But that victory was emphasized not only by the triumph of principle, but by the triumph of organization. The fighting was done almost entirely by Cobden and Bright outside Parliament. Both of the leaders, with Hume, Villiers, and other members, made speeches in Parliament. But the real work was done by the League, which was founded in 1838, and for eight years carried on an indefatigable but orderly campaign in the country. It bore some resemblance to the Political Unions which had supported the great Reform Bill. But those Unions had been massed behind the official Whig Opposition. The League had very few Members of Parliament at its head, and not one of those was within the circle of Whig favour. The Unions had forced their policy upon the Tory party. The League forced its policy upon Parliament. So far as active assistance was concerned the Opposition was no more to the Free Traders than the Government. Both official parties looked upon it with suspicion, and the old jealousy of popular organization which had faced the Corresponding Society and the Catholic Association was displayed by Whig as well as by Tory landlords. The lecturers of the League were denounced, not only as "commercial swindlers," but as "the paid hirelings of a disloyal faction," and "revolutionary emissaries," who inflamed the public mind "with sentiments destructive of all moral right and order."[254] In 1843 the League was accused of promoting a strike of factory hands in the North, and of rick-burning by agricultural labourers in the South, and it was rumoured that the Government intended to suppress it, as it suppressed the Catholic Association. It was not until Lord John Russell published his manifesto in favour of repeal in 1845 that a Member of Parliament of official rank openly allied himself with the League. Once the leaders of Opposition had given way the work was easy. The political centre of gravity was thus shifted from Westminster to the {201} country. It was no longer open to Parliament to decide policy, and to direct the fortunes of the nation as it thought fit. Not even Opposition could make a free choice of the topics of controversy and of legislation. It became the duty of members to observe the main currents of opinion, to check and deflect them, but no longer to originate them. They must look in future, not to their leaders, but to their constituents, for the principles which were to direct their conduct. The people were brought into direct touch with politics, and asserted their right, not only to censure their representatives by unseating them at elections, but positively to influence their actions while they sat in the House.