An odd feature of the time was the outbreak of what were called the Rebecca riots in Wales. These riots arose out of the anger and impatience of the people at the great increase of tollbars and tolls on the public roads. Some one, it was supposed, had hit upon a passage in Genesis which supplied a motto for their grievance and their complaint. And they blessed Rebekah, and said unto her let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them.' They set about accordingly to possess very effectually the gates of those which hated them. Mobs, led by men in women's clothes, assembled every night, destroyed turnpikes, and dispersed. Blood was shed in conflicts with police and soldiers. At last the Government succeeded

in putting down the riots, and had the wisdom to appoint a Commission to inquire into the cause of so much disturbance; and the Commission, as will readily be imagined, found that there were genuine grievances at the bottom of the popular excitement. The farmers and the labourers were poor; the tolls were seriously oppressive. The Government dealt lightly with most of the rioters who had been captured, and introduced measures which removed the most serious grievances.

Sir James Graham, the Home Secretary, brought himself and the Government into some trouble by authorising the Post Office to open some of the letters of Joseph Mazzini, the Italian exile. The public excitement was at first very great; but it soon subsided. The reports of Parliamentary committees appointed by the two Houses showed that all Governments had exercised the right, but naturally with decreasing frequency and greater caution of late years; and that there was no chance now of its being seriously abused. One remark it is right to make. An exile is sheltered in a country like England on the assumption that he does not involve her in responsibility and danger by using her protection as a shield behind which to contrive plots and organise insurrections against foreign Governments. It is certain that Mazzini did make use of the shelter England gave him for such a purpose. It would in the end be to the heavy injury of all fugitives from despotic rule if to shelter them brought such consequences on the countries that offered them a home.

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The Peel Administration had wars of its own. annexed by Lord Ellenborough in consequence of the disputes which had arisen between us and the Ameers, whom we accused of having broken faith with us. Peel and his colleagues accepted the annexation. None of them liked it; but none saw

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how it could be undone. Later on the Sikhs invaded our territory by crossing the Sutlej in great force. Sir Hugh Gough, afterwards Lord Gough, fought several fierce battles with them before he could conquer them; and even then they were only conquered for the time.

We were at one moment apparently on the very verge of what must have proved a far more serious war much nearer home, in consequence of the dispute that arose between this country and France about Tahiti and Queen Pomare. Queen Pomare was sovereign of the island of Tahiti, in the South Pacific, the Otaheite of Captain Cook. She had been induced or compelled to put herself and her dominion under the protection of France; a step which was highly displeasing to her subjects. Some illfeeling towards the French residents of the island was shown; and the French admiral, who had induced or compelled the queen to put herself under French protection, now suddenly appeared off the coast, and called on her to hoist the French flag above her own. She refused; and he instantly effected a landing on the island, pulled down her flag, raised that of France in its place, and proclaimed that the island was French territory. His act was at once disavowed by the French Government. But Queen Pomare had appealed to the Queen of England for assistance. While the more hot-headed on both sides of the English Channel were snarling at each other, the difficulty was immensely complicated by the French commandant's seizure of a missionary named Pritchard, who had been our consul in the island up to the deposition of Pomare. Pritchard was flung into prison, and only released to be expelled from the island. He came home to England with his story; and his arrival was the signal for an outburst of indignation all over the country. In the end the French Government agreed to compensate Pritchard for his sufferings and losses. Queen Pomare was nominally restored to power, but the French protection proved as stringent as if it were a sovereign rule. She might as well have pulled down her flag for all the sovereign right it secured to her. She died thirty-four years after, and her death recalled to the memory of the English public the longforgotten fact she had once so nearly been the cause of a war between England and France.

The Ashburton Treaty and the Oregon Treaty belong alike to the history of Peel's Administration. The Ashburton Treaty bears date August 9, 1842, and arranges finally the north-western boundary between the British Provinces of North America

and the United States. More than once the dispute about the boundary line in the Oregon region had very nearly become an occasion for war between England and the United States. On June 15, 1846, the Oregon Treaty settled the question for that time at least. Vancouver's Island remained to Great Britian, and the free navigation of the Columbia River was secured. The question came up again for discussion in 1871, and was finally settled by the arbitration of the Emperor of Germany.

During Peel's time we catch a last glimpse of the famous. Arctic navigator, Sir John Franklin. He sailed on the expedition which was doomed to be his last, on May 26, 1845, with his two vessels, Erebus and Terror. Not much more is heard of him as among the living.

CHAPTER VI.

THE ANTI-CORN LAW LEAGUE.

