusion, though he does 
 not say so in so many words, that the election to 
 the office of Emperor was also conducted with 
 fairness — with as much fairness indeed as the 
 election to the office of President had been conducted. 
 But between the two elections certain strange events 
 had taken place. There had been sudden imprison- 
 ment; there had been sudden murder; there had 
 been sudden massacre on a larger scale, as far 
 as my historical knowledge goes, than had been 
 known since the wholesale murders of Sulla called 
 proscriptions. It is impossible to judge of the 
 relation to each other of the two elections by 
 
284 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 jumping from the one to the other. There was a 
 chasm between them in which were engulphed the 
 bloody corpses of many thousands of Frenchmen 
 — how many will never be known. 
 
 Mr. Kinglake has given a striking description of 
 the result of the deeds of this Bonaparte and his 
 accomplices :— 
 
 " Of all men dwelling in cities the people of Paris are perhaps 
 the most warlike. Less almost than any other Europeans are 
 they accustomed to overvalue the lives of themselves and 
 their fellow-citizens. With them the joy of the fight has 
 power to overcome fear and grief, and they had been used to 
 great street-battles ; but they had not been used of late to 
 witness the slaughter of people unarmed and helpless. At 
 the sight of what was done on that 4th of December the great 
 city was struck down as though by a plague. A keen-eyed 
 Englishman, who chanced to come upon some of the people 
 retreating from these scenes of slaughter, declared that their 
 countenances were of a strange livid hue which he had ne.ver 
 before seen. This was because he had never before seen the 
 faces of men coming straight from the witnessing of a 
 massacre. They say that the shock of being within sight and 
 hearing the shrieks broke down the nervous strength of many 
 a brave though tender man, and caused him to burst into sobs 
 
 as though he were a little child Because of the palsy 
 
 that came upon her after the slaughter on the Boulevard, 
 Paris was delivered bound into the hands of Prince Louis 
 Bonaparte, and Morny, and Maupas or DeMaupas, and St. 
 Arnaud, formerly Le Roy. And the benefit which Prince 
 Louis derived from the massacre was not transitory. It is a 
 
Free Trade and the Channel Tunnel. 285 
 
 maxim of French politics that happen what may, a man seek- 
 ing to be a ruler of France must not be ridiculous."* 
 
 To proceed now to the second part of the process 
 as stated in the passage I have quoted from Mr. 
 Cobden, I will repeat the words used by Mr. 
 Cobden. They are these : — 
 
 " With what view did the French people elect him Emperor? 
 To maintain, in the first place, as he is pledged to do, the 
 principles of 1789 ; and, in the next, to preserve order, keep 
 the peace, and enable them to prosper." 
 
 Mr. Cobden does not say that the election was 
 conducted with perfect fairness, as that for the 
 presidency had been; but his words taken with 
 those he uses in the preceding page — '"'"public opinion 
 hy which alone he reigns " — unquestionably lead to 
 such an inference. What really took place I will 
 give in the words of Mr. Kinglake : — 
 
 " At length the time came for the operation of what was 
 called the Plebiscite. The arrangements of the plotters had 
 been of such a kind as to allow France no hope of escape 
 from anarchy, except by submitting herself to the dictatorship 
 of Louis Bonaparte ; for although the President in his pro- 
 clamation had declared that if the country did not like his 
 Presidency they might choose some other in his place, no 
 such alternative was really offered. According to the wording 
 of the plebiscite, a vote given for any candidate other than 
 
 * Kinglake, Invasion of the Crimea, 5th edit , vol. i;, pp. 286- 
 289 (Wm. Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London, 1874). 
 
286 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 Louis Bonaparte would have been null. An elector was only 
 permitted to vote 'Yes,' or ' No ;' and it seems plain that the 
 prospect of anarchy involved in the negative vote would alone 
 have operated as a sufficing menace. Therefore, even if the 
 collection of the suffrages had been carried on with perfect 
 fairness, the mere stress of the question proposed would have 
 made it impossible that there should be a free election : the 
 same central power which, nearly four years before, had com- 
 pelled the terrified nation to pretend that it loved a republic, 
 would have now forced the same helpless people to kneel, and 
 say they chose for their one only lawgiver the man recom- 
 mended to them by Monsieur de Morny. 
 
