For some years before 1838 the impression had become more or less prevalent that the influence of the Corn Laws was favorable to the landowners and the landowners alone. The system was devised as a means of protecting the interests of agriculture. The financial disturbances occasioned partly by the Napoleonic wars, partly by the invention of labor-saving machines, and partly by a succession of bad crops, tended at once to diminish the price of labor and increase the prices of food. The consequence was a universal prevalence of suffering among the wage-receiving class. Cobden and his associates believed that the suffering was chiefly due to the system of protection. The league was formed for the purpose of arousing public opinion in opposition to the prevailing system; and it did not rest till, after the most remarkable agitation in the history of reform, it had convinced the public of its errors, and swept the Corn Laws from the statute-books. For seven years Cobden had the ear of the public, and during that period his labors were incessant. He not only spoke in all the large towns and cities, but he directed and inspired the movements of hundreds of others. The policy of the league was not only to send speakers into every electoral district, but to flood the country with the most effective writings on the subject in hand. What may be called the statistics of the league are impressive and instructive. Five hundred persons were employed to distribute tracts from house to house. In a single year five millions of such tracts were put into the families of electors in England and Scotland, and the number distributed to non-electors exceeded nine millions. This work of 1843 was done at a cost of about £50,000; in the following year it was resolved to redouble the efforts, and before the end of 1844 nearly £90,000 had been raised and expended. The whole theory of Cobden’s propagandism was simply that, if the truth was brought to people’s doors, they would embrace it. The method was twofold. It sought to bring the facts bearing on the question to the attention of the people by means of the press, and then by public speech to persuade and arouse them to action. Of all the speakers of the time probably Cobden was the most effective. His methods were always plain and straightforward, showing a transparent honesty, a definite purpose, an argumentative keenness, and an almost irresistible persuasiveness.