'No Corn Law,' 'Give bread and labor,' he lean-
ed back in his carriage grave and pale." The
question before the country was between Sir
Robert's plan of a fluctuating duty and Lord
John Russell's proposition of a fixed one. Mr.
Cobden, at an early period of a long-protracted
debate, protested against both in one of his most
vigorous and telling speeches. He dealt especial-
ly with the fallacy, whose antiquity was exactly
coeval with that of the Corn Law itself, that high
prices of corn produced a high rate of wages. He
accused the Tories of utter ignorance on the sub-
ject; and being met thereupon with a storm of
deprecatory and derisive "Oh! oh's!" he turned
to the benches whence they proceeded, and said,
"Yes! I say an ignorance upon this subject which
I never saw equaled in any body of working-men
in the north of England. (Oh, oh.) Do you
think that the fallacy of 1815, which to my as-
tonishment I heard put forth in the House last
week, namely, that wages rise and fall with the
price of food, can prevail, after the experience of
the last three years? Have you not had bread
higher during that time than during any two
years during the last twenty years? Yes. Yet,
during these three years, the wages of labor in
every branch of industry have suffered a greater
decline than in any three years before."

One of the most important articles affected by
Peel's great and sweeping financial measure was

-83-