The Anti-Corn-law League has met in the Free-trade Hall of
Manchester, like "a phoenix couched upon her funeral nest," to bury the Corn-laws and cradle Financial Reform. The gathering was numerous, comprising the oldest veterans of Free Trade, from Perronet Thompson and Archibald Prentice, to neophytes like Mr. Bickham Escott ; the festival was as ornate and imposing as the first in the Corn-market, in 1839—more so; the speeches were as commanding and confident, and that, although they are now uttered after the event, is saying much. On the whole, the body of agitators is the same now as that which commenced the Anti- Corn-law agitation. But some differences do appear. In regard to the new subject of agitation, the speakers use a manner more generally contro- versial, and Mr. Cobden especially speaks in the injured expos- tulatory tone of "une femme incomprise," as if conscious that he is at odds with the influential part of society. When the Corn- laws were the standard of contest, the Protectionists their de- fenders, the Free-trade leader used the exulting tone of the great Captain when he cried, "Up Guards, and at them!" but now, half of what he says is explanatory and defensive. Thektiondam Anti- Corn-law expositor, now the extra-official censor of Mr. Cobden' budget, sat at the festival. In the consciousness of criticism abroad and in the face of that critical presence, Mr. Cobden seems not unprepared to make concessions : he appears to us to give his "budget" a less urgent aspect than it at first bore : it is no longer to be a real biulget, for use in the current year—a thing prac- tically to compete with that of the Chancellor of the Exchequer; but is only an ideal standard, a sort of theoretical scale, for a cri- tical measurement of the official proposition from year to year. This is not altogether to be regretted : "financial reform" will not suffer from Mr. Cobden's allowing his Procrustes bed to go to the old furniture shop. He will be wanted for more practical work ; and we fully expect that before the session is out he will have felt his way into a position more tenable and much more useful than that which he took up during the recess in his controversy with the unconvinced direct-taxationists of Liverpool.