 " Having the army and the whole executive power in their 
 hands, and having preordained the question to be put to the 
 people, the brethren of the Elysee, it would seem, might have 
 safely allowed the proceeding to go to its sure conclusion with- 
 out further coercing the vote ; and if they had done this, they 
 would have given a colour to the assertion that the result of 
 the plebiscite was a national ratification of their act. But 
 remembering what they had done, and having blood on their 
 hands, they did not venture upon a free election. What they 
 did was this : they placed thirty-two departments under 
 m.artial law ; and since they wanted nothing more than a 
 sheet of paper and a pen and ink in order to place every other 
 department in the same predicament, it can be said without 
 straining a word, that potentially, or actually, the whole of 
 France was under martial law. 
 
 " Therefore men voted under the sword. But martial law 
 is only one of the circumstances which constitute the difference 
 between an honest election and a plebiscite of the Bonaparte 
 sort. To the adversaries of the Elysee all effective means of 
 concerted action were forbidden by Morny and Maupas. Except 
 
Free Trade and the Channel Tunnel. 287 
 
 for the uses of the Blysee there was no press. Even the 
 printing and distributing of negative voting. tickets was made 
 penal ; and during the ceremony which was called an' election,' 
 several persons were actually arrested, and charged with the 
 offence of distributing negative voting-tickets, or persuading 
 others to vote against the President."* 
 
 Who would suppose that a man of Mr. Cobden's 
 abilities should have had nothing more than what 
 has been quoted to say about Louis Napoleon 
 Bonaparte ? For though Louis Bonaparte did 
 not possess the abilities and force of character 
 which made the Roman Emperor so terrible 
 a tyrant, there was a certain parallel in the 
 two situations; for Louis Bonaparte stood some- 
 what in the relation to the first Bonaparte in 
 which Tiberius stood to the first Caesar. Louis 
 Bonaparte was probably a more humane man by 
 nature than the first Bonaparte — which could not 
 be said of Tiberius as compared with Julius C^sar; 
 and yet, though Louis Bonaparte might not be 
 naturally blood-thirsty, I fear the records of 
 historical truth will show him to have had more 
 blood on his hands than Tiberius — that he was, 
 in fact, as blood-stained a man as SuUa. 
 
 The career of Prince Louis Bonaparte, known 
 in French history as Napoleon the Third, is indeed 
 
 * Kinglake's Invasion of the Crimea, 5th edit., i., pp. 300-302. 
 
288 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 an anomaly in history. For though he can surely 
 not he compared to Tiberius in force of character 
 or in military or political knowledge and ability, 
 he did more than Tiberius can be said to have 
 done. He stamped out the life of a great nation 
 for some twenty years. What Tiberius did was 
 to complete the work of Julius and Augustus in 
 stamping out the life of the Roman Republic. 
 But he only completed the work begun by the first 
 CaBsar, and carried on by his immediate successor, 
 whereas the work begun by the first Bonaparte 
 had been interrupted — broken ofi^ completely ; — and 
 this man and his band of coadjutors had to do it 
 over again from the beginning. They succeeded in 
 what they had undertaken ; and how thej'' succeeded 
 is as strange and terrible a tale, as Mr. Kinglake 
 tells it, as can be found in the records of the 
 world ; and more wonderful, because, as Mr. 
 Kinglake has shown, the head conspirator among 
 these adventurers wanted that quality which has 
 usually been considered indispensable for such 
 work — the power of calm though rapid thought in 
 moments of crisis and of danger. It was indeed 
 sad for France that a man should be able to stamp 
 out her life who certainly could not be reckoned 
 a man of genius in the sense in which the first 
 
Free Trade and the Channel Tunnel. 289 
 
 Bonaparte was a man of genius, and whose daring 
 was to that of the first Bonaparte as the murder of 
 unarmed citizens, and of old men, women and 
 children, was to the first Bonaparte's passage of the 
 Bridge of Lodi, swept by the Austrian artillery, at 
 the head of his grenadiers. " You were first," said 
 someone afterwards at St. Helena. " No," was the 
 reply, " Lannes was first — I was second." When 
 great genius and daring and energy go together, 
 no wonder if a nation bear with the dominion 
 of such a man, and even submit for a time to the 
 dominion of those who only inherit his name. But 
 to inherit or assume a name is not to inherit 
 the genius which made that name famous, is not 
 to inherit the mind, which gave dominion over 
 mankind. The term " inheritor of a great name " 
 is an error; a great name is attached to him who 
 earned it, and cannot descend to heirs like land or 
 money. 
 
