Gibson, Fox, Bright and Cobden—­ad nauseam usque; but, like a band of travelling incendiaries, they presented themselves with indefatigable energy in places which had never known their presence before.  And how comes it to pass that they have not long since kindled at least the manufacturing population into a blaze?  Is it any fault of the aforesaid incendiaries?  No—­but because there is too much intelligence abroad, they could not do what they would—­“raise the stubborn enthusiasm” of the people.  In one quarter they were suspected—­in another despised—­in another hated; and it became a very general impression that they were, in fact, a knot of double dealers, who certainly contrived to make a great noise, and keep themselves perpetually before the public; but as for getting the steam “up,” in the nation at large, they found it impossible.  In truth, the “Anti-corn-law League” would have long ago been dissolved amidst the indifference or contempt of the public, but for the countenance they received, from time to time, and on which they naturally calculated, from the party of the late Ministers, whose miserable object was to secure their own return to power by means of any agency that they could press into their service.  But, to return to our sketch of the progress of the “League.”  Admitting that, by dint of very great and incessant exertion, they kept their ground, they made little or no progress among the mercantile part of the community; and they resolved to try their fortune with the agricultural constituencies—­to sow dissension between the landlords and the tenants, the farmers and their labourers, and combine as many of the disaffected as they could, in support of the clamour for free trade.  This was distinctly avowed by Cobden, at a meeting of the Anti-corn-law deputies, in the following very significant terms:  “We can never carry the measure ourselves:  WE MUST HAVE THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS WITH US!!"[27]

    [27] League Circular, No. xxx. p. 3.

They therefore proceeded to commence operations upon the agricultural constituencies.  They knew they could always reckon upon a share of support wherever they went—­it being hard to find any country without its cluster of bitter and reckless opponents of a Conservative government, who would willingly aid in any demonstration against it.  With such aid, and indefatigable efforts to collect a crowd of noisy non-electors:  with a judicious choice of localities, and profuse bribery of the local Radical newspapers, in order to procure copious accounts of their proceedings—­they commenced their “grand series of country triumphs!” Their own organs, from time to time, gave out that in each and every county visited by the League, the farmers attended their meetings, and joined in a vote condemnatory of the corn-laws, and pledged themselves to vote thereafter for none but the candidates of the Anti-corn-law League!