Malthusian theory; and the British legislature has been compelled, openly and authoritatively, to desecrate the marriage tie. Popery has its extravagancies of asceticism; but there is an ascetic and monastic system now established in the manufacturing districts and in every parish union of England-compelling, as a punishment upon poverty, that abstinence from domestic comfort, that harsh sad labour, that negation of all bodily enjoyment, which Popery only prescribed as a duty for the improvement of sanctity, or the mortification of sin. How far such a system be necessitated by the circumstances of the country we do not say. That it does exist that it may be necessary-that men, who in their hearts condemn it, feel themselves compelled to submit to itthis must, surely, be sufficient to alarm a Christian at the condition of a nation which has generated such a system.

It would be painful (though not difficult) to trace the parallel much farther. One great feature indeed our mystery of evil wants; the one which round even the sins of Popery throws something of interest and dignity, and captivates the imagination even to delude the reason. It has no unity; it struggles indeed for power; it centralizes, subordinates, systematizes, strives to spread itself into every province of society, to raise up future generations impregnated with its own principles, and to choke and trample on every root from which a different spirit may spring up. But it is too gross and monstrous in its first axioms, too palpably opposed to religion and truth in even its pretensions to them both, for it to obtain among mankind an extensive or durable sway. Every democracy, sooner or later, will pass into a tyranny. Establish the rule of the many, and the many must finally take refuge from their own crimes and follies in the rule of And thus when the features of Antichrist are traced in the spirit of the age, this is to be regarded only as a brief and passing manifestation of its power, coming before us under the form most tempting to our present state of mind, but in reality soon about to pass into some shape more like to truth and goodness, and, therefore, more dangerous to them both.

one.

Another phase and form may still await it, and that phase be Popery. When the work of the demagogue has been accomplished, and an impoverished, bewildered, exhausted people is sinking down in the agonies of remorse and the darkness or despair of unbelief, Rome will be ready at its ear to offer its unction and its rule as the last and only refuge from the destruction into which it has plunged them; and if England once more become Rome's, how long will the coming of Antichrist be delayed upon earth? Absit, precamur omen!

ART. VII. 1. The Anti-Corn-Law Circular. J. Gadsby, Manchester. 1839-1841.

2. The Anti-Bread-Tax Circular. Gadsby, Manchester. 1841, 1842.

3. The Anti-Bread Tax Almanack. Gadsby, Manchester.

1841, 1842.

4. Daily Bread; or, Taxation without Representation resisted; being a Plan for the Abolition of the Bread-Tax- Give us this day our daily bread. By One of the Millions. pp. 32. 1841.

5. Union, the Patriot's Watchword on the Present Crisis. By the Rev. Henry Edwards, &c. pp. 24. Manchester and London. 1842. 6. The Lawcraft of Landcraft; with Legislative Illustrations. By James Acland, one of the Lecturers of the National AntiCorn-Law League.

7. Address to the Middle and Working Classes engaged in Trade and Manufactures throughout the Empire, on the Necessity of Union at the Present Crisis. By Richard Gardner, Esq., B.A. Manchester. 1842.

WE

E are aware that the publications, the names of which we have prefixed to this article, scarcely deserve to be considered as literature-they are but a few specimens of the ephemeral spawn of incendiary tracts, advertisements, and placards, with which the Anti-Corn-Law Associations inundate the country. But, affecting to appeal to reason, and having no doubt considerable influence in some quarters, they bring themselves within our jurisdiction; and we on our part are not sorry to accept the occasion they present of bringing-as far as in us lies-to the tribunal of public opinion the foulest, the most selfish, and altogether perhaps the most dangerous combination of recent times. We hardly can except the great Jacobin league, generated by the French revolution; because Jacobinism was a bold-faced villain,' enthusiastic and indiscreet, who avowed his real designs, and was therefore more easily dealt with than these hypocritical associations, which, grown, like Satan, wiser than of yore,' assume more cautious forms and more plausible pretences in pursuit of the same ultimate object. Indeed, this new League has in many respects fraternised with the old Jacobin spirit of enmity to our existing institutions, which has for half a century taken so many

various

various shapes, and which is now ready to join the new revolu- · tionary banner, that substitutes for the vague motto of THE RIGHTS OF MAN' the more intelligible but equally deceptive war-cry of CHEAP BREAD.'

1

The Anti-corn-law agitation was for a time paralysed by the direction which the late outbreak in the manufacturing districts happened to take. The League had expected to be only lookers-on while the mob destroyed other people's property, and were equally surprised and stunned when some of the ruins glanced off on their own heads. They are now beginning to recover their spirits —we do not say their senses-for, instead of profiting by the experience they have just had of the danger, even to themselves, of exciting those whom, when once excited, they have no power to restrain, they are now busy reorganising a new agitation, and have even ventured to propose to raise by public contribution the sum of 50,000l., to give renewed vigour to their lawless crusadea crusade, indeed, we may call it-for, as we shall see presently, it pollutes and perverts the most sacred topics into incentives to pillage and bloodshed.

