[Sidenote: The Pioneers of Free Trade.] [Sidenote: Failure of Potato Crop in Ireland.] This League was a remarkable organisation under a no less remarkable leader. Richard Cobden, the son of a yeoman farmer, was employed in his youth in a London warehouse, and then became partner in a Manchester cotton factory. He first attracted notice as a pamphleteer, attacking some of the most cherished traditions of British statesmanship. He travelled far and wide on the business of his firm, and in every country he visited his thoughtful mind gathered material for the doctrines inseparably associated with his name. He first entered Parliament in 1841, being recognised at that time as the leader of the movement in the country against the corn duties. Mr. Charles Villiers had won for himself the position of parliamentary head of the Free Trade party; to him Cobden came not as a rival but as a wise, resourceful ally. A third figure was soon to be added to this famous group in the person of John Bright, a Quaker manufacturer in Rochdale. A notable trio, each supplying the complement of the other's qualities; Villiers, of aristocratic birth and connections, well acquainted with the rules and peculiar temperament of the House of Commons, ardent, industrious, and well informed; Cobden, a man of the people, temperate, just, "the apostle of common-sense," and singularly persuasive; Bright, intensely--sternly in earnest, possessing gifts of oratory denied to his colleagues, but exercising them with a discretion rare among fluent speakers. Lastly, one attribute shared equally by each of the three men--absolute integrity and complete disinterestedness. They were Radicals, but they dissociated themselves from all ties of political party, looking for no reward from either side, but ready to support any Minister who would carry out their views. Their appeal was addressed to the understanding, not to the passions, of men: their aim was to secure cheap food for the masses, but they never stooped to inflammatory tirades against the classes. Hence the steady, rapid growth of the League, and its irresistible influence on the Queen's Ministers. Mr. Villiers had advocated for many years the total abolition of the corn duties, and nothing less would now satisfy the League. Russell, who scouted the very idea of absolutely free imports, had yielded so far as to propose, in 1841, a fixed duty on foreign corn, greatly less than the existing rate, which varied between 27_s._ and 1_s._ per quarter, according to the market price. Peel came forward in 1842 with a more liberal remission of duty, but although his Bill was passed by a very large majority, all it did was to make the country party behind him uneasy without conciliating the Anti-Corn Law people. No one but men of the Manchester school--"Cobdenites," as they afterwards came to be called--no one, either Whig or Tory, dreamt of denying that protection was desirable, even necessary, for agriculture. Peel's first measure