The Anti-Corn-law Leaguers seem to have made real progress in
the country as well as the towns, and some ominous conversions of' farmers have taken place. In more than one agricultural district the delegates of the League have talked down all active hostility from the tenant class : to Hertford Mr. COBDEN went down alone, and turned the farmers in a body to his purpose. Now the best of Mr. COBDEN'S speeches —and very telling they are—could not effect that metamorphosis at a blow : the great change must really have taken place, more gradually, before, and the occasion of showing it only have been wanting. But if thousands of farmers in Hertford have become ripe Free-traders, only awaiting to be gathered by the travellers of the League, what must be the state of the farming body throughout the country ? The Corn-laws have assuredly been de- serted by another large section of their army. As a matter of policy, it is doubtful whether the exhibition of a Hertford farmer- s real converted farmer—at the last weekly meeting of the League in London, could serve any useful purpose. It partakes too much of the spirit which sought to place the real GRACE DARLING on the stage, and it throws an air of wondermongering and ridicule over the whole success. There is an unfavourable appearance, too, about the set speech : it is not unlike a regular Leaguer's ; and you almost expect to recognize a familiar person of the drama, just as you detect Harlequin or Clown in the miller that appears so busy about his vocation in a pantomime. Producing the sample in this way detracts from the effect of the bulk at a distance. Still the fact stands, that two thousand or thereabouts of genuine farmers did, at Hertford, pass a resolution against the Corn-laws.