 After having escaped from the tyranny of the 
 landlords, we must not allow ourselves to fall 
 under the tyranny of the traders and manufacturers 
 and railway projectors — a tyranny manifested in 
 the form of laying the island of Great Britain open 
 to invasion and rendering it subject to heavy 
 taxes to support armaments and fortifications in 
 
 19 
 
290 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 order that traders and manufacturers and railway 
 speculators may have increased facilities for filling 
 their pockets at other people's expense. 
 
 I believe I have already quoted the words of 
 a certain French Vice- Admiral : — " The English 
 have not the warrior- spirit; and if we have war 
 with them, we should have but one thing to do, 
 that is, a landing."* It may be inferred that this 
 French Vice- Admiral was a very small boy when 
 the battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo were fought, 
 or believed that the French won both those 
 battles. Mr. Cobden, who seems to admire and 
 cry up France and every thing French, as he 
 depreciates England and every thing English 
 on all occasions, might perhaps have approved 
 of this Frenchman's opinion, published by his 
 Government in the official records of a Government 
 Inquiry.f Mr. Cobden says(" 1793 and 1853," p. 5) : 
 
 * Enquete Parlementaire, quoted at page 326 of Our Naval 
 Position and Policy, by a Naval Peer. (London : Longmans 
 and Co., 1859.) 
 
 t Tlie conclusion to be drawn from the whole scope of the 
 French Report and Evidence, is that it was the purpose of 
 France in ] 849-60 to strike a decisive blow on the first 
 opportunity England should afford her, which, if successful 
 in affording them a landing, would, according to their own 
 opinion, enable them to drive the English before them or 
 
Free Trade and the Channel Tunnel. 291 
 
 — " When shall we be proof against the transparent 
 appeal to our vanity involved in the ' liberties of 
 Europe' argument?" He then proceeds to say 
 that, " we never had forty thousand British troops 
 engaged in one field of battle on the Continent 
 during the whole war ;" and infers thence that we 
 could have had nothing to do with putting down 
 Bonaparte ; in fact, that the Russian winter did 
 the business, just as the Irish famine did the 
 
 slaughter them like sheep. When a Govermaent publishes 
 what the French Government put forth in its jEnquete 
 Parlementaire of 1849-50, I do not think we are guilty of 
 infringing the comity of nations in calling this insolence. 
 There is a monarchical insolence and a republican insolence. 
 This is republican insolence, and I think it exceeds mon- 
 archical insolence in offensiveness. If Russia were to come 
 under republican government, a Russian republic would 
 probably be a worse neighbour than a Russian Czar. If a 
 French republic of 1870 fancies it is to run the course of the 
 French republic of seventy years before, with a military 
 genius of the highest order to fight its battles, the French 
 Republic of 1883 may find itself very much mistaken. A 
 Channel Tunnel to bring us nearer to such a neighbour may 
 be agreeable to the high philanthropic aspirations of the 
 advanced thinker of the Peace Party, who proposed to 
 receive the invaders with such an eflPusion of hospitality and 
 brotherly love, as could not fail to convert the Zouave into 
 the friend of the family. Brotherly love ! and universal 
 philanthropy ! From the oldest record to that of yesterday, 
 
 19 * 
 
292 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 business of putting down the bread-tax. There is 
 something in this ; and yet Welhngton did far 
 more to put down Bonaparte than Cobden did to 
 put down the bread-tax. In answer to Mr. 
 Cobden's " forty thousand British troops " argu- 
 ment, did Mr. Cobden never hear that his hero 
 Bonaparte said that there were only two kinds 
 of troops — good and bad ; and that there were no 
 troops in Italy, save the Sardinians, that could 
 stand fire; that they fled like wild ducks at the 
 first voUey. Mr. Cobden writes as if he had 
 completely approfondi the philosophy of courage 
 and cowardice. I do not presume to say that I 
 know very much of what is meant by standing 
 fire ; but a friend of mine who was on Sir De Lacy 
 Evans's staff at the battle of the Alma, where he 
 was knocked off his horse by a sphnter of a shell, 
 and at the battle of Inkermann was on the staff of 
 
 brotherly love does not shine very bright. In the oldest family 
 on record brotherly love is represented by Cain. And in 
 Sybil (usually spelt Sibyl) it is represented by Lord Mamey. 
 Burns says, that Tam o' Shanter loved Sonter Johnny like a 
 " vera brither ;" and the reason he assigns for this brotherly 
 love is that Tam and Johnny had been " fou for weeks 
 thegither," that is, that they had been drunk for weeks 
 together. 
 
