ing period of the year at Manchester. Silk Buck-
ingham was introduced. Every one remembered
what good service he had rendered to the state
by his lectures in former years against the East
India monopoly. He addressed the meeting; so
did homely Joseph Brotherton, whose very sen-
sible annual motions that the House of Commons
should dismiss itself and betake itself to bed at the
sensible hour of twelve every night many of our
readers will recollect. But there was a sort of
damper on the meeting. Mr. Cobden jumped up
with alacrity, and, to cheer his friends up, first
informed them that Mr. Buckingham was going to
join their gallant crew as a recruit; he was going
to become one of their lecturers. Then he said he
was for national co-operation; it must be a mere
Manchester matter no longer. The League must
print a million copies of each of their three prize
essays. In a fortnight he'd have every Manches-
ter printing-press in full swing. They must not
any longer dispense Free Trade tracts, but con-
densed libraries on the Corn Laws. Every lec-
turer must have his district. And as for the mo-
nopolist papers jeering them and saying they
wouldn't raise their £50,000, why he thought they
might just as well ask for a hundred thousand at
once. They'd say this to the country--" We'll
spend the money first; we'll put ourselves in
pledge for it, and we'll trust to our bread-eating
countrymen to take us out of pawn!"

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