THE famous Corn Law of 1815 was a copy of the Corn Law of 1670. The former measure imposed duty on the importation of foreign grain which amounted to prohibition. Wheat might be exported upon the payment of one shilling per quarter Customs duty; but importation was practically prohibited until the price of wheat had reached eighty shillings a quarter. The Corn Law of 1815 was hurried through Parliament, absolutely closing the ports against the importation of foreign grain until the price of our homegrown grain had reached the magic figure of eighty shillings a quarter. It was hurried through, despite the most earnest petitions from the commercial and manufacturing classes. A great deal of popular disturbance attended the passing of the measure. There were riots in London, and in many parts of the country. After the Corn Law of 1815, thus ominously introduced, there were Sliding Scale Acts, having for their business to establish a varying system of duty, so that, according as the price of home-produced wheat rose to a certain height, the duty on imported wheat sank in proportion. The principle of all these measures was the same. It was founded on the assumption that the corn grew for the benefit of the grower first of all; and that until he had been secured in a handsome profit the public at large had no right to any

reduction in the cost of food. When the harvest was a good one, and the golden grain was plenty, then the soul of the grower was afraid, and he called out to Parliament to protect him against the calamity of having to sell his corn any cheaper than in years of famine. He did not see all the time that if the prosperity of the country in general was enhanced, he too must come to benefit by it.

A movement against the Corn Laws began in London. An Anti-Corn Law Association on a small scale was formed. Its list of members bore the names of more than twenty members of Parliament, and for a time the society had a look of vigour about it. It came to nothing, however. London has never been found an effective nursery of agitation. It has hardly ever made or represented thoroughly the public opinion of England during any great crisis. A new centre of operations had to be sought, and in the year 1838 a meeting was held in Manchester to consider measures necessary to be adopted for bringing about the complete repeal of the obnoxious Laws. The Manchester Chamber of Commerce adopted a petition to Parliament against the Corn Laws. The AntiCorn Law agitation had been fairly launched. From that time it grew and grew in importance and strength. Meetings were held in various towns of England and Scotland. Associations were formed everywhere to co-operate with the movement which had its head-quarters in Manchester.

The nominal leader of the Free Trade party in Parliament was for many years Mr. Charles Villiers, a man of aristocratic family and surroundings, of remarkable ability, and of the steadiest fidelity to the cause he had undertaken. Mr. Villiers brought forward for several successive sessions in the House of Commons a motion in favour of the total repeal of the Corn Laws. His eloquence and argumentative power served the great purpose of drawing the attention of the country to the whole question, and making converts to the principle he advocated. But Mr. Villiers might have gone on for all his life dividing the House of Commons on the question of Free Trade, without getting much nearer his object, if it were not for the manner in which the cause was taken up by the country, and more particularly by the great manufacturing towns of the North. Until the passing of Lord Grey's Reform Bill these towns had no representation in Parliament. They seemed destined after that event to make up for their long exclusion from representative influence by taking the

government of the country into their own hands. Manchester, Birmingham, and Leeds are no whit less important to the life of the nation now than they were before Free Trade. But their supremacy does not exist now as it did then. At that time it was town against country; Manchester representing the town, and the whole Conservative (at one period almost the whole landowning) body representing the country. With the Manchester school, as it was called, began a new kind of popular agitation. Up to that time agitation meant appeal to passion, and lived by provoking passion The Manchester school introduced the agitation which appealed to reason and argument only; which stirred men's hearts with figures of arithmetic rather than figures of speech, and which converted mob meetings to political economy.

The real leader of the movement was Mr. Richard Cobden. Mr. Cobden was a man belonging to the yeoman class. He had received but a moderate education. His father dying while the great Free Trader was still young, Richard Cobden was taken in charge by an uncle, who had a wholesale warehouse in the City of London, and who gave him employment there. Cobden afterwards became a partner in a Manchester printed cotton factory; and he travelled occasionally on the commercial business of this establishment. He had a great liking for travel; but not by any means as the ordinary tourist travels; the interest of Cobden was not in scenery, or in art, or in ruins, but in men. He studied the condition of countries with a view to the manner in which it affected the men and women of the present, and through them was likely to affect the future. On everything that he saw he turned a quick and intelligent eye; and he saw for himself and thought for himself. Wherever he went, he wanted to learn something. He had in abundance that peculiar faculty which some great men of widely different stamp from him and from each other have possessed, the faculty which exacts from everyone with whom the owner comes into contact some contribution to his stock of information and to his advantage. Cobden could learn something from everybody. He travelled very widely, for a time when travelling was more difficult work than it is at present. He made himself familiar with most of the countries of Europe, with many parts of the East, and what was then a rarer accomplishment, with the United States and Canada. He studied these countries and visited many of them again to compare early with later impressions. When he was