Free Trade and the Channel Tunnel. 293 
 
 General Pennefather, to whom he gave his horse 
 when the general's horse was killed, and mounted 
 a troop horse which was struck very soon after ; 
 and in one of his journeys to bring up ammunition 
 — the road he had to traverse being swept by the 
 Russian artillery — as he was galloping forward he 
 heard a thud behind him, and, turning his head 
 round, saw his brother staff officer rolling on the 
 ground in the last death agonies, having been 
 struck by a shot and almost cut in two, gave me 
 his notions about standing fire, which were as 
 follows : — 
 
 " I do not care twopence for being handed down to 
 posterity any how — such a posterity as it is likely to be. 
 Why, nnder the tuition of the Quakers and the philanthro- 
 pists, people have come to such a pass nowadays that they 
 can never speak of any act of war except with a whine and 
 an intimation that it is half criminal ; in another generation 
 they will hold it altogether criminalj and will look upon it as 
 
 that pious skunk, old seems to have done when he 
 
 entered in his journal — that journal which I believe he 
 wrote with the idea that God Almighty was looking over 
 his shoulder all the time, and would be gammoned by 
 what he read — my uncle's death in action as 'an awful 
 instance.' 
 
 " By the way, did it ever occur to you to speculate what 
 will be the result of the peculiar course of tuition which I 
 have just spoken of ? Perhaps it is all owing to my deficiency 
 
294 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 of natural valour, but my impression, derived equally from 
 internal feeling and from observation, is that standing fire 
 is a very unpleasant thing, and extremely repugnant to the 
 natural man. If we in some measure do it now, I take it 
 that it is in virtue of the fag-end of the old-fashioned training 
 which instilled into a man from his babyhood that standing 
 fire was ihe one thing he had to do, and which succeeded in 
 the main in making it easier to most men to stand fire than 
 to refuse to stand it." 
 
 Such are the reflections of a man who has had 
 some experience, and consequently has some know- 
 ledge of what he is writing about, while Mr. 
 Cobden, who had no knowledge of the matter, 
 wrote dogmatically about it, and called in Gibbon 
 as a witness to support hina — Gibbon, though he 
 had been a militia officer, knowing as little about 
 the matter as Mr. Cobden. Mr. Cobden, indeed, 
 quotes these words as spoken by the Duke of 
 Wellington in the House of Lords, June 15, 1852 : 
 "I believe every man is brave" — words which are 
 in direct opposition to the words attributed to 
 Marshal Lannes, that a man who says he does not 
 know fear is a coward. The account which Colonel 
 Gurwood has given of his sensations when his 
 offer to lead the forlorn hope at Ciudad Rodrigo 
 had been accepted is very instructive. 
 
 Colonel Gurwood put together for a special 
 
Free Trade and the Channel Tunnel. 295 
 
 purpose the particulars of his part in the storm of 
 Ciudad Rodrigo in a pamphlet, of which he printed 
 only fifty copies for private circulation. The 
 preface is dated 14th June, 1845. I have not seen 
 the pamphlet, but the writer of the article, Ourwood, 
 John, in the second supplement to The Penny 
 Cyclopcedia, says that the particulars in his article 
 are taken from one of the fifty copies. The writer 
 of the article appears to be in error in saying that 
 the officer who commanded one of the storming 
 parties was of the rank of major. That officer, 
 whom I have met at the house of a common friend, 
 was at the time I saw him a major, Major Mackie, 
 but at the storm of Ciudad Rodrigo he was Lieu- 
 tenant Mackie of the Connaught Rangers. His 
 statement — and I believe that he and Colonel 
 Gurwood were both men incapable of wilful 
 inveracity or misstatement — was that he accepted 
 the surrender of the governor ; that a sword, after- 
 wards found to be that of an aide-de-camp, had been 
 presented to him in token of surrender ; and that 
 while he was engaged in saving the lives of two 
 officers who laid hold of him for protection, one on 
 each arm, Lieutenant Gurwood came up and obtained 
 the sword of the governor. Major Mackie died in 
 1839, and this statement was made public in the 
 
296 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 followiBg year in a second edition of that portion 
 of Napier's History relating to the storm of Ciudad 
 Eodrigo, the first having stated "that " Mr. Gurwood, 
 who, though wounded, had been among the fore- 
 most at the lesser breach, re'ceived the governor's 
 sword." 
 
