Address: Manchester. To Mr [?George] Moffatt. 'Not a word passed between [Earl] Grey & me upon any other subject than corn - I called on him solely for the purpose of urging the Whigs to stick to our principle, & to explain that the League could not swerve a hairs breadth from its path of Total & Immediate to suit any party. This is all that passed - [Viscount] Palmerstons name was of course never mentioned or referred to ... The Whigs are lower than ever by this exhibition of impracticableness at a moment when every other question ought to have been suspended at least till they had dealt some-how or other with that food crisis which alone called them into place & alone warranted them in assuming a power which otherwise they did not possess. At such a time to squabble over seats at the Council board! If I had been Lord John [Russell], history should have rather said of me that I had sent into the parish vestryroom for a dozen select men of the parish to form my cabinet, until I could in my place in Parlt. birng on the total repeal of the corn law, than that I had allowed any two or even twelve men to stop me in my course when once pledged to such an undertaking'.
Autograph, with signature.
Sir Robert Peel had resigned as Prime Minister on 9 December 1845 after the famine in Ireland had led him to consider the repeal of the Corn Laws as essential; Lord John Russell had failed to form a government owing to dissension between Grey and Palmerston, so Peel had resumed office on 20 December 1845. The bill repealing the Corn Laws finally passed in the House of Lords on 25 June 1846; Peel commented that the name that should be associated with free trade in corn was Richard Cobden.