It is not our province to pronounce whether this levying money for the avowed purpose of forcing the legislature to alter the law of the land be not per se criminally punishable; but we will take upon ourselves to say that, considered in connexion with all the previous proceedings of those associations, it is illegal and in the highest degree unconstitutional. We cannot conceive that any man, entertaining the slightest respect for the law, the constitution, or even the public peace, would contribute to the funds of these associations, if he were aware of what their proceedings have been, and what, under the pretence of cheap bread,' their real objects indisputably are. The summary which we are now about to give of the history of these associations may, we hope, have the doubly salutary effect of opening people's eyes and closing their purses!

We feel this to be the more necessary, because, amongst other exertions towards forwarding this subscription, the advocates of the League have taken the bold line of denying-not of merely palliating, for that might look like repentance-but of utterly denying the violent language and proceedings that had been imputed to them. An assertion so extravagant, if it had been made by one of the usual organs of the League, we should have hardly thought worthy of notice-but when we find it produced and circulated under the name and authority of a Peer of Parliament, it becomes so grave a matter as to deserve, we feel, to be probed to the bottom. A letter has been just published, addressed by LORD KINNAIRD

KINNAIRD to Mr. Smith, one of the hired lecturers of the League, and secretary of the London Anti-Corn-Law Association, in which his Lordship avows himself an original member of the Leaguedenies, on its part, the charge of violence, &c., made against itgives many, of what he no doubt calls, reasons for his hostility to the Corn Laws, and advocates with great earnestness the success of the subscription. We shall not follow his Lordship into a discussion of the policy, justice, or operation of the corn laws; we have debated those questions so recently, and our opinions have stood so entirely unshaken by any adverse argument, and have been so wonderfully confirmed by growing experience, that we are enabled to resist the temptation of exposing the futility and inconsistency on these points of Lord Kinnaird's letter, which indeed exhibits, in a most striking way, the peculiarity which seems distinctive of Anti-Corn-Law writers as a class-namely, that all their facts happen, by a lucky coincidence, to overturn all their arguments. His Lordship is, it seems, a farmer; and while his letter professes to advocate a low price of corn, it is filled with the bitterest complaints of the low prices of it as well as of every other kind of agricultural produce. The jumble between his profession of free-trade principles, and his agony at the least practical approach to them, is sufficiently comic; and, if we had not graver matters in hand, we should desire no better sport than to run him for twenty minutes; but our present business is neither with his Lordship's opinions on farming nor free-trade, but with his evidence in defence of the League-with certain matters of fact, which on his own personal authority he roundly denies, and which we think that we can, on still higher authority, indisputably establish. His Lordship's statement is—

THE LEAGUE HAS AT NO TIME BEEN THE ADVOCATE OF PHYSICAL FORCE, OR HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE LATE POPULAR TUMULts.

Their object is to instil knowledge into the minds of the people, and to publish facts, the PLAIN STATEMENT of which is quite sufficient to arouse the indignation of honest and feeling men against our commercial laws, without the use of VIOLENT LANGUAGE, which can only injure a cause, instead of advancing its interest.'-Morn. Chron., Nov. 26, 1842.

This statement has been, as might be expected, received by the League with great exultation; it was peculiarly welcome, for at the moment of its arrival the League had received some mortifying hints of disapprobation, even on scenes of its former successes. Lord Kinnaird's letter was therefore quite a prize. It has been reprinted and circulated, and quoted and puffed, with great industry and triumph; and who shall now say that the League

ever used violent language,'-or menaced the Government with the application of physical force'-or did anything towards producing the late popular tumults'-when a peer of Parliament, himself a member of the League, publicly, and on his own responsibility, solemnly asserts that they did not ?

Now, upon each of these points WE JOIN ISSUE with LORD KINNAIRD; and we trust that-considering not merely the rank and station of the champion who has thus thrown down the gauntlet, but the grave importance of the public question he has provoked we shall be excused for entering into what might otherwise be thought a superfluity of detail.

We must begin by observing that there are two leading anticorn-law associations: the one, instituted in January, 1839, styled the Manchester Anti-Corn-Law Association; and the other, which grew out of it three months later, under the title of the National Anti-Corn-Law LEAGUE.

There is little real distinction between these associations-none, we believe, but that the Manchester Association professes to be a local, and the League assumes to be a general and national union.' The leading members, however, and governing bodies of both societies being almost identical, both having the same purse, and their professed objects, and the machinery for executing them, being common to both, the two societies may, in common parlance and for general discussion, be considered as one, The formation of the Manchester Anti-Corn-Law Association was first suggested at a dinner given to Dr. Bowring in Manchester, by the friends of Free Trade, in September, 1838. On the 10th January, 1839 the project was so far ripened that the following persons, who may be considered the founders of the institution, were nominated a committee to solicit and receive subscriptions to carry it into effect :

'J. B. Smith, Esq.
Mr. Alderman Cobden
Mr. Alderman Kershaw
Mr. Alderman Callender

Mr. Alderman Shuttleworth
J. C. Dyer, Esq.

R. H. Greg, Esq.

H. Hoole, Esq.'

Manchester Times, 12th January.

On the 28th January the Association was formally organized at a general meeting, which passed several fundamental resolutions, of which the two first and only important ones were:

1. That the Association be called the "Manchester Anti-Corn-Law Association," and its object is hereby declared to be to obtain, by all legal and constitutional means, such as the formation of local Anti-CornLaw Associations, the delivery of lectures, the distribution of tracts, the insertion of articles in the public papers, and forwarding petitions to parliament, the total and immediate repeal of the corn and provision laws.

2. No