 The writer of the paper in The Cyclopoedia 
 says that the statement of Colonel Gurwood was 
 irreconcilable with tha^ of Major Mackie. I do 
 not see this at all. Lieutenant Mackie supposed 
 that the sword of an aide-de-camp was the sword 
 of the governor, and whUe he was protecting two 
 French oiRcers, Lieutenant Gurwood came up and 
 obtained the sword of the governor. There is 
 nothing irreconcilable here. The luck was on 
 Gurwood's side in getting the governor's sword, 
 and as no doubt was thrown on the truth of 
 Gurwood's story, his finding the French officer 
 whose life he had saved does no more for his 
 case than Major Mackie's finding the two French 
 officers whose lives he had saved would have done 
 for his case. No one that knew Colonel Gurwood 
 or Major Mackie would have doubted their word 
 as men of veracity and honour. 
 
 Colonel Gurwood's narrative of his adventures 
 during that night is one of the most valuable 
 
Free Trade and the Channel Tannel. 297 
 
 pieces of evidence on the question on which Gibbon 
 and Mr, Cobden express themselves so dogmatically. 
 When he knew that his offer had been accepted, 
 he says: — "I kept on eating, principally bread, 
 but I carefully controlled my thirst, knowing how 
 insatiable it becomes under nervous excitement. 
 On the concerted signal for the assault — ^three 
 guns from the batteries — my heart beat double 
 quick, and I applied my mouth to the calabash 
 of Jack Jones, from which I swallowed a gulp 
 of ' aguardiente.' On arriving at the top of the 
 breach, I saw a musket levelled not far from my 
 head, and a Frenchman in the act of puUing the 
 trigger. I bobbed my head in time, but was 
 wounded and stunned by the fire. I found myself 
 at the bottom of the breach. I cannot tell how 
 long I was there, but on putting my hand to the 
 back of my head, where I felt that I had been 
 wounded, I found that the skull was not fractured." 
 He again scrambled up the breach, and gained the 
 rampart of the bastion. Here he saw one of his 
 men, Pat Lowe, in the act of bayoneting a French 
 officer who resisted being plundered, and he saved 
 the Frenchman by knocking down the Irishman. 
 His prisoner guided him to a tower where the 
 French o-overnor and some officers had shut them- 
 
298 Notes mi the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 selves up. He summoned them to surrender, and 
 the door was unbarred ; but Pat Lowe, who had 
 rejoined him, called out, " Dear Mr. Gurwood, they 
 will murder you!" and as he entered he was seized 
 round the neck and expected a sword in his body ; 
 but he found that the person who had seized him 
 round the neck was the governor, and that he 
 yielded himself his prisoner. Gurwood conducted 
 him to Lord Wellington on the ramparts, who 
 said, "Did you take him?" and on his replying 
 that he did, handed to him the governor's sword, 
 with the words : " Take it, you are the proper 
 person to wear it." He wore it ever afterwards. 
 
 It seemed to be the end and aim of Mr. Cobden's 
 book to cry down military men and cry up cotton- 
 spinners and calico-printers. Military men may 
 be good and bad, and cotton-spinners and calico- 
 printers may be more good than bad. But the 
 mistake was that Mr. Cobden and some others 
 after Peel's panegyric assumed Mr. Cobden to be 
 not only a great, but a universal genius ; which of 
 course was a mistake. He was indeed an able 
 man, and an eloquent man in a masculine kind of 
 eloquence, and I agree with Mr. Forster, that in 
 dividing the boroughs I should prefer Mr. Cobden's 
 plan of the single member constituencies to the 
 
Free Trade and the Channel Tunnel. 299 
 
 double member. The impression left by some of 
 Mr. Cobden's letters which have been published, in 
 which the writer gives opinions about the Govern- 
 ment of British India, and about the Prussian 
 Government as compared with the English Con- 
 stitution, is that Mr. Cobden had not studied the 
 subject of the English Constitution, of British 
 India, of Canada, or of the English Colonies, 
 sufficiently to have accurate knowledge on that 
 subject. 
 
