he and his associates have heretofore reproached for such practice."

His speeches were probably as numerous during the election as Brougham's, as he spoke every day at the close of the poll, and in one of his speeches he begged to be excused from making a longer speech on the ground of the necessity under which he was to attend in the course of the evening upon several meetings of freemen. No sooner was the election over, than we find him haranguing, as Platform opponents called it, at a dinner at Manchester, delivering a regular party leader's speech.

In the following year, after the session was over, we find him again speaking at Liverpool. "As the representative of Liverpool, I am most happy in meeting my constituents again, after a year's experience of each other and a year's separation." Had his constituents been at his door, as Fox's were, it is probable his harangues would have been as numerous as Fox's.

His speeches have, moreover, this special characteristic which belongs to the higher class of Platform oratory, that they were addressed not merely to his constituents, but to the larger public without. Both the subjects which he selected to speak about, and his treatment of them, were on a very different level than the ordinary hustings eloquence of the time; and the fact that so great a man, and one who had filled such high station in the government of the country, should resort to the Platform for the purposes of acquiring additional popularity and power, is the most remarkable testimony to the position already reached by the Platform.

CHAPTER IX

THE SECOND SUPPRESSION OF THE PLATFORM

THE long war, that titanic struggle of twenty years' duration, which had been waged by England for her very existence, at length came to an end.

Peace came at last. The icy blasts of a Russian winter had wrapped one whole French army in a snowy pall, and the gleaming bayonets and indomitable courage of British soldiers had routed another. France, unable longer to carry on the contest, succumbed, and a treaty of peace was signed on 30th May 1814.

For twenty years the kingdom had been straining every nerve in the struggle, money had been poured forth with the most lavish hands, burden after burden had been piled upon the people, the dread of invasion had frequently kept the country in a fever of anxiety, political reforms were declared to be barred, everything had had to give way to the one overwhelming imperative necessity of war.

War had become almost the natural state of life. A generation had grown up in war, and their ideas were habituated to it; political parties were regulated by their approval or disapproval of it; agriculture and manufactures and commerce had shaped themselves to the circumstances and requirements of war; Government itself was carried on in the atmosphere of war. And now all was to be different. The war clouds had broken, and were rolling away, the horrible ever-present nightmare was disappearing. Men could breathe freely again, could think of something else than war, could lift up their heads and look about them, and endeavour to adapt themselves to their altered and wider life.

We now can but dimly realise what the change was. It was like the raising of a siege, like stepping on shore after a

long and perilous sea voyage, like recovery from a desperate and critical illness. Life, as it were, was to begin again, scope was once more to be afforded for energies long restricted and confined, and forces long dormant were to spring into action.

Though political life and action had been more or less in abeyance during all the long years of the war, a gradual process of education and enlightenment had been going on among the people, an increased comprehension of the principles and practice of Government, an increasing sense of a just, moral claim to a share or voice in the management of public affairs, and an increased desire to take part in them. The complete freedom of speech in Parliament, and the publication of the debates or discussions there, had encouraged freedom of thought amongst the people outside, and habituated them to greater freedom of discussion. Public interest in the proceedings of Parliament had grown keener, the growth of the Press had given those proceedings a wider circulation, and the public, from repeated experience, were growing ever readier to criticise the action of Parliament, and to protrude their views, opinions, and judgment on the Legislature. Population had increased, and great centres of industrial activity grown into being, and with the increasing population a growing restlessness had been showing itself among large masses of the people. Nor can we be surprised at it, for there was not much inducement to them to rest.

Causes of discontent were numerous. The monopoly of political power in the hands of so small a part of the nation, the enormous and excessive influence of the Crown, the shameful and now exposed abuses in the exercise of patronage and the administration of the public funds, the almost unbearable burden of the taxes-all these were there to urge men, once war had ceased, to agitation for reform, social, political, or material; and with greater knowledge and more enlightened intelligence on the part of the people, the agitation was certain to be more serious, more determined, and more pertinacious than it had ever been before.

The crisis would, under any circumstances, have demanded much ability and tact on the part of the political leaders successfully to surmount, but the Government aggravated the

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difficulties of the time by a policy which, however consonant with the prevailing ideas, was most disturbing in its results, and once more provoked the Platform into action.

The landed interest was still regarded by the governing powers of the time as the most important interest in the country. To it all others had to make way. Commercial and manufacturing interests weighed almost as nothing against it. If grain was dear, and the rent of land was high, the country was pronounced to be in a state of sound prosperity, no matter how trade and commerce languished. If the price of grain fell, and the farmers could not afford to pay a high rent, cries of lamentation and woe instantly arose as to the distressed state of the country. The consumer was thought nothing of, was of no consideration whatever in those days; the landed interest, or to be more precise, the landlord interest, was the predominant one; and inasmuch as the landlord interest was overwhelmingly predominant both in the House of Commons, and in the House of Lords, legislators took very good care of their own interests. The arguments by which they justified the legislation for their own advantage are as entertaining and worthless as those which the boroughmongers used against proposals for a reform of Parliament; but that they utilised their power to secure to themselves a monopoly, at the cost of every other class in the country, shows how unfit they were to be trusted with the power they had, and is the strongest possible condemnation of the then existing system of representation.

The benefit to be derived from the legislation which was now being contemplated by the landed interest exclusively and entirely affected the landowners. This cannot be too clearly understood; and as, some five and thirty years later, the Corn Laws were the subject of a tremendous agitation, hereafter to be described, this point can with advantage to a true conception of the question be stated here.

Whether wheat was 120s. or 60s. a quarter was a matter in which the labourer had no interest whatever, so far as his wages were concerned. If he got higher wages when the price was high, and as a rule he did not, he had to pay higher prices for his food and clothing. And as regards the farmer, it came to the same thing if he got a low price for his produce,

and paid a low rent, or got a high price for his produce, and paid a high rent-his share of the profits was the same. The landlords, therefore, were the only persons who profited by high rents.

To keep rent high-that was their one object. That could only be done by making the produce of the land as dear as possible, and that could only be secured by shutting out foreign competitors, and thus "protecting" home-grown produce. The evils resulting from natural scarcity were bad enough, in all conscience, but for Parliament to pass a law in the interests of its own members and class, creating artificial scarcity, was almost the most heinous offence it could be guilty of.

Since 1791 a sliding tax had been imposed on imported corn, that is to say, an import tax which diminished as the price of home-grown corn increased, or increased as the price of corn diminished. In 1813, when prices were not quite as high as was deemed desirable, the landed interest had prevailed upon Parliament to appoint a Committee to investigate the Corn Laws. The Committee made the monstrous recommendation that wheat should have reached the starvation price of 105s. a quarter before the importation of that article should be permitted.1

In the following year another Committee sat. The Committee observed that the sudden removal of the impediments to importation, which, during the war, operated to check the importation of foreign corn, had created among the occupiers of land a certain degree of alarm.

During the war, more particularly in the latter part of it, rents had been fabulously high, and the landlords had so long enjoyed the advantages of high rents that when peace came they were determined, if possible, to secure the continuance of a state of things which enabled them to live more luxuriously and to keep up greater state than otherwise they could have done. This fact finds confirmation in the action of this Committee, which, more moderate than its predecessor hinted. at the protection price being raised from 63s., at which it had latterly stood, to 80s. per quarter.

2

The manifest object of these Committees was to pave the 1 See Parliamentary Debates, vol. xxv., Appendix, p. lv. 2 This is confirmed by Francis Place.