But Robert Peel no longer backed the Corn Laws. He wanted the drawbridges around Britain lowered forever. But he wondered how could he, leader of the Conservative party, carry through such a revolutionary change? He decided to let the present Parliament run its course. In the next election he would appeal to the country: he would carry the fight to the people. Then they could send him back, free of all party ties and obligations, as a Free Trader. But the weather is no respecter of parliamentary elections! The wheat crop failed in England, like the potato crop in Ireland. People were starving, and the Corn Laws locked out food. Peel called a meeting of his Cabinet, and the storm broke. The Cobden forces were ready. They held great mass meetings, with Cobden and Bright enlisting every available speaker. Frederick Douglass addressed crowds in Piccadilly, on the docks, and in Hyde Park. He and John Bright went down into Lancashire. They talked in Birmingham and other towns and cities about the worker’s right to have bread. Then one morning a week before Christmas, Bright burst into the rooms on Tavistock Square, waving a newspaper. “We’ve won! We’ve won!” he shouted. “The Cabinet’s intact, the Prime Minister is back, the Repeal stands! We’ve won!” James Buffum rolled out of bed and reached for the paper. Frederick, partly dressed, emerged from behind a curtained cubicle and clapped the little man on the shoulder. John Bright had watched his wife die of starvation while he sat at his spindles. But he could not fill enough spools. He could not spin fast enough. She had died. So John Bright had left his loom and joined Richard Cobden. Now there would be more food in England. He stood clinging to the dark man’s hand--this new friend who knew so much about suffering. “I’m going home,” he said in his rich rolling Lancashire brogue. “I’m going down to tell the folks myself. Come with me. We’ll be glad together!” So it happened that Frederick spent the Christmas in a spinner’s shack in Lancaster. On Christmas Eve he wrote Anna.