 Although Mr. Cobden has at once overlooked 
 Bonaparte's true character and overrated his 
 genius, he has shown a tendency to underrate the 
 genius of Wellington, and in fact to run down 
 military talent altogether. The truth is more 
 nearly attained in some remarks of a military 
 friend of mine, who has seen service enough to enable 
 him to say that a man who has been in a battle 
 all the time it lasted knows no more of that battle 
 than a herring does of the North Sea. He says : — 
 
 " Tou say that Cromwell's genius in war was creative, not 
 strategic. I think that this is well put, and useful, as tending 
 to lead to a reflection which has often occurred to myself, 
 viz., the number of different geniuses (if that is the plural) 
 which a man must have on hand who hopes to be a first-class 
 general. Perhaps professional conceit may have something 
 to do with- it, but I have always thought that, to make a 
 
300 Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 great general, it took a more perfect and complete man than 
 would be required for any other walk in life. I do not say 
 that to make a Napoleon, it requires that any one faculty 
 should be so highly developed as would be wanted for a 
 Newton ; what I mean is, that while a Newton can be made 
 by one abnormally developed faculty in an otherwise mediocre 
 mind, a Napoleon must have power in every direction." 
 
 I venture to think that these remarks are at 
 once just and profound. He who made them, like 
 another friend I have referred to in these pages, is 
 perhaps one of those subtile thinkers who appear 
 in this world and live and die unheard, leaving no 
 name behind them. 
 
 " My Lords," said Nelson, in a speech in the 
 House of Lords, November 23, 1802, " I have in 
 different countries seen much of the miseries of 
 war. I am therefore in my most inmost soul a 
 man of peace. Yet would I not, for the sake of 
 any peace, however fortunate, consent to sacrifice 
 one jot of England's honour. Our honour is 
 inseparably combined with our genuine interest." 
 
 The gentlemen of the English Peace Society 
 have not shown in the peace question the logical 
 power which they have shown in other matters. 
 When they want to purchase a commodity, they 
 do not adopt as a mode of obtaining it at a reason- 
 able price a display of extreme anxiety to possess 
 
Free Trade and the Channel Tunnel. 301 
 
 it. And they could hardly, as men of average 
 rationality, expect that sending a deputation to 
 the Emperor Nicholas was a likely way to lead to 
 peace. 
 
 Mr. Kinglake says the Peace party — 
 
 " Went on and on, and still on, until their foremost thinker 
 reached the conclusion that, in the event of an attack upon 
 our shores, the invaders ought to be received with such an 
 effusion of hospitality and brotherly love as could not fail to 
 disarm them of their enmity and convert the once dangerous 
 Zouave into the valued friend of the family." * 
 
 In a note to this passage, Mr. Kinglake says : — 
 
 " I have no copy of this curious pamphlet before me, but 
 it has been quoted (I- believe by Lord Palmerston) in the 
 House of Commons, and therefore the passage alluded to 
 in the text might no doubt be found in Hansard. The 
 writer, I remember, went farther than is above stated. He 
 argued that the French people would be so shamed by the 
 kindness shown to their troops that they would never rest 
 until they had paid us a large pecuniary indemnity for any 
 losses or inconvenience which the invasion may have caused." 
 
 I have not seen the pamphlet referred to by 
 Mr. Kinglake, but I think it may probably be a 
 work advertised at the end of a Library edition of 
 Mr. Cobden's three letters, published Tmder the 
 
 * Kinglake's Invasion of the Crimea, i., 415, 5th edition. 
 William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London, 1874. 
 
302 Notes on the Anti- Corn Law Struggle. 
 
 title, " 1793 and 1853," early in the year 1853, of 
 ■which I had the honour to receive a presentation 
 copy from the author in August, 1853. The work, 
 which would seem to be the pamphlet referred to 
 by Mr. Kinglake, is thus advertised — " Defensive 
 war proved to be a denial of Christianity, and of 
 the Government of God. With illustrative facts 
 and anecdotes. By Henry C. Wright. 12mo., 
 cloth, price 2s." 
 
 The members of the Peace Society are not, 
 however, always consistent; at least they did not 
 always show themselves consistent in their pro- 
 ceedings before the Crimean War. At a Peace 
 and Anti-Loan meeting, in 1849, Lord Dudley 
 Stuart vehemently advocated the propriety of 
 England's giving " energetic and efficient support" 
 to the Turk in resisting Russia; and Mr. Cobden 
 gave his support to Lord Dudley Stuart's argu- 
 ments, which must be understood to have meant 
 war, if they meant anything. In fact, a man of 
 Mr. Cobden's sagacity must have seen the utter 
 impracticability of such doctrines as those attri- 
 buted by Mr. Kinglake to the " foremost thinker " 
 of the Peace party. 
 
