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The first hint of this great political Association is to be found in the writings of the very individual whose labours tended so much to crown its efforts with success. In the well-known pamphlet, entitled England, Ireland, and America, by a Manchester Manufacturer, Mr. Cobden says:

“Whilst agriculture can boast almost as many associations as there are British counties, whilst every city in the kingdom contains its botanical, phrenological, or mechanical institutions, and these again possess their periodical journals (and not merely these, for even war sends forth its United Service Magazine)—we possess no association of traders, united together, for the common object of enlightening the world upon a question so little understood, and so loaded with obloquy, as free-trade.

“We have our Banksian, our Linnæan, our Hunterian Societies, and why should not at least our greatest commercial and manufacturing towns possess their Smithian Societies, devoted to the purpose of promulgating the beneficent truths of the ‘Wealth of Nations’? Such institutions, by promoting a correspondence with similar societies that would probably be organized abroad (for it is our example in questions affecting commerce that strangers follow), might contribute to the spread of liberal and just views of political science, and thus tend to ameliorate the restrictive policy of foreign governments through the legitimate influence of the opinions of its people.

“Nor would such societies be fruitless at home. Prizes might be offered for the best essay on the corn question, or lecturers might be sent to enlighten the agriculturists, and to invite discussion upon a subject so difficult and of such paramount interest to all.”

The pamphlet from which the preceding extract is taken, was published in the early part of the year 1835, about four years before the formation of the Anti-Corn-Law League, and at a time when, owing to the very low price of grain, and the prosperity of the manufacturing districts, the question of the Corn-laws scarcely attracted the slightest attention, either in Manchester or in any other part of the country.