[Note 9], [p. 109].—On the 12th of March, in the preceding year, Cobden had moved for a select committee to inquire into the effects of protective duties on agricultural tenants and laborers. His speech on the occasion is one of great importance, and may be read with profit in connection with the speech here given. As Cobden himself was a manufacturer, and as the repeal sought was believed to be especially in the interests of his class, the remark was made that this new argument came “from a suspicious source.”
[Note 10], [p. 112].—Mr. Villiars was one of the earliest to advocate the abolition of the Corn Laws, and in 1839 was a recognized leader. In 1841 he was given charge of the interests of the movement in the House of Commons, where he annually “brought forward his motion.”
[Note 11], [p. 118].—Quotations in support of the positions taken were here introduced from speeches of Mr. Pusey, Mr. Hobbes, and Lord Stanley.
[Note 12], [p. 121].—It should not be forgotten by the reader that the lands of England are very generally owned in large estates, and that these are rented in portions to the farmers, who usually pay a fixed rent to the landlords in money. Sometimes the agreement is for a long term of years, taking the form of a lease, but more frequently, as Cobden shows, it is simply an agreement for a short term only, sometimes even for a single year.
[Note 13], [p. 126].—Mr. Huskisson, in the distressing period after the close of the Napoleonic wars, grew into almost universal favor by the wisdom of his financial methods. In 1823 he became President of the Board of Trade, and from that time till he was killed at the opening of the railway between Liverpool and Manchester in 1830, was the most eminent financial authority in the kingdom. He was the successor of Pitt in the advocacy of greater freedom of trade, and the advocate of methods which it was now Cobden’s work to develop.
[Note 14], [p. 135].—In the debate of March 12, 1844, it had been hinted that Mr. Cobden, a manufacturer, was in a position to be benefited by such agricultural distress as his measures were calculated to bring on. It was urged that by admitting grain free, farmers would be ruined, laborers driven out of employment, wages would be depressed, and manufacturers would secure labor at a reduced price.
[Note 15], [p. 136].—This assertion was also made at the debate a year before.
[Note 15a], [p. 143].—The passage referred to, in what can hardly have been other than mere playfulness, is the following:
Urit enim lini campum seges, urit avenæ;
Urunt Lethæo perfusa papavera somno.
For a crop of flax burns the land, also of oats; also poppies impregnated with Lethæan sleep.—Georgics, Lib. i., 77.