 It is remarkable that the peace-at-any-price 
 doctrine enunciated in the advertisement I have 
 
Free Trade and the Channel Tunnel. 303 
 
 quoted had been acted upon, and put to the test 
 in England at a time when the coasts of England 
 were infested, not by Zouaves, but by Barbary 
 pirates. But I have never discovered that the 
 extremely pacific dispositions of the King who 
 then reigned in England had any eiFect whatever 
 towards turning the once dangerous Barbary pirate 
 into the valued friend of the family. On the con- 
 trary, all the evidence which I have seen bearing 
 on the subject leads to the conclusion that the 
 pacific disposition of the English King, so far from 
 producing a similar disposition in the Barbary 
 pirate, only encouraged and excited him to more 
 extensive depredations. 
 
 Mr. Cobden has thrown his work into the form 
 
 of Letters to the Reverend , and begins with 
 
 these words : — " Accept my thanks for your kind- 
 ness in forwarding me a copy of your Sermon upon 
 the death of the Duke of Wellington;" and ends 
 with these words : — " When the Master whom you 
 serve mingled in the afi"airs of this life, it was not 
 to join in the exaltation of military genius or share 
 in the warlike triumphs of nation over nation, but 
 to preach ' Peace on earth and goodwill toward 
 men.' " Suppose some of the Peace-at-any-price 
 Corporation had gone on a pacific mission to 
 
304 Notes on the Anti- Corn- Law Struggle. 
 
 Napoleon Bonaparte before the Battle of Waterloo 
 as they went to the Czar Nicholas before the 
 Crimean W9,r. It would no more have stopped 
 the *career of Bonaparte than it stopped that of 
 Mcholas. ■ Those traders who are so eager to get 
 rich and cry out for " Peace on earth and goodwill 
 toward men," do not see that they and their goods 
 would be a prey to the thousands of robbers who 
 swarm, and will continue to swarm upon earth, if 
 it were not for that infanterie Anglaise which at 
 Waterloo made good General Foy's remark to 
 Bonaparte on the morning of the battle — " L'in- 
 fanterie Anglaise en duel c'est le diable." 
 
 In the course of an adventurous and stormy life 
 — of the result of which he modestly said that he 
 had been " successful in life " — the Duke of 
 Wellington had opportunities of sefeng the effect 
 of the phrase " Peace on earth and goodwill to 
 men," and he wrote thus in a letter to the Earl 
 of Liverpool, dated " Sta. Marinha, 23rd March, 
 
 1811"!— 
 
 " I shall be sorry if Government should think themselves 
 under the necessity of withdrawing from this country, on 
 account of the expense of the contest. From what I have 
 seen of the objects of the French Government and the sacri- 
 fices they make to accomplish them, I have no doubt that if 
 the British army were for any reason to withdraw from the 
 
Free Trade and the Channel Tunnel. 305 
 
 Peninsula, and the French. Government were relieved from 
 the pressure of military operations on the Continent, theij 
 would incur all risks to land an army in his Majesty's dominions. 
 Then indeed would commence an expensive contest ; then would 
 his Majesty's suhjects discover what are the miseries of war, 
 of which, by the blessing of God, they have hitherto had no 
 knowledge ; and the cultivation, the beauty, the prosperity 
 of the country, and the virtue and happiness of its inhabi- 
 tants would be destroyed, whatever might be the result of 
 the military operations. God forbid that I should be a 
 witness, much less an actor, in the scene."* 
 
 And in his memorable letter to Sir John 
 Burgoyne in 1847, which Mr. Cobden labours to 
 make appear to be the work of a man in his dotage 
 — suffering from softening of the brain — though 
 the words in it are very similar to those in the 
 letter quoted above, and written near forty years 
 before, the Duke says : — 
 
 " I am bordering on seventy-seven years, passed in honour. 
 I hope that the Almighty may protect me from being the 
 witness of the tragedy which I cannot persuade my contem- 
 poraries to take measures to avert." 
 
 * Gurwood's Selections from the Despatches of the Duke 
 of Wellington, No. 515, p. 45?. 
 
14, Henrietta Street, Oovent Garden, Lmdon; and 
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