The principle of protecting the country against the importation of foreign breadstuffs was upheld as fostering the agricultural interests, as inciting the larger cultivation of poor lands, as providing against dangerous dependence on foreign countries, and as helping the large landowners and their tenants to patronize manufactures and trade; so that, although the high prices of breadstuffs were keeping vast numbers of people in misery and the country on the edge of revolution, the protectionist doctrine was believed in religiously by the laboring classes, the small shopkeepers, nearly all the educated classes, and a large majority of the members of Parliament.

To combat this unshaken traditional belief was a gigantic undertaking.  It was the battle of reason and truth against prejudice and bigotry,—­the battle of a new enlightenment of general interests against the selfishness of unenlightened classes.  While Villiers and Thomson appealed to members in the House of Commons, Cobden and Bright with still greater eloquence directly addressed the people in the largest halls that could be found.  In 1838 Cobden persuaded the Chamber of Commerce in Manchester to petition Parliament for a repeal of the duties on corn.  In 1839, the agitation spreading, petitions went up from various parts of the country bearing two million signatures.  The motion to repeal, however, was lost by a large majority in the Commons.  Then began the organization of Free-Trade Leagues.  In 1841 a meeting in Manchester was held, at which were present seven hundred nonconformist ministers, so effectually had conversions been made among intelligent men.  Nor did the accession of the conservative Sir Robert Peel to power discourage the agitators, for in the same year (1841) Cobden was sent to Parliament.  Meetings were still more frequently held in all the towns of the kingdom, A bazaar held in favor of the cause in the Theatre Royal, Manchester, in 1842, produced a clear profit of L10,000.  In 1843 the great Free-Trade Hall was opened in Manchester, built expressly for public meetings for the anti corn-law agitation, and the sum of L150,000 was raised by private subscription to disseminate knowledge.  At last, recognizing with keen instinct the inevitable turn in public opinion, the “Times” came out with a leading article of great power, showing a change of views on the subject of protection.  Great noblemen, one after another, joined the League, and the Marquis of Westminster contributed L500 to the cause.

The free-trade movement was now recognized as a great fact which it was folly to ignore.  Encouraged by the constant accession to the ranks of reform, the leaders of the League turned their attention to the registration of voters, by which many spurious claims for seats were annulled, and new members of Parliament were chosen to advocate free-trade.  At last, in 1846, Sir Robert Peel himself, after having been for nearly his whole career a protectionist, gave in his adhesion to the new principles.  Cobden, among others, had convinced him that the prosperity of the country depended on free-trade, and he nobly made his recantation, to the intense disgust of many of his former followers,—­especially of Disraeli, who now appears in Parliament as a leader of the protectionists.