FREE-TRADE MOVEMENTS.
MESSRS COBDEN AND BRIGHT AT OXFORD.—IMPORTANT MEETING OF FREEHOLDERS AND FARMERS OF THAT COUNTY.
As we stated last week, announcing the intention, Mr Cobden and Mr Bright visited Oxford on Wednesday, for the purpose of addressing the freeholders and farmers of the county on the subject of the corn laws.
Very considerable excitement had prevailed in the city and the surrounding districts in consequence of the proposed visit of Mr Cobden, but it does not appear that the landowners on the present occasion, through the medium of the farmers' clubs and agricultural associations, thought fit to get up an organised opposition, similar to that at Colchester, or interfere to prevent their tenants from attending, as at Reading. The consequence was a very large number of farmers were present at the meeting, although it is well known that the harvest is not in such a state of forwardness as to allow them to absent themselves from their ordinary occupations without considerable inconvenience.
It is a circumstance worthy of notice, and strongly indicative of the present state of public feeling upon the subject, that in a purely agricultural district, at a county meeting regularly convened by the High Sheriff, the whole of the county members being present, two of whom spoke in favour of protection, supported by many influential men of their own party, no person ventured to propose a resolution in favour of the present corn law, and that even the resolution for a low fixed duty made by two of the most popular men and largest landed proprietors in Oxfordshire, Lord Camoys and Mr Langston, was supported by only three or four individuals out of a meeting of nearly 3,000 persons.
Early in the morning, a protectionist champion presented himself, not in the guise either of a freeholder or farmer of the county, but in the person of a good-humoured, though somewhat eccentric printer, named Sparkhall, who had come from the celebrated locale of John Gilpin—Cheapside, and who having armed himself with a large blue bag fitted with elaborate treatises upon the corn laws, and among other pamphlets a recent number of Punch, forthwith travelled to Oxford, and by the kind permission of the meeting was permitted to essay a speech, about what nobody could divine, and in a manner truly original. It is, however, due to the monopolists of Oxfordshire to state that they did not accredit their volunteer champion, and even went so far as to request that he would "bottle up" his eloquence for some future opportunity.
At two o'clock, the hour appointed for the proceedings to commence, the County hall, which is capable of containing 1,800 persons, was nearly filled.