The Anti-Corn-Law League showered pamphlets, tracts, letters, newspapers, all over the country.  They sent lecturers into every town, preaching the same doctrine, and proving by scientific facts the justice of the cause they advocated.  These lecturers were enjoined to avoid as much as possible any appeals to sentiment or to passion.  The cause they had in hand was one which could best be served by the clear statement of rigorous facts, by the simple explanation of economical truths which no sophism could darken, and which no opposing eloquence could charm away.  The Melbourne Ministry fell in 1841.  It died of inanition:  its force was spent.  Sir Robert Peel came into office.  Cobden, who then entered the House of Commons for the first time, seemed to have good hope that even Peel, strong Conservative though he was, might prove to be a man from whom the Free Traders could expect substantial assistance.  Sir Robert Peel had, in fact, in those later years expressed again and again his conviction as to the general truth of the principles of free trade.  “All agree,” he said in 1842, “in the general rule that we should buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market.”  But he contended that while such was the general rule, yet various economical and social conditions made it necessary that there should be some distinct exceptions, and he regarded the corn laws and sugar duties as such exceptions.  It may be mentioned, perhaps, that the corn laws had, in fact, been treated as a necessary exception by many of the leading exponents of the principles of free trade.  Thus we have to notice the curious fact that while Sir Robert Peel’s own party looked upon his accession to power as a certain guarantee against any concession to the Free Traders, the Free Traders themselves were, for the most part, convinced that their cause had better hope from him than from a Whig Ministry.

The Free Traders went on debating and dividing in the House, agitating and lecturing all over the country, for some years without any marked Parliamentary success following their endeavors.  An immense and overwhelming majority always voted against them in the House of Commons.  They were making progress, and very great progress, but it was not that kind of advance which had yet come to be decided by a Parliamentary vote.  Probably a keen and experienced eye might have noted clearly enough the progress they were making.  The Whig party were coming more and more round to the principles of free trade.  Day after day some Whig leader was admitting that the theories of the past would not do for the present, and, as we have said, the Tory leader had himself gone so far as to admit the justice of the general principles of free trade.  At one point the main difference between Sir Robert Peel, the leader of the House of Commons, and Lord John Russell, the leader of the opposition, seems to have been nothing more than this, that Peel still regarded grain as a necessary exception to the principle of free trade, and Lord John Russell was not clear that the time had come when it could be treated otherwise than as an exception.