Part letter from John Bright, Rochdale, Lancashire, to Henry Pease, explaining the effect of the Corn Laws on the working classes in Britain, in depressing their wages, in preventing them from buying food and extra comforts from abroad; remarking that Protection benefits only landowners and oppresses all the other classes; ‘I maintain that a repeal of the Corn Laws would advance Wages. We have power equal to 600 million of men in our steam & machinery & yet we cannot maintain with this 27 millions of men – If we had free trade this 600 millions of power would bring from every country in the world the best of every thing they produced, but as it is, it is given away, partly to our Aristocracy & partly to other nations, & little of the good remains for us – These are the main points of my argument upon the Corn Laws & wages’, 9 March 1842 – From: Quaker families of Darlington,Pease family, Henry Pease (1807 – 1881), Correspondence