against that mongrel compromise with slavery, the apprentice system in the West Indies; and he would fight under no other against the Corn Laws. He not only carried it into that great field as the banner of his own action, but he rallied to it even many of the leaders of the movement who were on the point of being seduced into a compromise with the upholders of the unjust system. At this crisis of the movement, its most dangerous stage, when the two great political parties were so nearly balanced that each was bidding high for the adhesion of the Anti-Corn-Law League, no man saw the peril of the temptation so clearly as Joseph Sturge. He was on the point of leaving for America on an anti-slavery mission; but he wrote an earnest letter to the Council of the League, offering to raise his subscription from £100 to £200 for the year, on the distinct understanding that they were on no account to yield up the principle of total and immediate abolition. Mr. Cobden, who had the greatest reverence for his strong, deep, and clear sense of truth, right, and duty, wrote to him thus: "A letter from you in the 'Anti-Corn-Law Circular,' published at the present time, exhorting us to stand firm to principles, and promising your co-operation so long as we do so, would be a rallying point for all the good and true men, and would shame the wanderers and bring them back to our ranks."
